This alternative blog system that I'm now using is much easier but it does require a good internet connection. It's not really possible to compose the blog offline for later upload as I could with the other system (when it worked). Yesterday's hotel's WiFi didn't extend to our bedroom but fortunately I have brought an extra smartphone along with us, courtesy of Rod Boardall, for just this contingency. I purchased a Portuguese SIM in Lisbon that has a large data allowance via the generally very good 4G network in Portugal. This allows us to have our own private local WiFi network whenever we need it. Last night I needed it, tonight the hotel's network here in Tomar is very good.
We set of early this morning as we knew that would be a long walk. The first thing we needed to do was to get back onto the Camino route, Last night's hotel was situated about 2km off the Camino. We could have just walked back down the road that we came along yesterday, but we discovered from the map that we could take an alternative that that ran diagonally from near the hotel, this rejoined the Camino the a few kms northwards.
Warning! Nerdy stuff follows - As we left the village we crossed the railway line at a level crossing I noticed a very strange rail arrangement of several parallel rail lines
Because we were leaving early we missed breakfast, but part way along the route were small villages where we were sure that we would be able to get something. At the first village we found nothing, and the same at the next village Atalaia, after that there's simply are no more villages for many kms, so we just got on with the walking.
The countryside had been quite flat for a long time, this morning it started to become more noticeably hilly. We could see hills in the distance that we knew we would have to cross to reach today's destination. They don't look very high, and they aren't particularly high in reality. But what they are, as we soon found, Iis that they are very steeply undulating. This meant that we had many sessions of steep upclimbs followed by equally steep downhills. The sum-total being that we had a lot of metres to climb and descend whilst overall staying quite low down. Some of the climbs were horribly steep on poor tracks.
Our route went through this type of countryside for what seemed forever. As we've seen earlier on this walk there are very large areas of countryside that seem to be completely empty of village or other habitation. What we did see through, as usual was plenty of flowers and small wildlife. The specialisation of today's route was several instances of what can only be described as puddles of "Tadpole Soup". These are puddles, of various sizes, but usually at least a metre diameter and reasonably deep that are the home to very large families of tadpoles. We've never seen anything like it before, Ponds with tadpoles? Yes. Puddles? No.
After what seemed like endless walking in the hilly, and forested, area we finally found a village and had our first break. It had taken over 4 hours and about 11km of tough walking and we were ready for a break. All that was available was coffee and snacks, so they had to do. However shortly afterwards we found another cafe with a rather better selection and a barman who spoke excellent English, plus providing a valuable stamp or "carrimba" on our Credential.
We were now well and truly back into more populated areas and felt that we would soon be getting close to Tomar. There's were soon signed of "civilisation"
But there were also lots of better signs of civilisation than illegal tipping, horrible!
There were more houses etc but when we checked the map we still had some kms to go, but they soon passed. The final stretch of road into Tomar was busy, and with virtually no footpath, but we managed, even with another bout of rain and finally made it to our hotel. Which is very stylish. More about that tomorrow which we are going to have as a rest day.
We've walked about 24km or 15 miles today over quite tough terrain so we feel that we deserve it. Tonight though after a short rest and some food we both feel that we could actually go out tomorrow and walk it all again, but we won't, we'll do the tourist bit in this rather fine city.
At our meal tonight we met two new pilgrims, now making our total to 5. These are an Australian couple who are walking more or less the same distances as us and have just had a rest day here today, before moving on tomorrow, So it possible that we will meet then again later. Stuart, the solo English walker that we meet up with a few times earlier, is now well in front of us now. But is planning on having a break in Porto, so we may just possibly meet him again. I read his blog each day. He publishes it on Facebook under the heading of " The Man In The Blue Blazer ". I've not seen it there, as I gave up on Facebook a while ago, but he sends us an email version each day.
His blog, as he is currently walking totally on his own, has a different slant than ours. He is meeting up with his wife in Porto and they will walk on together after that
