Hospital de Bruma → Sigüeiro

The profile is favourable — descents outweigh climbs — and the technical difficulty is low, but Gronze warns that it is a stage "very short on services". The real difficulty of this day is not in the legs but in the planning: you have to decide before setting out where you are going to sleep, because the usual public option does not exist at the far end.

The route, village by village

You leave Bruma towards O Castro, already in the Ordes district (3.1 km), with a sculpture park but no bar. The first resupply comes at A Rúa (7 km), with two bars and the church of San Paio de Buscás. Shortly after, at O Outeiro-Poulo (9.8 km), is the Xunta hostel "Rectoral de Poulo", at the standard 10 € and with about 42 beds: it is the only public hostel on the whole stretch, though it sits halfway through the stage.

Then A Calle (11.6 km), with a bar and a stone cross, and further on A Baxoia (17-18 km), with the Fonte da Santiña. The rest of the way runs in several stretches hard against the AP-9 motorway, with its noise in the background and the odd underpass beneath it, until you reach Sigüeiro. Bars are scarce above all in the first half of the day: make use of A Rúa and Poulo to restock.

A bridge with the Andrade signature

At the entrance to Sigüeiro you cross the river Tambre on a bridge of medieval origin, with an inscription that tradition attributes to Fernán Pérez de Andrade — the same noble who turns up on the bridge and tower in Pontedeume and on the tomb in Betanzos. It is the thread that ties three different stages of this same route together.