{"id":23057,"date":"2026-06-18T15:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/?p=23057"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:02:19","slug":"via-lemovicensis-nearing-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/via-lemovicensis-nearing-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Via Lemovicensis: Nearing the End"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span>e 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was already sweating, not from heat \u2013 it was actually quite cool \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At about 7:40, as the trees grew into the woods, I passed a place called O Mui\u00f1o 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I crossed a highway at the tiny little hamlet of A Pena, it was back to the asphalt road.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This took me through the sprawling hamlet of O Peruscallo, where I skipped the two vending machine caf\u00e9s. After this, it was back to the dirt and gravel path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stayed with her, and I read to her. I prayed in her presence, and I’d like to think with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked though a string of hamlets and tumbledown farming communities: Corti\u00f1as, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stopped in a caf\u00e9 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like the warnings against people taking advantage of pilgrims can be found as far back as the Codex Calixtinus<\/em> of 1128.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 10 AM, I walked through the farming hamlet of Moimentos, where I was tempted by a vending machine caf\u00e9. From here, the Camino continued its gradual descent. I was surprised to see mist still clinging to the valleys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stopped in a little caf\u00e9 for a Coca-Cola and ran into Moses and Veronica, Domi, Eric, and as I was leaving even Stanley and Patrick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We rang the “Liberty Bell”, located overlooking the lake, and then walked the long bridge over the R\u00edo Mi\u00f1o 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here Erik and I met up with Frederick as well as Katie, Jane, and Kyla, who I’ve stayed with the last few nights <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I visited the church, which had been moved, block by block, from the original now flooded town in the valley below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I prayed here and lit a candle for Francine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the whole group of us \u2013 six in all \u2013 had lunch together at a place with the improbable name of \u00a1slurp! We all hit the road together at about 12:50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After weaving in and out of the woods for a bit, Camino turned along a two lane road about twenty minutes later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I drank a liter and a half of water and took a cold shower in an effort to cool down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Date:<\/strong> 18 June 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n