Padron to Pontavedra: Insanity turns an easy day to a nightmare but we did get a good look at the Spanish Countryside

September 21, 2013

Today was meant to be another easy day, about 34km through Caldas de Rei which is an ancient Roman Spar town then on to Pontevedra, a city of about 75000. That however is not what happened. Just after leaving Padron we saw an inviting looking small road going off in about the right direction. Lets take it and desert the N550 for a while, after all we can always get back on it if all turns to custard. We took small road after small road going through semi rural country with extremely small holdings. There were names of places here and there but none we could find anywhere on our maps. We were clearly lost and hadn’t the faintest idea where we were. That is OK though we have our faithful Gamin GPS. Lets put in Caldas de Rei. Now I don’t know what we have done to it but I am convinced that the GPS hates us. This is not the first time it has taken us on a difficult and needlessly long route. But we still had faith in it. We had started at sea level up, up,up we went and knew we were getting to the top when we saw the windmills What a lovely downhill and we were back at sea level but on the other side of the peninsular from Pontivedra. At this stage Ken was all for throwing the thing away so I turned it off. We managed to find where we were on one of the maps and saw a magic sign Pontivedra in one direction and Caldas de Rei in the opposite direction – clearly we wouldn’t visit Caldas de Rei today. Of course the road was straight up and we ground away getting higher and higher. It was a massive road but at this stage very quite and with an exceptionally good hard shoulder. The land on either side was a mess of pine trees, gorse and gum trees clearly just waste land . We seemed to have been climbing for ages when we saw a sign Potevedra 20km we must be making progress and not long after that a bar where we stopped for a very welcome coffee. After this things were much more interesting with small farms and vineyards – Ken even saw a tractor. It was still uphill but usually OK but with a killer stretch at the end. Then 10km from Pontevedra the road tilted downwards and we had a fast and furious 10km to here.

Pontevedra is a lovely town it has a very attractive new part which is for pedestrians only and near the old town. We have a very good and inexpensive hotel here. We had a beer and our usual sandwich for lunch then after a sleep we got up at the usual Spanish waking time of 4.30pm and have had a good poke around. There are lots of people around and one thing that impresses me is how beautifully dressed the children are. On this Saturday there are lots of them with their parents having a good time. It always impresses me how like our granddaughter Charlotte the slim young teenagers look.

After all that we actually had a good day and I am certainly fitter than when I started all that time ago in Crawley.

Nestle are the big milk company here - we have seen their tankers

An early 2 cylinder Deutz at work in a vineyard with an even more ancient owner

There are some lovely statues in the town

This is my favourite, the sweet little girl loved it too - look at proud Dad

Narrow streets in the old part of Pontavedra

The Bridge over the estuary coming into Pontavedra

Scallop shells on the bridge (the pilgrims walk over it)

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 2,836 km (1,761 miles)

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