Sarria to Portomarin- day 2

Now the real walking begins! We had a typical Spanish breakfast in our hotel of freshly squeezed orange juice, cafe con leche and a giant croissant. While we ate we watched other walkers passing by and heading up through the centre of Sarria. Many of the walkers had commenced their journey in France almost 700Km away,some of them even from further away. We have a mere 118 Km in front of us, 'no problemo'.

morning mist leaving Sarria

A quick browse at our Brierly guide confirms that the big flight of granite steps in the old town centre that we had viewed the previous evening are on our route. Today we will walk 16 miles two thirds of which are uphill followed by a steep descent into the valley of the river Mino but rising up to the town of Portomarin. The highest point, alto Paramo, is at approx 2,200 ft.

We departed Sarria on a fine sunny morning when the air was still cool and walked through the beautiful scenery with a slight early mist making the elegant road viaduct look very pretty. Before long the mist was gone and the temperature rose steadily. We passed through several sleepy little hamlets, continually climbing upwards until we reached Morgade where we stopped a while for a welcome drink and snack and congratulated ourselves on being almost half way for the day.

After this we got going again but by now it was getting very hot and it wasn't long before weneeded an ice lolly stop at Ferreiros. Eventually we reached the highest point for the day and commenced our descent with around 8Km to go. Well whatever about the up hills being tough the downhills were almost as bad nipping our toes and heels and the sun getting even hotter. We caught a glimpse of Portomarin in the distance and then it seemed to disappear again.


Eventually we saw the long bridge across the Mino river that leads over to Portomarin and it was a great relief to think we were almost there. The location was very beautiful, the bridge was very long and as we reached the other side we could hardly believe our eyes. There was a huge set of steps-an escalinata leading up to the arch and capela de Santa Maria de las Nieves. We hoped against hope that the climb up the steps was optional and variously thought is was penance, a joke or an optional extra challenge. I still don't know how I got to the top but knew when I got there that I was seriously dehydrated and could go no further.  My daughter and my friend knew things were serious when I said I needed water, I felt ill and dizzy and had clearly misjudged the importance of taking enough liquid on board. Without a word of complaint or a word of Spanish Grainne continued upwards to the town and re appeared with a bottle of water. I will never again dismiss the benefit of water it was a lifesaver for me that day. Thanks Grainne! very much appreciated.

the top of the escalinata!

After a while we continued upwards in to town to get a bed for the night, unfortunately the first few places we tried were all completo (full). We briefly considered the possibility of sleeping on the church steps but the the next place we asked at had a room and it was a great relief to get  freshened up, tend our feet and have a short lie down before getting some food.

We thought at this point that we had the first part of our climb done for the next day for our next stage but that all went out the window when we saw a steady stream of walkers going in the WRONG, as we thought, direction the next morning while we had breakfast. Alas it was us that were wrong, it was back down that hill to the river to go up a different hill.

Teochinos and fresh orange juice to get us going!

We decided to have a light breakfast at the pension Arenas and get going again and split the day into 3 parts stopping for a snack at Gonzar and lunch at Eirexe.