Via Lemovicensis: Nearing the End

18 June 2026 Thom Pilgrim Reports, Via Lemovicensis

We had a community dinner and a community breakfast. I slept a little longer than I had hoped this morning, so I wasn’t out the door until 7 AM. Mist filled the valleys has the sun rose through the clouds.

Today was supposed to be much cooler than yesterday. I was certainly hoping so, since today was going to be a 30+ kilometer day. Turns out: no.

The Camino began with roadwalking on asphalt through the trees and fields. Sheep grazed in a little enclosure to my right, as farm fields rolled away to my left. It wasn’t long before I saw cows grazing as well.

By 7:15, the Camino had turned into the hamlet of Rente. This appeared to be another one of the half-abandoned little farming spots that I’ve seen since coming into Galicia.

I was already sweating, not from heat – it was actually quite cool – but from the humidity. I stripped off my fleece, which might be the earliest in the morning I’ve done it in weeks. I hadn’t even walked 2 km yet.

At 7:25 I passed the two closed bars in the crossroads hamlet of A Serra. Something didn’t look right, so I checked my GPS. Sure enough, I taken the wrong way from the crossroads. Fortunately, I only had to backtrack a few dozen meters. I was beginning to think that I hadn’t had enough coffee this morning.

The Camino path was now a rotating mixture of dirt and stone and concrete. I passed houses, pastures, and farms interspersed amongst the trees. Mist rose from the pastures.

At about 7:40, as the trees grew into the woods, I passed a place called O Muiño de Marzan. I’m unclear as to whether this was a hamlet or something else. I then crossed a bridge made of stone slabs across a stream.

After I crossed a highway at the tiny little hamlet of A Pena, it was back to the asphalt road.

This took me through the sprawling hamlet of O Peruscallo, where I skipped the two vending machine cafés. After this, it was back to the dirt and gravel path.

One year ago, Francine slept. That’s it. She slept. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t drink, and she absorbed her medications as a paste put in her cheek.

I stayed with her, and I read to her. I prayed in her presence, and I’d like to think with her.

But mostly what we did was we sat a long and lonely vigil. Visitors were a great comfort and a blessing, but they did not relieve the soaring loneliness and the sense of dread in waiting for the inevitable.

I walked though a string of hamlets and tumbledown farming communities: Cortiñas, Lavandeira, O Casal, A Brea. The Camino wove its way through the low hills, through woods and through meadows. I crossed the number of little streams over slab bridges of a style that I hadn’t really seen since Navarra almost a month ago.

Although mostly dirt, some sections of the path were covered in loose rock and stone, and near the bridges there was even a rough sort of stone paving.

I stopped in a café about 8:35 for coffee and cake. By the time I left twenty minutes later, the place was absolutely packed with pilgrims, including some familiar faces. Most of them, however, were new to me. Many of them had shiny new shoes.

The Camino followed a narrow asphalt road now with a surprising amount of traffic. I was definitely seeing newbie pilgrims now, some of them tapping with their sticks ahead of them as though they were blind.

Just a few minutes later, I passed through the hamlet of Morgade, with its famous bar and its odd little pilgrim chapel. The asphalt ended here.

There seemed to be a never-ending stream of pilgrims now, and it was pretty clear that many of them didn’t know how to use their equipment properly. I saw so many people with their hip belts unfastened and just dangling.

By the time I passed through the hamlet of Ferreiros at 9:15, I had managed to get ahead of a knot of them. Back to asphalt.

As far as I can tell, the hamlet of Mirallos consist of a church, a graveyard, and a bar. The graveyard and the door were open, but the church was not.

Just a few meters away, there’s an empty shrine, which pilgrims over the years have filled with holy cards, memorabilia, and junk.

Shortly after this, I came to the farming hamlet of A Pena, where the hundred kilometer marker is located. I am reasonably certain that the last time I was through here the marker was further up the road, just across from the empty shrine.

Next to the current marker, a local had set up a table where he would stamp your pilgrim passport and, for a donation, stamp it with the date as well.

I feel like the warnings against people taking advantage of pilgrims can be found as far back as the Codex Calixtinus of 1128.

Here I fell in with Stanley, a Pole living in Ireland, and his son Patrick. We walked and talked together for a while. Stanley is the spitting image of my friend Kevin, which made the whole conversation a little surreal.

They were walking a little slowly for me, so after a few kilometers and a couple of hamlets (O Couto and As Rozas) I bid them buen Camino and pushed on into the Galician forest.

By 10 AM, I walked through the farming hamlet of Moimentos, where I was tempted by a vending machine café. From here, the Camino continued its gradual descent. I was surprised to see mist still clinging to the valleys.

A string of tiny little hamlets followed, some no larger than a few houses: Marcadoiro, Moutras, A Casa da Brea. All throughout, the Camino vacillated between a dirt path and an asphalt road. After the last of these, however, it was back to roadwalking for a while.

I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea of double digit kilometer markers. They’re so frequent now, that I’m watching a literal countdown to the coming end.

In one sense, I don’t want this Camino to end. I’ve learned so much and gained so much from this pilgrimage. On the other hand, I am so very ready to go home.

At about 10:20, the Camino turned off the road at last onto a dirt and stone path bounded by open fields. Somewhere, I could hear a very angry cow. By the time I reached the hamlet of A Parrocha, the bellowing cow had set off a cacophony of barking dogs and screaming crows.

I stopped in a little café for a Coca-Cola and ran into Moses and Veronica, Domi, Eric, and as I was leaving even Stanley and Patrick.

I walked and talked with Erik through the hamlet of Vilacha. We roadwalked into the town of Portamarin via but I can only describe as a stone toboggan chute. There are two other ways into the town to avoid this, but of course this is the shortest way, so this is what we took.

We rang the “Liberty Bell”, located overlooking the lake, and then walked the long bridge over the Río Miño into town. The end of the bridge is a long set of stone stairs up to the hillside town. The lake here was formed by the damming of the river in the mid-20th century, which drowned the original town. The current town was created by moving the population (and the “historical” buildings) to higher ground.

Here Erik and I met up with Frederick as well as Katie, Jane, and Kyla, who I’ve stayed with the last few nights

I visited the church, which had been moved, block by block, from the original now flooded town in the valley below.

I prayed here and lit a candle for Francine.

Then the whole group of us – six in all – had lunch together at a place with the improbable name of ¡slurp! We all hit the road together at about 12:50.

Once we finally made it out of town, the Camino took us uphill on a forest road. Pretty soon, I was dissolving into a puddle of sweat due to the heat and the humidity. We came up out of the forest onto a grassy plane at about 1:15, and I immediately put up my umbrella. It didn’t really help all that much.

After weaving in and out of the woods for a bit, Camino turned along a two lane road about twenty minutes later.

About 1:50, the Camino left the roadside and struck out between a hill and a long stone wall at the hamlet of Toixbo. Shade was rare, and the heat radiated up off the ground.

By 2 PM, we were walking through the forest. It did a little to relieve the heat, but not much. Eventually, the forest path returned to the side of the road. But at least there was shade.

By the time we reached the hamlet of Gozar, all of us were well and truly exhausted. The heat I think is mostly to blame. Although I had planned initially on going a few kilometers further today, I was just as done as everybody else and so stayed here.

I drank a liter and a half of water and took a cold shower in an effort to cool down.

Date: 18 June 2026