Redondela

The first thing you notice is the noise. Not traffic, not chatter, but the rumble of stone-laden freight trains crossing nineteenth-century viaducts that slice straight through Redondela’s centre. At night the 02:30 service rattles the windows of the albergue on Rúa do Adro; by dawn the 04:10 follows like an alarm clock nobody asked for. Light sleepers should pack ear-plugs or book a room at the back—yet most walkers roll over and smile, because the clatter means the Caminho Português is finally feeling serious. This is the spot where the coastal and central routes merge, and the number of rucksacks in the bars doubles overnight.

Redondela sits barely five kilometres inland from the ria de Vigo, low enough for salt spray to reach the cabbage plots but too far for cruise-ship crowds. It functions as a commuter dormitory for Vigo and Pontevedra, so the outer streets are a mish-mash of tyre centres and apartment blocks. Keep walking. Inside ten minutes the concrete thins out, granite mansions with glassed balconies appear, and you’re in a compact old quarter that refuses to behave like a museum. Schoolkids stampede across Praza do Adro at home-time, grandparents gossip under the soportales, and the chemist still shuts for siesta even when the Camino queue stretches round the corner.

Stone Arches and Sea Legs

The viaducts dominate every postcard, but they’re impossible to miss so nobody bothers selling postcards. Instead, simply look up: two tiers of ochre stone marching across the valley, the upper deck for the main Madrid–Vigo line, the lower for the regional slow train that clanks off to Ourense. Engineers finished them in 1863, when local granite was cheaper than iron and the valley floor too marshy for embankments. Today they work as the town’s compass: if both bridges are west of you, the ria is straight ahead; if they’re behind, you’re climbing towards the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Vilavella and views that stretch to the Cíes Islands on a clear evening.

That climb takes thirty sweaty minutes and deserves to be timed for golden hour. The baroque church at the top is nothing special inside—too much nineteenth-century plaster—yet the forecourt delivers a widescreen payoff: oyster beds floating like rafts, the industrial tongue of Vigo’s port in the distance, and the viaducts reduced to model-railway scale. Pilgrims use the terrace to phone home; locals use it to walk dogs and complain about property prices. Both groups share the single water fountain, so queue politely.

Down at sea level the parish of Cesantes feels like a different municipality. Fishing boats nose onto a slipway opposite the chapel of San Benito, nets dry on rails, and every other house seems to offer kayak rentals or mussel-tasting tours. The beach is a slim crescent of pale sand that disappears at high tide; when it’s out, the flats smell of iodine and tractor diesel. British families like it because the slope is gentle, the surf modest, and the nearest ice-cream kiosk stocks Magnum-alikes for €2. On summer Sundays a toy-sized road train shuttles here from the centre every thirty minutes—fare €1.50, exact change appreciated, patience essential.

What to Eat When the Town Shuts

Galician cuisine is built for hikers: starch, salt and seafood in proportions that make a full English look dainty. Start with chocos á feira, rings of tender cuttlefish dusted in paprika and served in a paper cone; they taste like the posh calamari you get in Borough Market for a third of the price. Follow with a square of empanada gallega—tuna and red pepper baked between two thin layers of pastry, designed to be eaten one-handed while you hold a credential stamp in the other. If the budget stretches, Casa Pinales on Rúa da Constitución does an arroz con bogavante that’s closer to a wet risotto than Valencia paella; expect €22 per head but enough lobster to justify it. Wash everything down with a glass of Albariño: apple-sharp, reliably good even in bars that still display a 1997 calendar.

Tuesday is the secret trap. Almost every restaurant closes—owners head to the wholesale market in Vigo and take the staff with them. The exceptions are a burger bar that plays nineties Britpop and a couple of cafés offering toasted ham-and-cheese bocadillos. Plan accordingly: the Mercadona on Avenida de Galicia stays open and sells ready-sliced queixo Tetilla, the mild cow’s-milk cheese that converts even fussy children. Picnic on the waterfront, watch the tide turn, and regard the closure as enforced downtime.

Rain, Railways and Real Life

Weather is the variable nobody edits out of the brochure. Spring brings sudden horizontal drizzle that sneaks under rain-jacket hems; autumn can gift T-shirt evenings in late October. The viaducts look dramatic under black clouds, but the stone turns slick, and the steep lanes around Vilavella become miniature streams. Trains still run, though. That’s the advantage of a town whose identity is welded to a working railway: even when the AP-9 coastal highway floods, the iron bridge stays open and the café under the arches still serves coffee at €1.20.

Accommodation splits into three tribes: pilgrim albergues (€12–15, kitchens hotel-clean at Albergue A Dársena do Francés), family-run guesthouses (€45–65, towels thin but views thick), and one four-star on the ring road that caters to wedding parties and accepts walkers only if they leave boots at reception. Whichever you choose, ask for a room facing away from the tracks. Night freight doesn’t blow its horn, yet the vibration loosens fillings.

Last Orders

Redondela will never win Spain’s prettiest-village contest, and it doesn’t try. The place is a hinge, not a jewel: a crossing point where Atlantic fog meets inland heat, where nineteenth-century engineering collides with medieval footpaths, and where the Camino shifts from solitary plod to social parade. Come for the viaducts, stay for the cuttlefish, leave before Tuesday if you want a proper lunch. And when the 04:10 goods train jolts you awake, remember it’s the sound of the town going to work—noisy, useful, alive.