Day 8 - In Tomar

Today is to be a rest day. That was decided yesterday, as we were completing a very long, hilly, confusing and, latterly, wet day.

Yesterday's trek was a part of the story, the other parts are that we had been told that Tomar is a very interesting city and well worth a good few hours of exploration. That is something that is difficult to do when you are walking to new destinations each day. The final part of the decision is to do with places we have yet to reach.

I've mentioned before that the “main” guidebook for this, (and other Caminos), is organised on roughly 30km per day stages. We feel that this stage length is too far, particularly to do day-after-day. However for our next stage there is no choice. There are simply no places to stay in the 30+km between Tomar and the next town, Alvaiazere. The countryside between is also rather hilly. That combination leaves us with limited choices. We had considered several alternatives, walk out half way and get transport back, in a similar fashion to that used by us leaving Lisbon. Get transport all the way to Alvaiazere; OR the method we have chosen. Our final choice, after checking transport etc today, is to go by bus to an intermediate point, round about half way, and then walk the rest of the way to Alvaiazere.

We have confirmed that our plan is feasible. There is indeed a bus tomorrow morning to Alvaiazere that stops at a suitable point, i.e. where it's route crosses the Camino route. So that's what we'll do.

Having sorted that out we had time on our hands. As advised, we spent some time exploring the city. We first visited the tourist office, had our credentials stamped, and got advice on where to visit. The major feature of the city is the castle/convent that towers over everything. It is an ancient Knights Templar stronghold from East back. From below it looks impressive, from within the building itself, it is incredible. It is an amazing amalgam of ancient castle, and an enormous deserted convent. It sounds a strange mixture, but that's what it is. We spent a long while exploring the place, starting by having a strenuous walk up the steep hill from the town centre simply to get to the castle. We could have got the bus, but we are supposed to be walkers after all.

First impressions are that it is bigger than it looks, final impressions are that it is vastly bigger than it looks. It took over two hours simply to look around, and there are places that we didn't get to. It's very well preserved and only 3 euros entrance fee. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After leaving the castle/convent we walked back down into the town look around there. Again there is lots to see. Many churches, as is normal in this part of the world, a beautiful river area and quaint streets and shops.

Oh yes, by the way it rained, heavily. And it's easy to recognise Portuguese post-boxes

One place that I must mention was one we saw near the bus station, before visiting the castle. That is the museum of matches. The sort that you use to start a fire, that is.

We didn't go in, but the notice claims that it is the world’s largest collection of things to do with matches, including over 40,000 match boxes. Why?

Another unusual feature, again with exhibits in various places, is a tradition of young girls creating very tall hat-like structures and then wearing these for various parades around the town. 

This tradition "The Festa dos Tabuleiros" takes place every four years. Each hat has to contain a number of small loaves of bread and a great collection of flowers, usually artificial these days an arranged in specific ways. The structure had to be the same height as the girl and apparently weighs about 15-29 kg.Quite heavy, and a strange custom. The link above gives full details, it's all very strange.

There is even a monument to the tradition on the local traffic roundabout.

The rest of today was spent doing a little washing and, for me, finally getting our previous blogs transferred to the new blog website at folksfrom62.blogspot.com, complete with relevant photographs. 

Please go there and see what you've missed. 

Also please let us know what you think, as it's difficult for us to see the actual finished items. Every time I log in the system recognises my log in and takes me directly to the editor, which doesn't quite give Mr the views that you see. All, reasonable, suggestions accepted. 

Day 7 - To Tomar

Our stay at the motel last night was fine, and the meal down the road was good. The waiter was very attentive and Barbara and he chatted in French for a while. We later made our way back to the hotel, where I completed yesterday's page of the blog.

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

These tracks seem to be a throwback to older times when Portugal, and Spain operated multiple track gauges. As far as i know they both use the international gauge now. End of nerdiness.

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.

Quite how these tadpoles survive in temporary puddles is amazing, I suppose that as it is still spring, and the area has regular rain, the tadpoles will grow into frogs before the heat of the summer dries out the puddles. We hope so. We must have seen 10 to 15 puddles like these, and there must be loads more, so very soon this area will be overrun by tiny baby frogs.

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!

 It's just possible that one of the illegal tippers had been caught!

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

Day 6 - To Vila Nova Barquina

After our excellent evening meal  with Helena and Honora, our young Italian lady we had a good night's sleep in our luxury abode. They joined us again for breakfast before we set out.

It is a shame that they are, off the main Camino route and also not near the end of one of the main stages. Many people doggedly follow the "stages" described in the main guide book although these are normally around 30+ km per day. That is just too far for a lot of people, but they follow the book, finding it very hard and get disheartened. We work on a daily distance of about 20 km a day, where we can, and manage with that. Occasionally, like yesterday, we just have to walk more than 20km, but we try not to.

