Peter is walking the Portuguese Camino: Day 23 Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis

We left our hotel at 0730 and got a taxi back to the cathedral in Cadras , we arranged to meet Steve at 0800 as he was going to walk with us today.

Note the scallop on the bridge which is the symbol of the way of St James

Today was only going to be a 13 mile walk so we were not going to rush, it is amazing I say only 13 miles as that distance 2 years ago would have been unthinkable .

Yotty decided to stop for a chat .

We at last began to see signs to Santiago, the end of our journey was in sight .

We were walking through lovely country lanes with the usual smell of eucalyptus trees.

As always the first five miles passed quickly for me and it was time for a break.

This marker showed we only had 50 kilometres to go.

Thought it was only me that did this Yotty.

After 21 days of walking to see this sign was fantastic, when we set off from Lisbon with 380 miles to walk all that time ago, this was unthinkable.

Note my knee, I suddenly got a nasty pain in my right kneecap ,I took some painkillers and Steve loaned me a knee support, I limped for about 45 minutes and like so many aches and pains you get on the Camino the pain disappeared and transferred to my left shoulder .

Around the 11 mile mark Yottys ankle started to play up and was causing him a lot of pain , with only 26 miles to go I was praying the unthinkable would not happen as this is how his shin splints started , we slowed the pace down.

Thankfully we soon arrived at Caldas de Reis, I wanted Yottys weight off that ankle asap.

We stopped for lunch and tended to Yotty.

Yotty asleep again, the truth be known we are exhausted .

The lovely ladies who run our Casa Rural came and picked us up .

This really is a superb place and I hope I will come back one day

We went back into Caldras at 8 o'clock ,we were due to meet Colin at 9 o'clock.

There was fiesta planned for the evening.

The children dancing were so sweet.

DOB time

We met Colin and settled down for a fine meal by the river.

James and Phil arrived at about 2130 , it was really lovely to see them and I really appreciate them coming all this way to support us.They got straight into the swing of things.