Day 25 - To Valença, our last town in Portugal

We ask had a very good time at the restaurant last night. One of the topics that was discussed at the meal was the question of snoring as the frenchman confessed to being a snorer and was just warning us. At that virtually everyone also confessed. "It will be very interesting tonight then" was the general consensus.

As it happens it was quite a good night, several people said, this morning at breakfast, that they'd woken during the night but not really heard much noise. That changed early-on as a group of school children, teen-agers, that were also at the albergue, woke early and departed with a lot of noise. We had a very civilised breakfast provided by Marlene before leaving.

Today's walk was pretty uneventful compared with yesterday, and some of the previous day's that we've had. We had a climb over lowish hills, nothing like yesterday's scramble, but some areas were rather tricky, especially as we were overtaken several times by groups of cyclists on their mountain bikes. This usually happened just at the rockiest part of the walk.

Overall we passed through some really nice country on our last day's walking in Portugal.

Today we walked alongside running water for a lot of the time. Running water, and lots of it, have been a great feature of a lot of our trail for many days past. Has have the many cuckoos we've heard

When we reached Valença we soon found the municipal albergue, located just outside the walls of the city. The old part of the city is contained within a very large and impressive citadel.

This was a key defence position in years past as it is situated at the main river crossing point of the River Minho between Portugal and Spain.

The arrival at the albergue was rather strange as it was locked with a message on the door to ring a particular number for access. We did this and we're given a code for the door lock. We were greeted, inside, by a French couple that we'd meet a few days ago, who were it's only customers up to that point. Many people had been in front of us on the walk today, but must have decided to walk further.

We were soon showered and dressed in fresh clothes and set out to explore the old town, within the citadel. It was very touristy, with lots of tourist shops, bars etc but still very interesting.

We finished off the day by investigating a large marquee exhibiting, and selling, lots of local produce and food dishes. While we were eating we were entertained in turn by a group doing a, seemingly impromptu, "Flamenco" set of singing and dancing. Just afterwards a group were setting up the stage, and doing some rehearsals.

They seemed to be a retro music group as the pieces that were rehearsing were from the 1940s an 50s.

Later we went back to the albergue as it had a great advantage over several places we've been to lately, good internet access.