The first stage of our walk today was, we were warned, on a very busy road with absolutely no pavement areas at the side. Neither of these statements turned out to be completely true. At times several vehicles were in our vicinity and some times there was no where to walk other than the road surface, but, as far as we can remember we never got both together. It wasn't a great walking place but OK. The weather was very pleasant, so things were fine. Initially it was rather misty, but the sun soon cleared that and the rest of the walking was good.

This is horse, and Stork, country and we saw plenty of evidence of both. In one place we passed a line of power pylons, each adorned with several Stork nests.

We soon seemed to be in Golega, the next largish town where we found a cafe in the pleasant centre.

Barbara was feeling a little lacking in get-up-and-go this morning so tried a drink of hot chocolate, which worked its magic, she felt much more energetic after that.

The yellow Camino marker arrow signs were rather scarce asd unclear today, possibly because up to yesterday the Camino track and and the pilgrimage route to Fatima followed the same route. At Santarem the two tracks separated and, we feel, the Camino route becomes the poor relation, getting less attention. Nevertheless we managed OK with the arrows that were there, two guide books and a gps track on my phone. As before there seem to have been several changes in the route fairly recently as sometimes we had the choice of several possibilities depending on which guide you liked at. We stopped at Sao Caetano and had a small coffee in a tiny Archeological museum staffed by 3 young women. No sign of any visitors others than us. Shortly afterwards we passed through a strange "Ghost Town" sort of place, Quinta Cardiga. This had been a very large palace with all its supporting buildings, stables, farm buildings, church etc. All remarkably intact but completely deserted.

We did read that there had been some sort of plan to renovate the main palsce buildings to make a Posada, the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish Paradores. It could well work as its location is excellent very close to the Tajo river, and with excellent view s etc. I hope it works out.

Very soon afterwards we left the Camino route to get to our stopping place for tonight. As we've found on this Camino finding a suitable place to stay can take some imagination and accepting the fact that the only place is not actually quite on the Camino route. This is the case today, as, yesterday, out lodgings are about 1 km off the main Camino route.  The place we are staying in is a motel, on a garage/ petrol station site. Adequate, but un-pretentious.  It has what looks like a good restaurant, but as it's Monday, it is closed this evening. So we wandered down the road and had a delicious meal at another restaurant.

DAY 5 – To Azinhaga

We did have the dormitory to ourselves last night as we’d thought we might. There seemed to be a group of men in another room upstairs but ours stayed exclusive to us. We both slept well, each in our own bottom bunk. One thing that I haven’t mentioned about this trip is that when the sun shines it can be very warm but the evenings and dull days are cold.  Before going to bed last night we spent some time in a lounge , Barbara reading and me writing the blog. We were both cosily wrapped in our sleeping bags. That aside we both slept very well. Breakfast consisted of the usual cold meat and cheese etc. It was a very good spread and very filling.

Today we planned to walk to Azinhaga. We have booked at a small guest house, which has good reviews.  We soon rejoined the Camino route and walked out of Santarem. We knew that the town was built on higher ground than the surrounding area but were rather surprised just how high it was until we started down a very steep track taking us out of town.

 Looking back we could see the town walls towering above us. At the bottom we entered a long stretch of very flat land, walking through an agricultural area, mainly vineyards.  

It was a very nice walk for about an hour, not particularly sunny, rather dull but dry. At least to start with. We began to notice drizzle in the breeze prompting us to put on our lightweight wind/shower proof jackets. Shortly afterwards the rain started, strong enough to warrant getting out out large raincoats. Just in time as it turned out as the rain started in torrents. It poured for at least an hour, a deluge as Barbara described it, certainly the tracks we were walking on changed from being simply dusty to being extremely muddy. We carried on walking, we had to as there was no shelter anywhere, just wide open fields for miles in  directions adjacent to the River Tajo. It soon became necessary to use our walking poles for support as the mud was so slippery that it was difficult walking, sliding where it was flat and almost impossible to stand on a long downwards slope that we had to traverse.

Eventually we managed to reach a road that had a hard surface and we could walk more or less normally again. The rain however continued for a while longer before finally stopping. We eventually came to Vale de Figuirea, a small town at the top of a small hill. We had coffees and a small savoury snack each and then carried on. 

