As a result of a comment from June and Newton I have added a new Widget at the left hand side of the page.
If you enter your email into the "Follow by email" panel, a notification of any new blogs will be sent automatically to the address you give, and confirm later.
Hopefully this will make it easier for you to follow us and our ramblings, both physical and mental.
Tony
Thursday, 14 April 2016
Day 9 - To Alvaiazere
We enjoyed our, so called, rest day in Tomar. With all the walking up to the castle and back and various other side trips around the town we clocked up about 8km to add to our total.
As I mentioned yesterday, we started from Tomar this morning by traveling out by bus to Tojal. When we left the hotel the weather was rather overcast and didn't look promising. Sure enough, as we were on the bus, just leaving Tomar it started to rain. And that sums up most of today.
It rained! Then it rained some more. Then it rained harder. And it carried on raining even more
The whole of our walking today was in heavy rain. The bus stop at Tojal was next to a petrol station with a big roof covering the pumps area. We took advantage of this to put on our larger poncho-style raincoats. These cover everything except out boots and lower trouser legs. So when we set off we were dry, that didn't last long. The raincoats protect you from the direct rain but the inside of them fairly quickly gets wet just from condensation, this in turn wetting your inner clothes. After about an hour of walking you're almost as wet inside as if you'd never had the raincoat on. Not quite, but it felt that way.
The actual walk would have been nice, we only did about 10km through what would normally be rather attractive countryside. But when everything is dripping it's not quite the same. In some ways we had taken a very good decision to bus-travel part of the way and only do a shorter walk. If, by any fat chance, we had decided to walk the whole way it would have been hellish, not enjoyable in any way. The short distance we did was enough in the circumstances.
It was too wet to chance taking our cameras out much, but I did get a few pictures.
When we finally arrived in Alvaiazere we soon found the albergue that we had booked for tonight. Unfortunately it was closed, but with a message on the door to press the bell button. We tried this several times with no results. What now? Just nearby is a cafe. So we went there and had a drink and small snack, mainly to waste time as we suspected that someone may be there at about 2pm.
It got to 2pm, still nothing so a little later we decided to send a text message to the number we had used when we booked the place. We sent this, but some while later we hadn't had any reply. We couldn't sit around dripping in the café anymore as we'd more than overstayed our welcome and small purchases. The rain had eased a little so we decided to have a wander around the area, possibly to find a warmer cafe, the previous one was freezing cold.
We'd only gone about 50 yards when we heard someone shouting to us. It was the wife of the albergue owner, she'd only just read our message and had come out to try to find us. She was full of apologies and quickly showed us into the albergue. We have a fine room and the property is very nice and cosy, particularly when Carlos, the owner arrived and lit the wood-burning stove.
We soon got ourselves installed, had hot showers, and took all of our wet and dirty clothes downstairs to a laundry to be washed and dried. The laundry is operated by Carlos's mother who promises to bring them up to the albergue when they are done later this afternoon.
Carlos, himself, after dealing with the fire proceeded to stamp our credentials. Not with the normal inked rubber stamp, but with something much more special, A real hot wax embossed seal, no less.
Finally sitting snug and dry.
Current view from our bedroom window, it's still raining.
Tomorrow we plan on walking to Ansiao, we hope that the weather is better, the forcast isn't.
We've just been joined in the albergue by Brian from just north of Dublin. He has walked the whole 30+ km from Tomar today, very impressive. He has also been given the privilege of sleeping in the John Brierley Room, the very same bedroom that the writer of the most famous Camino guides, (the ones that usually encourage people to walk 30km a day) slept in a year or so back when he was in the area surveying the route.
STOP PRESS NEWS: Our freshly washed and dried clothes have just been delivered, Barbara is very impressed.
As I mentioned yesterday, we started from Tomar this morning by traveling out by bus to Tojal. When we left the hotel the weather was rather overcast and didn't look promising. Sure enough, as we were on the bus, just leaving Tomar it started to rain. And that sums up most of today.
It rained! Then it rained some more. Then it rained harder. And it carried on raining even more
The whole of our walking today was in heavy rain. The bus stop at Tojal was next to a petrol station with a big roof covering the pumps area. We took advantage of this to put on our larger poncho-style raincoats. These cover everything except out boots and lower trouser legs. So when we set off we were dry, that didn't last long. The raincoats protect you from the direct rain but the inside of them fairly quickly gets wet just from condensation, this in turn wetting your inner clothes. After about an hour of walking you're almost as wet inside as if you'd never had the raincoat on. Not quite, but it felt that way.
The actual walk would have been nice, we only did about 10km through what would normally be rather attractive countryside. But when everything is dripping it's not quite the same. In some ways we had taken a very good decision to bus-travel part of the way and only do a shorter walk. If, by any fat chance, we had decided to walk the whole way it would have been hellish, not enjoyable in any way. The short distance we did was enough in the circumstances.
It was too wet to chance taking our cameras out much, but I did get a few pictures.
It got to 2pm, still nothing so a little later we decided to send a text message to the number we had used when we booked the place. We sent this, but some while later we hadn't had any reply. We couldn't sit around dripping in the café anymore as we'd more than overstayed our welcome and small purchases. The rain had eased a little so we decided to have a wander around the area, possibly to find a warmer cafe, the previous one was freezing cold.
We'd only gone about 50 yards when we heard someone shouting to us. It was the wife of the albergue owner, she'd only just read our message and had come out to try to find us. She was full of apologies and quickly showed us into the albergue. We have a fine room and the property is very nice and cosy, particularly when Carlos, the owner arrived and lit the wood-burning stove.
We soon got ourselves installed, had hot showers, and took all of our wet and dirty clothes downstairs to a laundry to be washed and dried. The laundry is operated by Carlos's mother who promises to bring them up to the albergue when they are done later this afternoon.
Carlos, himself, after dealing with the fire proceeded to stamp our credentials. Not with the normal inked rubber stamp, but with something much more special, A real hot wax embossed seal, no less.
Current view from our bedroom window, it's still raining.
Tomorrow we plan on walking to Ansiao, we hope that the weather is better, the forcast isn't.
We've just been joined in the albergue by Brian from just north of Dublin. He has walked the whole 30+ km from Tomar today, very impressive. He has also been given the privilege of sleeping in the John Brierley Room, the very same bedroom that the writer of the most famous Camino guides, (the ones that usually encourage people to walk 30km a day) slept in a year or so back when he was in the area surveying the route.
STOP PRESS NEWS: Our freshly washed and dried clothes have just been delivered, Barbara is very impressed.
Wednesday, 13 April 2016
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?
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 April 2016
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
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
Monday, 11 April 2016
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.
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
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
Saturday, 9 April 2016
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 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.
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