Somewhere Slowly

The penultimate day … Even if we were planning to carry on to Finisterre, it still felt like our focus – like most of the others on the trail – was on Santiago. We took our key back to the hotel and went for breakfast across the street from it. Nanci went to get money out, and on the way she bumped into the Canadian contingent and told them where we were, so they joined us for another coffee, another chat, and another day of glorious walking through the green Galician countryside.

The markers kept ticking the kilometres off, each one better and worse. Though it’s all about going to Santiago, arriving is a very mixed blessing. We filled our day chatting, marvelling at views and flowers, taking Aquarius and cake breaks, finally talking to people we had been walking in sync with for days, even finding lost friends in the loo queue! We smelt and photographed the roses, literally.

When we got to Padron, Wendy and Rebecca carried on as they had booked a place further on, but we arranged to meet them the next day so we could walk into Santiago together.

We checked into a great room in an albergue, spotlessly clean, with comfy beds, kitchen and laundry facilities – including washers and driers, so again we washed everything. We would arrive in Santiago in fragrant style!

Apparently the Padron pillar – the one St James’ stone boat was tied up to when he sailed into Galicia, covered in scallop shells – is on display in this church by the river. We didn’t go in, but stopped for an anchor drink at a small bar/café on the square, where the owner had an odd penchant for kissing women on the head. Yes. Literally. We only stayed for the one drink, then went off to see any sights and catch some food.

Padron is (also) famous for the pimientos de Padron, a kind of small green peppers which are sometimes hot, mostly not. It’s basically the culinary version of Russian roulette. I have only had seriously hot ones twice in all my years of munching on gorgeous, flash fried pimientos liberally sprinkled with coarse sea salt, but they are absolutely worth a try. So we were obviously looking for some for our dinner, but there were none on any of the menus we saw … I guess they just call them peppers there. Or maybe they weren’t in season yet?

Padron town was pretty, and small enough to get a good feel for the place, but not very lively early in the evening. We walked around for a bit, found very few restaurants open and in the end went for some pizza. There wasn’t a lot to do but try to get an early night, so we could get up and race the 4 kms to meet the Canadians for our last 26 km walk into Santiago.