Our planning of those stage of the route revealed lots of inconsistencies in different descriptions of the route to take. It seems as if several major changes have been made in the route in recent years and some of the guides are incorrect. We simply followed the arrows which have been consistently good all the way from Lisbon so far. The initial stretch had been quite easy, the stretch in the rain and mud more difficult but very interesting, but the latter stretch became eventually rather tedious as we we were just waking seemingly endless straight, flat country lanes. We had one more break at Pombalino, where we left the Camino route to walk about a mile to our lodgings for the night.

Our place tonight is stunning, port of a large private house, fully fitted with everything you might need. We have a private bedroom about 30ft square with adjacent bathroom and shower. A large lounge with wood burning stove and a delightful evening dinner with our hosted Helena. She was assisted by a young Italian lady who seems to be here as part of her Tourism training program. We all had an enjoyable evening

Day 4 - To Santarem

Today’s walk was planned to be from Azumbuja to Ponte de Mugue but it ended up being rather further than planned. You’ll see why later.

We had a very good night in our hotel in Azumbuja. Our meal last night with Stuart was very enjoyable with the man running the restaurant proving to be rather a comic and kept us amused. We finished fairly early and said our goodbyes, again, to Stuart as he was planning to be off very early in the morning for a long day’s walk. I completed my blog posting, still no advance on the photo uploading problem, and we went to bed. I had the best night’s sleep yet of the trip, and we both awoke bright and refreshed, ready for a reasonably short day’s walk. The cost of the hotel included breakfast so we went down to the restaurant. We’d been there about 10 minutes when Stuart walked in looking rather flustered. He’d slept in and was now behind his schedule. He grabbed some food including some for later and was soon off on his long walk.

We soon followed him, but at a slower pace than he walks. We were soon out in very flat but very pleasing countryside in slightly overcast but warm conditions. It soon got too warm for our fleeces so these came off, followed shortly by the legs of our convertible trousers. Our initial route was along a very quiet road but we soon left it and started walking along good quality farm roads. This continued for several miles and it was great to be away from the busy traffic of yesterday. It was very much like the Camino walking we had enjoyed in Spain previously.  Strangely, although we didn't walk through any villages we did pass two small private airfields, both of which had small aircraft flying in and out.

In England you see sSeagulls following the plough,

here they get Egrets

Eventually, as we drew nearer to the River Tajo we started meeting a few houses and were back on very quiet rural roads, but nothing much. Gradually however we realised that we were being passed by more and more cyclists. Initially it was the of one or two, then slightly more until eventually groups of 15 to 20 passed us. They were not racing, but were all going in the same direction as us. We eventually saw one young woman with a shirt that lead us to believe that they may all be cycling to Fatima.

They were a happy lot, and many shouted to us, in English, as they passed us.

Eventually we arrived at the village where we planned to stay for the night. There are two places listed and one gets very good reviews, which is where we planned staying. However when we arrived it was all closed-up.  OK then. Let’s go to the other. That was all closed up as well. What now? The next stretch of the route has nothing at all for well over 15km. That was too far for us to walk, being realistic. So, move over to plan B, resort to public transport.

There is a railway station in the next village, but enquiring about train times from the locals made us believe that the bus was a better bet, and a man we met in the bar insisted that he would take us in his car to the next village to catch the bus from there to Santarem. We couldn’t persuade him otherwise, So, off we set. We were soon at the local bus station, such as it was, and dropped off with many thanks from us.  However when we looked at the timetable we found that what was a half hourly service during the week only ran about every two hours at the weekend, and we’d just missed one. So, rather than wait another two hours we walked into the town centre and found a taxi that took us directly into Santarem. We soon found a good hostel and booked ourselves  in.

Just as we were completing the paperwork who walked up the stairs? Stuart of course. His face was a picture. He thought, as we did, that by now he would be well in front of us along the route. He couldn’t understand how we had overtaken him, so we had to confess and explain.

We are sleeping in a dormitory tonight, the first time on this trip so far. There are 8 bunks in the room but it looks as if we will be on our own.  Stuart has previously booked a private room. To complete the conversion into full Camino modes we have  just made our own meal rather than eating out. We’ve also taken the opportunity of confirming our accommodation for the next 3 nights.

Day 3 - To Azumbuja

Today is rather a special day. It is the day that we travel out from Lisbon,  do some walking, and don’t go back to Lisbon.

Last night was hectic. We needed to pack everything ready for the morning, We’d got into the habit of taking most things out in our packs on the previous day’s walks,  but always some stuff was left behind as we knew that we would be going back in the evening. Tomorrow we need to take everything we have, as we are leaving Lisbon.

I was up early to complete my packing, which had been delayed last night, and we were fairly soon off to the station with all of our world on our backs. We caught the same time train as yesterday but travelled out further, to Alhandra, where we finished yesterday. This took about 30 minutes on the train, but had already taken us a day and a half of walking.

