As previously mentioned, Negreira isn’t a very big place, but it seemed somehow bigger than I remember – possibly because it has got more pilgrim specific facilities over the last five years? We saw an albergue I can’t remember, and a self-service laundry across the street from it too I think? What I did remember, though, were the cute little shops in the arches on the way out of town, and the sculpture of the two sides of emigration – the hopeful wanderer versus those left behind, with the child leaning out of the window to try to stop the father from leaving.
This was mostly a green and very chilled day in the Galician countryside, bimbling along enjoying the sun and the breeze and the views. Not just along, though, but steadily upwards – sometimes gently, sometimes enough to warrant benches at the side of the trail. We were slowly getting to the realm of the windmills. Thank you for the benches!
I remembered a café up some steps and hoped they were less steep than I remembered them, but no such luck. We bumped into two other pilgrims heading up that way from the opposite direction and asked if there were any other places nearby, but they said definitely this one. So up the steps we went, and it really is worth it once you get up there. Good views, good food, great place to rest up before we moved on (but no taking your shoes off inside). I could show you a photo if I had one, but this seems to have been a slow photo day.
I can’t remember really seeing many people, or talking to them in any memorable sense, though I do know we made a few stops – there were yogurts and Santiago cake and at one point a bocadillo – but mostly we just walked along quiet roads and trails in the lush countryside, and it was all good.
There are many odd conversations popping up when you walk with someone for so long, but this day Nanci asked us both an interesting question: If money were no object, what shiny new thing would you get for your kit? (Campervans, Spanish real estate with pools and such were not ‘allowed’, apparently.) I really had to think long and hard, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Everything I wore, carried and brought with me seemed to cover my needs and work as intended, and the inability to answer the question made me very happy.
At long last we arrived at Casa Pepa in Santa Mariña, a tiny spot in the middle of seemingly nowhere, where I had booked a twin room. Last time I was there with the Scouse Spouse, they only took cash, and we didn’t have enough to pay for the room and the evening meal, so we had to go to the (not very) nearest bar to buy divine bacon sandwiches with a card – this time we had arrived with plenty of ready money! I was so pleased with this progress that I was unprepared for the utter, utter comfort of our room in a recently built or renovated building. There was also a new dining room, pilgrim friendly laundry facilities, even insect screens on the windows!! And that’s a very good thing, because they had just (ahem) fertilised the fields and there were masses of flies everywhere. But apart from that, so peaceful and lovely. We chatted with an Irish pilgrim while we washed and dried everything we weren’t wearing, enough to see us through to Finisterre.
The evening meal was fine, the other pilgrims seemed more sociable than on the Portuguese, and my bed was heaven. Now that we could go to sleep with the window open without getting a room full of buzzing and biting insects, the cool evening air naturally had to smell of manure – and I was next to the window. Nothing like oxygen for a good night’s sleep though. Not sure what the albergue beds are like but I can absolutely and definitively recommend the rooms at Casa Pepa. And they now take cards!
Somewhere Slowly 