Day 2: to A Guarda, Spain

A somewhat gloomy day as I looked out the breakfast room window. However the forecast was that the rain sprinkles would cease as the morning progressed. Today I would cross the Minho River, the border with Spain and enter Galicia and the city of A Guarda. So only one day of my Camino was in Portugal. If you are wondering why it's not La Guardia, Galician has many similarities with Portuguese.

The buffet was bountiful. There were many European tourists, notably Germans, in this hotel, some pilgrims, other just holidaymakers. The hotel has a pool which was too cold to enjoy and a steam bath which was too much hassle to book into.

As you can see, the path here is the esplanade.

Since I had a lot of time before the first ferry, I tarried in the town, taking in a local produce and bric-a-brac market.

The ferry was a small solar powered vessel. It seems that in the past a larger service had operated this crossing but the councils on both sides decided that a smaller boat was more sustainable to run.

The solar panels, and the road bridge to the east of our crossing.

The outboard motors. I guess it doesn't take all that much energy to propel a boat over calm water.

By and by I was joined by several other pilgrims, mostly young people, making the same crossing. We are casting off now.

In about 15 minutes we had reached the other shore.

It seems the service was established in the Xacobeo year of 2020-2021. Looks like I missed a plenary indulgence. ☹️😉

The skipper gave us our stamps in our credencials (pilgrim passports), and made us say ¡Gracias! so that we would be correct in Spain.

Beautiful as the harbour was, it was still a few kilometres to the city. So we set off, following the arrows uphill.

After gaining some altitude, I took this picture of the river.

This day's walk was only about 7 km because I had already plodded through the first 7 km of the original stage the previous day. I fetched up at the hotel, checked in, and went looking for lunch. I took many wrong turns but that made me explore the city.

Eventually I worked out that most of the good eateries were down in the harbour so I found a suitable restaurant and ordered a mackerel dish.

It had turned into a brilliant sunny day.

That evening, I returned to the same harbour because dinner had been arranged at one of the restaurants via a coupon issued by the hotel by arrangement with my travel agency.

Since I was still trying to stretch my day, I took a coffee after dinner.

The harbour lights.

I thought Bippy was the name of the dolphin but it's just the name of the toy shop. Cute though.

Earlier in the day the hotel had recommended going up to the Castro (fort) de Santa Trega on the hill but I was too tired to do that. I suppose I could have taken a taxi but it seemed out of form with my entire walk.