Day 11 - Armenteira to O Milladoiro - 22.9km

Good morning pilgrims.

×trigger warning this posts starts with a rant×

Since the last camino I have noticed there are a load of stickers on lampposts. There always were, but generally advertising services or promotions etc. Now they are the current generation of look at me bullshit.

From Porto we have been seeing stickers of a couple I refer to as "bintface and loverboy". Its an ai generated image of a couple. It isnt promoting anything or linking to anything. Purely a look at me, i have been here piece of narcissistic tomfoolery. I hate it.

Since Valenca we have seen stickers by 3 guys with a spanish slogan i assume translates to the 3 bell ends. Its huge. Why stick this thing everywhere.

Absolute pillocks.

Today i captured all 5 tossers on one lampost. If i saw these people I would slap them

Rant over.

This morning started early as we had booked the boat from Vilanova to Padron.

St James after the death of jesus travelled to europe to spread the word of christ. And so he fell in love with spain and the region that is now Galicia. He returned to Jerusalem where he was killed for heresy or some such. His body was thrown into the sea in a stone boat. Some time later (via magic we must assume) his body washed up the river Ulla into Padron. It was carried north and buried. 900 years later his body was found and santiago cathedral was built to house his bones

Well our boat today follows his bodys magical journey upriver. And it was magical!

We had booked "the small boat" a little open aired speed boat rather than the larger, more comfortable cruiser. It was set to be an adventure as one very excited pilgrim told us!

As we left the pontoon, the rain eased and a big rainbow appeared overhead. Ramone, our captain introduced himself and apologised for his spanglish!

We headed out towards the mussell farms and were lucky to see the harvesting taking place with a massive net of mussells. There are 200 mussell farm pontooms here!!

We continued up the estuary towards the river and were amazed to see dolphins surfacing and approaching the boat. They gave us a great show, coming really close to us before moving away. We were in awe as we set off again passed the three islands. Ramone took us passed crossed on islands and the shore line, explaining the various stories, and passed an old castle built to defend against vikings.

We entered the river Ulla and followed it upriver to pontesecures were we disembarked.

A short walk later we stopped for breakfast and it was amazing. I had french toast topped with apple and cinammon and mum had a crispy croissant with ham, creamcheese, fried egg and avocado. It was excellent.

We met anthony a 22 year old from Canada who found everything fascinating and just seemed happy with everything. He walked with us a few km, but our slow pace was keeping him as he was headed to santiago today so he shot off in padron when we stopped to see the church and convent.

After this the walk today was mostly small roads with frequent blister adjustment stops. Mum now has bad blisters on both small toes, a location which is particularly difficult to tape, compeed or do anything with! It got worse as the day went on as the constant rubbing against the shes exacerbated the pain!

After the stone statue in the monastery the other day, Padron church gave us todays likeness of mums expression!!

We ploughed on though, making steady progress towards O Milladouro, passing the 20km, 15km and 10km to go markers before arriving.

During the day we met a few pilgrims new and old. A lovely hungarian lady we had dinner with the night before, then at a short beer break a lovely german couple who found out they were pregnant the week before coming!

Biggest Albergue for mum tonight with 24 beds in the room, but we both have bottom bunks! Winner!

We are doing laundry then will go find dinner. Probably meat or fish with chips!!

Tomorrow is only about 7km into Santiago. Strap the toes up and hobble on. We are nearly there!!