El Camino Portuguese O Porcino to Arcade

 El Camino Portuguese 

O Porrino  to Arcade

The Galician granite pylon that would adorn the sides of El Camino all through the region with the scallop shell at the top, the yellow arrow in the middle and the distance in kilometres to three decimal places to the end of this Camino in Santiago de Compostel..

Most people walk and the next most common form of transport is by bicycle. Some ride horses and I have ridden the last 260 kilometres into Santiago on a horse along El Camino Frances. But there are always a few eccentrics and this one didn't want to be photographed but he was walking with a donkey to carry his belongings.

After long slog up a hill, there was a pleasant walk through forest and past a Roman milestone. Then the  track joined a steep road down the side of the valley with marvellous views off into the distance across Redondela which is on the coast nut there were too many mountains in the way to actually see the sea.

Down in the valley, I passed under part of the AVE railway network. It stands for Alta Velocidad Espanola, the Spanish High Speed network whose trains can reach speeds up to 350km/h.

                                          
I walked through the centre of Redondela, which sits in a deep and steep sided valley. The railway has to cross the valley and does so on a viaduct that cuts across the centre of the town.

The bad thing about a steep walk down in to the town, it also means a long slog up the valley side to out of town. But leaving the urban fringe, the trail passes through some tranquil forest and then through the trees I caught glimpses of the Ria de Vigo, which is also the estuary of the Rio Verdugo on which Arcade sits.

Glimpses of Ria de Vigo through the trees as the track descends.

But I wouldn't get a good view of the water until I was virtually at sea level.

I went for a walk to check out the route for the morning. I had found that trying to find yellow arrows in the dark before dawn was difficult and might lead to taking long turnings so when I might be leaving early through an urban area, I would check out the route on the ground in the afternoon.

This particular yellow arrow was unmissable.

And I got to add another photo to my collection of photos of old Land Rovers.