Leaving the train we rapidly rejoined the Camino route which passes over the railway bridge next to the station, and headed into Alhandra itself. Most guides describe this next section as extremely tedious, and even dangerous. This is because, until recently, the official Camino route had been almost entirely along the N1/N3 road. This is a very busy, but non motorway, main road. This is heavily used by lots of large trucks serving the various industries around the area. That would normally be fine, (not good but fine), except that the road sides do not have a proper pavements. Walkers are expected to walk along the edge of the road and hope.

Recently though, an alternative has been made available for part, at least, of our route today. This is a very new 4km long riverside walk. It is all very swish, well paved, plenty of interest and importantly, well away from the N1/N3 road. Part of the interest is that every 250 metres, or so, there are rest/bench areas, each with a very good piece of painted artwork. Each of the images relates to the river, the path, or something to do with the immediate area.  I realised, after about the third image what these were about, and started to lphotograph the whole series, excluding the ones I had already passed of course.

The effect of these images is striking and really interesting as you walk along the pathway.

At the next village, Vilafranca de Xira, the new pathway ended and the Camino route continued on a mixture of little used rural roads, across farm fields and through industrial areas. Thankfully these were still away from the N1/N3,. However they were extremely boring. On the whole, they were deserted, dead-straight, roads through completely flat land, often near to the railway.

By this time the sun was quite strong and hot. Eventually we did join the very busy main road for the last 10 km or so. In some respects this was a welcome change. We still walked along the edge of the road, but the markrde shoulder, where we walked, was well marked and generally very wide. Oveall today was quite hard and boring., tomorrow promises to be rather better, we’ll see.

I mentioned yesterday that we’d meet Stuart, anotherYorkshireman He was walking rather faster than us yesterday, and so we expected that he would be far in front of us today. We had exchanged emails yesterday, and today I received an email link to his blog. Later, I responded to that and asked how he was progressing. To our surprise he replied that he was staying at the Ourohotel. We had just checked into the Ourohotel in Azumbuja, so I responded asking if he was in Azumbujsa, to discover that he was in a room just along the corridor. It seems that he had decided to do a short day today after his long day yesterday, and we had done the opposite, having a long day today. We met briefly and exchanged notes, and also agreed to have a meal together tonight. This was very enjoyable, all the better for being unexpected. However his schedule means that over the next few days he will leave us far behind, so our meal tonight will probably be a one-off event.

Being in an hotel tonight has also allowed us to catch up with some much needed washing. This was always a problem in our place in Lisbon due to the lack of proper ventilation due to the small windows and wooden shutters. We are now just about up to date in that respect. It will be nice to get back into the normal Camino routine, walk, wash, sleep, walk again etc.

Tomorrow should be a shorter day, hopefully I’ll be able to sort out the photo uploading problem.

Days 1 and 2. -Leaving Lisbon - Sort of.,...

DAYS 1 AND 2 – LEAVING LISBON, SORT OF……
APRIL 7, 2016

I’ve decided to combine our first two days of “proper” walking the Camino out of Lisbon. It will become clearer-why as we go on.

As I may have mentioned somewhere else, the first few stages of walking from Lisbon are not straightforward. Part of this is due to the geography of the city, it has a large semi-industrial history. It was, and is, a world ranking port and hence has many miles of seafront port facilities, backed by residential and other industrial or commercial development. Much of this is quite old, some thriving, other parts deserted with empty buildings or just empty sites. It is through this area that the initial stages of the Portuguese Camino run.

The sum-total of all of this is that there is essentially no pilgrim accommodation for the first thirty-plus kms. In fact there is very little hotel property either, what there is available is very exclusive and expensive.

There is no-way that we are going to walk something over thirty kms in one go, certainly not as the first stage, so we have had to use an alternative strategy, one that was suggested by a Camino expert. This works by staying in Lisbon for an extended period but walking out and riding back and forth on local transport.  So yesterday, our first day of walking, we set-out from the cathedral, having had our Credential stamped, and then walked about 12km to Sacavem. There we caught a train back into Lisbon and to our lodgings,. Today we took the train back to Sacavem then walked 24 km to Alhandra before taking the train back here to our lodgings. Tomorrow we will take the train back again to Alhandra and walk out about another 24km but this time we stay out. We have already booked a room at a small hotel. More of that later.

My brain hurts with all this faffing about, how about yours?

All of this shuffling back and forth overcomes the lack of accommodation and is very cheap. The train back tonight, about a 30km ride, cost us 1.85 Euros each or about £1.50. That was even without bothering to claim old age reductions.  It is doing what we hoped it would do in terms of getting started, but it is VERY time consuming.  This compounded with having internet connection problems means that it has been a struggle to get my blog posts done on time.

