Camino de Portuguese Day 13: Pontevedra to Briallos

Hiking the Camino de Portuguese from Pontevedra to Briallos, Spain | June 2026

In a few of the previous posts, I’ve touched on one of the only negative sides we had been experiencing on our Camino, which was dealing with inconsiderate other pilgrims in the public Albergues, specifically within the last 100km of the trail to Santiago, which tends to be the busiest part of the trail. However, today we discovered the solution to this problem which completely turned things around for us and gave us the best experience for the remainder of our journey. If all Albergue stays were this good, our hike would have been perfect, and if every day was as easy as today was, our pilgrimage would’ve been too easy!

Like other mornings, we were awoken at 4:30 because of alarms set by those around us, and we quickly and quietly joined them in packing up and setting off on the trail, even though it was still 1 1/2 hours until sunrise. I guess we couldn’t be too upset about that because after having near perfect weather for the majority of the hike, the temps were slowly starting to creep up, making it beneficial to get most of the hiking out of the way during the morning. And since we had already done plenty of wandering around Pontevedra the night before, we knew we weren’t missing anything as we retraced our steps through the town center and towards the North end of town. We crossed the bridge over the river that was illuminated with fun lights on the ground and the light of the crescent moon above us and reflecting in the water.

After a couple kilometers, we came to the break in the trail where the Spiritual Variant split from the main Portuguese Camino. We knew the Spiritual Variant was very highly recommended by those who had done it, and had strongly considered doing it ourselves, but ultimately decided against it. There was more elevation change and a boat ride involved, and while it sounded fun and potentially very scenic we wanted to stick to the main trail and continue staying in the Albergues rather than figure out the lodging situations on that path. In hindsight, I can’t say we regret not taking it because from what I was reading online during that time, it seemed like that variant was becoming the more popular choice and by not going that way, we may have gotten away from some of the pilgrims that were making the Albergue experience unpleasant.

The majority of today’s walk was either forested or going through farmland, which included walking through beautiful vineyards. There were a few cafes along the way, but we didn’t end up stopping at any because we had plenty of snacks from Aldi. The trail was very quiet besides one large family group from Portugal who were very friendly. Along the way, we met a very friendly dog who solicited pets from the other side of the fence. It was clear that he very much enjoyed living on the Camino and constantly had people stopping by giving him love.

The last stretch of trail took us along a busier road. If we wanted, we could have gone off trail a ways to a nature preserve to see some waterfalls, but ultimately decided it was too far out of our way. On our way to our destination town of Briallos, we passed the marker indicating that we had only 50km left to Santiago de Compostela!

Now, here’s where we figured out the best hack for hiking the Camino: We knew that most people who start in Pontevedra will walk about 21 km to Caldas de Reis. However, I had heard about a supposedly less popular public Albergue in Briallos which was only 16km away, and since we had the time we decided to break up the remainder of our trail into 4 days rather than the usual 3. And just by going against what the guidebook says and what most people do, we were able to get away from the ‘crowds’ and enjoy a very quiet and enjoyable night in one of our favorite Albergues!

We had to walk about half a kilometer off the main trail to reach the Albergue, and perhaps if you didn’t know about it before, you might not notice the small sign pointing the way. There isn’t much going on in the town (if you can call it that), but there is a restaurant/cafe attached to the Albergue so that wasn’t an issue. We were the first to arrive, and the host allowed us to check in an hour earlier than their listed opening time! It was just 10 euro per person (as all Albergues in Spain had been) and out of the 26 beds, only 6 ended up being taken tonight, making it a very peaceful and quiet experience. Best of all, they had the only free laundry machines that we came across in all the public Albergues where we stayed. We washed ourselves and our clothes, we read and relaxed, and for dinner we got a pizza and beers from the restaurant next door. This experienced totally redeemed the public Albergues in our eyes and we were so thankful we made the decisions we did that led us to here!