Day 16 - To Albergeria-A-Velha

I slept on the top bunk last night, in our room for two.  It's the first time on the top bunk since the last Camino. Normally they don't bother me, but last night was uncomfortable. Quite late in the evening the heating in the room turned on, which was quite nice at the time, as it had become rather chilly. However it stayed on all night, with the result that I was rather hot, not sleeping too well. 

We had opted to have breakfast at the albergue this morning, at a very reasonable €2.5 each. We didn't expect to have anything much more than coffee and bread with possibly some jam or marmalade for that price, but we were presented, instead, with a feast. We had a choice of color meats, cheeses, cereals, various fresh fruits, different breads etc.  And excellent coffee, the best in Portugal so far. Very good value.

Les set off at about 8am and was soon followed by a Danish lady that we hadn't met before, but who is doing a solo Camino. We later met her again, briefly, out on the trail.

Today started out with nice weather and we both chose to walk without our legs on. The removable legs of our walking trousers of course. Barbara removed hers a day or so ago, but I only removed mine yesterday. It is much cooler in the warm weather we've had over the last couple of days.

Looking back at our albergue from last night we were glad that today's walk didn't start with the long climb that we finished with yesterday

Our route today gave us two options, one was to walk to Albergeria-A-Velha, a distance of about 16kms or go on to the next town adding another 7kms or so. We opted for the shorter distance, partly to allow us time for washing/drying etc. Our social late afternoon and evening yesterday was very nice but it meant that some things we needed to do didn't get done, so a short day today should help.

Shortly after leaving our albergue we were walking through an industrial area, and not too sure about the way the route went, when a young woman came to us and asked, in good English, if we needed directions. She, she claimed, was also a Camino pilgrim, having walked to Santiago a year or two back and she envied what we were doing. She was just on her way to work and decided to help. "The Camino will provide", goes the legend.

Our route today was, again, very nice countryside. One or two hilly stretches, as is normal around here, but very pleasant. On one stretch we walked along what is claimed to be a Roman route, now bypassed by a modern road, which suddenly became a very long many arched low bridge over a large lake on one side leading to the river on the the other side.  

It is a beautiful place, lots of bird, and frog, songs to entertain you. Up to fairly recently this part of the trail continued across over the river on a higher-arched old (Roman) bridge.  This is no longer possible as the centre arch collapsed into the river some time ago. Instead the route now crosses the valley by means of a very modern, very high bridge.

This gives great views down into the village below, and also saves a lot of descent and ascent across the valley. Shortly after the end of the modern bridge we rejoined the old trail to walk through some more eucalyptus forest and on to our destination town.

There are one or two places to stay here, but we decided to stay at the local pension, the "Casa da Alameda". This has obviously been a very upmarket place in the past, the long past. It's a decidedly funny place, a snapshot of sometime between Victorian and 1950s.  There seem to be lots of bedrooms that are simply storage for assorted furniture and fittings, with staircases that should lead elsewhere but are now cordoned off by strategically placed armchairs.  Everywhere is either very dark-brown wood furniture and muddy cream walls, or is painted dark-brown to match the woodwork. But we have our own room and bathroom. We did have to request that the heating be put on as it was decidedly chilly. 

Anyway we've had a restful and useful afternoon, and as a fortunate side-effect, missed walking in some very heavy rain that occurred not long after we arrived. This evening we had a short stroll around the centre of town finding a rather good cafe for our breakfast tomorrow. The place is run by a local man who lived for some time in Montreal in Canada where he learned his English, amongst the French of course. But he was very eager to practice English again and refused any attempt by us to try any of our very sparse Portuguese. " I must practice my English before I forget it " he claimed. He also repeatedly said "You are very welcome here", something that we've noticed all over Portugal so far.

Day 15 - To Agueda

We set off today with a totally clear, blue, sky and brilliant sunlight. As we tend to, we had decided to have breakfast on the trail. At the first village there was nothing available, but at the second village, Aguim, we had delicious sandwiches and coffees. The cafe was a little off the Camino track and we only found it by accident. They really need to put a sign on the Camino trail and they would get a lot of business. On through other places including Anadia, after we walked through a large, totally deserted sports and athletics complex. It had become a feature of this trip to suddenly come across large modern structures that seem to be completely unused and deserted, probably due to the economic crisis that hit Portugal a few years ago. 

We continued steadily, coming across various odd features from time to time.

Things like a very artistic garden arrangement

the two headed goat,

footballing lions

and the dragon goalkeeper.