Day 1 – Lisbon To Sacavem Day 2 is below

We set out fairly early, called at the cathedral for out initial stamp, a ‘Carimbo’ in Portuguese. The guy at the cathedral told us that they have several people every day starting out from there. The numbers are small at the moment but will increase radically in May, and through the summer.

The very first part of the way runs through the Alfama district, about 100 metres from our lodgings and then down towards one of the main rail stations and the Cruise Ship terminal. Today there was a Fred Olsen cruise ship docked.

From there it was through lots of the old dock and military areas. Some old buildings were interesting in i their own rights,  but things became much more interesting towards the end of today’s stage.

We walked through the “Parque Das Nacoes”, the site of ” Expo98″ the 1998 World Fair. This  large area, originally developed for the world fair, but is now used for all sorts of leisure, educational and artistic purposes. One of the very nice things there is a very long cable-car system. We’re always suckers for this sort of thing, so we had a ride, it gave us a rest from walking and also transferred us about 1km onwards on our travels.

Following that, the rest of the walk to Sacavem train station was mainly through the parkland of the area. We had a quick ride back to Lisbon on the train into Santa Appolonia station about a half mile from our lodgings.

In the evening we decided to eat out. We thought that we would try one of the small bars in the lower parts (altitude-wide) of Alfama. We only wanted something simple and quick. What happened next still has us confused, but it happened. We were walking along one of the narrow alleyways that are lined with bars and eateries when a guy at the door asked us if we were interested in eating there. We initially declined, but then changed our minds and went in for a look. It was a small, empty area, it was early so we weren’t surprised., and decided to stay. At this, the guy lead us up some stairs into the main eating room, which was very busy with very well dressed clients in a very swish environment, and sat us down as a table. Almost immediately a very large lady singer started her “Fado” session immediately next to our table, accompanied by two guitar players. She was loud? certainly. On key,? most of the time, but very unexpected . We were stuck, were couldn’t really escape, so decided to stick it out. We were given a menu each and ordered our choices. By this time the soprano had finished, to be replaced by an equally large, wonky voiced tenor. He was very earnest, but also equally as loud as the soprano. By this time out food had arrived and we were totally stuck. To totally crown it, you’ve got to know that we were sitting there, in this very swish place amongst very well-dressed people, in the clothes we had been walking in all day, and we hadn’t even had time for a shower before going out for what was going to be a quick, simple meal. Goodness only knows what the other guests thought we were at.

Neither of us thought that the food was very good. It was pretentious, but very mediocre quality with poor service. To finish off an exciting evening when we tried to settle-up before we rushed away from this nightmare we discovered that they didn’t accept any kind of cards, cash only! Fortunately we had enough, just, to pay the bill before escaping.

Day 2 – Sacavem to Alhandra

After a quick journey back to yesterday’s end point we followed the trail mainly through countryside. The route is described by the writer of our guide as “an ugly walk all the way to Alhandra”. We didn’t find it so. In many ways it was very pretty and certainly interesting. We followed a small tidal river, not “an old abandoned canal”, for many kilometres along a valley. Admittedly at the edges of the valley there could be seen industrial and residential areas, but the areas immediate next to the walk were very interesting. We saw lots of wild flowers, heard lots of birdsong,  frogs croaking. We also saw some sheep and lambs and lots of other things. We were under the flight path from Lisbon airport, but that wasn’t too intrusive. Over all we enjoyed the walk. Much of the land send to be a clay-like soil so some of the paths had puddles of all sizes available for our intrepid walkers to step into.

Whilst doing this part of the walk we met our first companion Camino walker. This is Stuart Nelson, “The Man in the Blue Blazer”, on Facebook. Not only was he English, but from Yorkshire too. That is a very unlikely combination as vet few Camino walker are from England, let alone Yorkshire. At one point he helped us across a very boggy patch by lending us his walking poles. Stupidly we’d left ours behind at the apartment thinking that we wouldn’t need any. He was walking rather quicker than us, as he had further to go, so he soon was well ahead of us. Possibly well meet him somewhere else later, who knows.

The latter part of the walk was on a very new, and long, boardwalk through an extensive nature reserve at the edge of the River Tajo.

This is Lisbon’s main river and it was delightful. In between we went through a number if small towns and some industrial areas, but generally it was a good, but long, day.

We returned by train, as explained above, but decided to stay in tonight to avoid being mobbed by the crowds expecting a repeat performance of our “Weird people out of context” performance at the restaurant down the road.