Camino de Santiago Portuguese - Day 15

Jeff Warner
Oct 2, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Nov 23, 2025

Daily Overview

Summary of the Day:

Well, I’m sitting here in a laundromat in Pontevedra, Spain, and I know what you’re thinking: you have one night in this beautiful Spanish city and you’re at the laundromat. I know, I know. Over the last three days, we’ve walked 35 miles, and we only have access to a laundry once in a while, so here we are. It’s already 7:30. We are going to go out for dinner after our clothes finish. We got a late start this morning because I had a computer/phone glitch with my blog post from yesterday, and it was completely erased. By some miracle, Sandy had the blog post open on her phone at the time, and we could copy everything from there to put it back together before it disappeared forever.

The Camino got very crowded today. We were walking from north of Cesantes this morning. We avoided going way back up on the mountain by walking a quarter of a mile along the very busy highway that goes to Redondela. We connected back up with the Camino on that same road and saved ourselves walking all the way up the mountain, only to walk right back down again. Crossing the bridge over the Vigo River was just beautiful. Redondela to the south is where the Portuguese Central route and the Coastal route come together, so when we came into Arcade, a town a little to the north, it was Pilgrim central. I’m guessing we saw/and walked with close to a hundred pilgrims today. The trails were crowded in some sections in a way I haven’t experienced before, with some people walking like Santiago is on fire and they are on the way to put it out, and other people (like us) going at a much slower pace. After Redondela, we had to cross another mountain. I told Sandy today, this is not like driving to Shenandoah National Park and going hiking; this is like walking to Shenandoah National Park and then going hiking. I was exaggerating, but we were very tired coming into Pontevedra around 4 pm this afternoon. We stopped about 1:30 at a SUPER Mercado, which always sounds a lot more impressive than it is. We got fresh bread and turkey, and cheese sandwiches for lunch. The last leg into Pontevedra was along a creek through the forest, and that was wonderful, being in the shade and off the roadways. We finally made our way into the city, stopping at an Aldi’s ( of all places) along the way. It was a challenging day of walking, but a good day.

What we planned to do:

Walk from north of Cesantes to Pontevedra, about 18km, where we’ll spend the night,

The Day's Focus

Topic: Finding Joy in Little Things: More often than not, the things I take for granted the most, like regular food or clean clothes, are the things I miss the most when they aren’t available in the same way anymore.
Word for the Day: Contentment
Scripture: "Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it." - Proverbs 15:16

Spiritual Practice: Pick one thing that’s important to you, that you have on a daily basis, and imagine that it was gone. How would your life be different? How would you be different as a result?

Camino Portugues Video of the day
A panorama of the Vigo River and bridge

Moments and Images

Images from the Way Today:

Beautiful Spot of the Day:

Spiritual Meditative Moment:

Sitting in the church of Iglesia de la Perigrina, the ground felt holy…..

What Church We Visited:

Iglesia de la Perigrina

People we experienced:

We encountered this little elderly man yesterday, who had positioned himself along the roadway in a small village on the Camino with the express intention of getting pilgrims to stop walking on the roadway. He was very passionate about it, with motions about our legs being broken by a car. The problem is, a lot of the Camino requires navigating the shoulders along roads, and sometimes you just have to walk on the road; there’s no place else to be.

Unexpected Surprises:

Getting to the top of the mountain in the middle of NOWHERE, and finding a snack truck. We really needed a drink.

Animal/Nature or local life:

Reflections and Learnings

Reflections from Today:

Our friend sent us a word of encouragement today about walking in the sanctuary of creation. In truth, we have been visiting churches that are housed in a greater church.

"Well, that was hard.":

Climbing over the mountain mid-morning. Didn’t we just do this yesterday?

"What helped me today":

Warm clothes right out of the dryer probably would have made it into the Sound of Music song “My Favorite Things” if they had had dryers back in 1939.

"Something I learned":

When you walk into a pharmacy over here, you get better service than when you go to the doctor in the States. I just needed some reading glasses, and the lady there was super helpful.

"Insight for the day": There is always more than one way to accomplish what God has called you to do. The question is, which way accomplishes the task by drawing you closer to him and which way just gets the job done?

"Mystical occurrences": Being able to recover my blog post because Sandy had it open at the moment the server deleted it was pretty much a miracle

Daily Conclusion