Later we stopped for a coffee break at another small village, Alfaloas, where the cafe owner, very kindly, gave us a leaflet for an albergue for tonight, and showed us her book of comments from other pilgrims, also stamping our credentials. While we were there we were joined by the youngest pilgrim that we've met so far on this trip, a young lady called Ava. She was originally from Belgium but currently living in Norway, and obviously wanted a chat with someone. She is walking the Camino by herself and camping out every night. Not something either of us would like to do, even in better weather than we've been having. It must be pretty horrible in the rain we've had over the last week or so. I heard, about a week ago that it's been, officially, the wettest April in Portugal for many years. 

We had a few more kilometres of countryside before our lunch in the early afternoon, again at a very nice little cafe with a very welcoming owner, she actually gave us two very nice meringues on the house. 

Somewhere along the route we passed a rather surprising, very modern, structure. This is a communal wash house for the village with the water being supplied from the local stream.

It seems rather a throwback to mediaeval times, but it is obviously very new. We've seen many other similar structures before, most villages have them, but most look very old and unused.

The other item we saw was this Camino marker. One part of it shows the direction to take on the Camino, but the other gives the distance to Santiago de Compostela as 303kms.

As most guides quote a distance of just over 600km between Lisbon and Santiago it means that we are just about halfway there. By evening we definitely will be.

The guide we're using describes the next stage into Agueda as a long slog through an industrial area. That sums it up entirely. It was a hard uphill climb through factories and warehouses, followed by similar downhill stretch into the centre of Agueda, followed by another long, steep uphill stretch to our albergue. 

We soon checked in, the receptionist mentioning that another Englishman, Les, had already checked in.  Later, as I caught up with my laundry requirements, he and Barbara walked back down the hill to the local Lidl to get two bottles of wine and some nibbles for later in the evening. We also ordered some takeaways to be delivered as an evening meal. High living on the Camino - partly to celebrate the halfway point, mainly for the hell of it. We were also joined by Bernard, from Germany, whose English improved greatly as the evening wore on and the wine took effect. 

All of us were fairly tired and retired to our rooms by about 8:30, me to work on this blog and Barbara to catch up with The Archers on the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Day 14 - To Mealhada

After our none-walking day in Coimbra we returned, with somewhat of a vengeance, to the task of walking the Camino today. We were up and out by about 08:15. There were no breakfast facilities at our hotel, but we had coffee and a nibble at a small cafe just opposite. Getting out of Coimbra was somewhat difficult because, as so often happens on this Camino, there seems to be several routes. The first route we followed just seemed completely wrong, it was going in totally the wrong direction. Looking closely at the route shown on a map it seemed that it would like to take you all around the town and cathedral district that we'd looked at yesterday.  Eventually we found a satisfactory route, initially by the river and canal, past the station and eventually out into the country.

We strode out at a steady pace, overtaking some other pilgrims stopping on the way for coffees, etc as necessary.

At Santa Luzia a big market in the centre of the town was just finishing. All the stallholders were clearing away their stalls. It looked as if it had been a big event. We saw Erña and Jurgen, from Holland and Denmark, from time to time, near here. The route then followed a track through a eucalyptus forest.

Just as we rejoined a paved road, after several kilometres of forest track, we saw two pilgrims approaching us from the opposite direction. Initially we thought that either they or is were lost. Almost as quickly we realised that they were pilgrims, but heading towards Fatima, which is now well south of us. We confirmed that with a few words, each wishing the others a good Camino and went on our ways. These are the first Fatima pilgrims we have definitely seen.  We've seen plenty of signs pointing guards Fatima and some possible pilgrims, but these were definitely going there.

The new route we had just followed is to avoid an equally long walk totally avoiding the main road. It eventually took us into the smallish town of Mala, where we had delicious, freshly baked, sandwiches for lunch.

The last stretch was from Mala to Mealhada, which seemed to be fairly endless, very pretty through the various types of countryside but it took a long time. When we arrived at the Pension that we had chosen for the night we were told that it was full. That was a bit of a blow, as the next place was about 2km further on. However it turned out to be a far better place with very good facilities. We had a very good evening there, over a meal, with various other pilgrims. We had already come across most of them, but this was was the first time that we'd had time to talk together. Our group consisted of Barbara and myself, Les from Brighton, he's only walking as far as Porto. Louise from Perth, Australia, and is hoping to walk to Santiago, but is having some pretty severe foot problems, and Alex, the youngest of the group at 42. He originally came from Sao Paulo, in Brazil, but now lives in Berlin, Germany. He was hurrying along as he was meeting sometime in Porto in a few days time. We will, hopefully, continue plodding along all the way to Santiago.