Vigo to A Aldea - 34 miles

I think it is fair to say that today did not go as planned.

The forecast for the whole day was torrential rain and heading to breakfast it was already hammering on roof and windows. I convinced myself that when inside, rain always sounds worse than it really is - the difference seen between driving a car into weather compared to just standing out in it - and as I reluctantly stepped out into the street to begin my trip there was definitely truth in that idea, although not as much as I would have liked. 

My ride out of Vigo started with a slow, steady and wet climb up a main street, its heavy silence and drab greyness reflecting the nature of the weather. Nearly an hour later I was still climbing. The roads were not ridiculously steep but a combination of unceasing rain and unceasing hills was wearing. I wanted to take photographs - of water running down towards me in deep, wide ripples, of drainage ditches full and flowing, of the surrounding hilltops lost in angry, grey cloud - but the mobile I use for navigation has broken and so it was my main phone that was sealed away from the weather to provide me with directions along the minor roads I was using, roads that did not appear on the road atlas that I had as backup.

 

Leaving Vigo 

Five miles in I passed under the flyover of a major Vigo ring road and sought a few minutes respite from the rain in its gloom. I was not yet out of the city's influence although the buildings I was now passing were residential and reasonably spaced while trees and greenery were also making an appearance. Ninety years ago this would have all been very different. It occurred to me as I sheltered from the rain under big-city infrastructure that when, on his first night in Spain, Lee stopped in open countryside with views of Vigo and the aim of sleeping rough (he actually spent the night defending himself from wild dogs) he was not much further out from the city than I was now.

Another five miles on and I stopped again, this time seeking shelter and coffee in a small bar in the town of O Porriño. I saw a number of walkers braving the weather and others were in the bar; apparently the town lies on a Camino route that takes you through Portugal (I am only ten miles or so from the northern border here). My impression was of being in the centre of a small, stone-built market town but as I headed out I picked up a quiet but potentially busy road that took me past the granite quarries for which O Porriño is apparently known. It would be a few more miles yet before I felt I had fully escaped suburbia.

O Porriño 

O Porriño 

Throughout, the rain continued unabated. It was hard to see the route detail through the drops clinging to my phone's protective cover and I went wrong more than once. Trying to brush the water away was registered by the touch-sensitive casing and the screen would then do any number of things other than show me my direction. To rectify this I would have to remove the phone, the phone then got wet and things then went from bad to worse.

While a beautiful stretch through vineyards and then woods following the River Miño that divides Spain from Portugal lifted my spirits a little, I was now having to stop regularly in the open to try and dry the phone, but with only limited success. Two more coffee stops to seek warmth and dryness in welcoming cafes helped somewhat but even when the rain eased off for a while I was forced to recognise that I was making no real progress in my efforts to use narrow, quieter lanes for which I really needed technology. Furthermore, when things were working I seemed to be spending all my time 'head down' trying to follow the route through a rain spattered, hard to read cover rather than looking around and enjoying the ride, weather notwithstanding. My day was becoming about reaching a destination rather than enjoying the journey to get there so I decided to throw in the (by now somewhat damp) towel. 

River Miño

I am now in the handful of houses that make up A Aldea, just off a road that I had been trying to parallel but in the end I have had to use. I can imagine this road not long ago being a valley-clinging and hillier version of the one I enjoyed so much on my ride to León but now it is wider and faster, although still not one of the main roads in the area. Even having ridden it for the last few miles, it has still taken me almost six hours to cover thirty-four miles today (although my phone tells me that over a third of that time was stationary). And despite the forecast the sun is now out. In fairness it has been out intermittently since I made the decision to stop early although its appearance was never going to change my mind: by then the damage had already been done - to the miles I had hoped to do, to my enjoyment of the day, and to my tolerance towards the challenges I was facing.