We only walked about 17 kms today. A bit of recovery has been needed after yesterday! It took us ages to walk out of the huge urban sprawl we’d become sort of mired in as of about noon yesterday. Vigo is a large place and city walking really isn’t pleasant. The constant traffic noise. The exhaust. The dodging of people. The unrelenting pounding of feet against hot hard pavement. The constant search for the correct route. The frustrations when a Way Marker is missed because a delivery van was parked in front of it…..

But we finally made it into a more tranquil country-side and enjoyed about 6 kms of off road walking. Bliss!

This evening we are back in an Albergue. 14 beds in our room. A few other pilgrims. We are hoping for a few more as there is a group of Boy Scouts waiting to get in if there is room. We hope there will not be room! The building we are staying in is a reworked 16th century mansion in a beautiful old part of Redondela. There is a washing machine here – omg so wonderful! Here’s Pat under our laundry – happy days, and Pat in our dorm – so far all women – here’s hoping because Jan’s doing a great job sending the stinky guys into the room next door! 

A very short blog to let you know we walked 35 kms today. We are tired, aching and in good spirits in a HOTEL! Albergues not to be found. 

We’ve enjoyed another three days of wonderful walking. Some ups and downs and into the coastal hills from the dunes of the shoreline. Through farm land, forests and charming old villages. This part of Portugal and today into Spain seems quite affluent and some of the homes we’ve passed by are palatial. Swimming pools built into rocky outcrops by the ocean, lush manicured gardens, high walls. Farm fields are well kept and prolifically producing vast quantities of fall veggies. We’ve walked along quite a few cobble stone lanes between high stone walls interspersed with intricate wrought iron gateways between stone pillars and archways. We’ve crossed ancient stone bridges over burbling brooks. We’ve popped into tiny smoky cafes for water breaks. We’ve enjoyed delicious bakery concoctions and coffee for breakfasts. (Well Pat and I succumb to the sweet baked delights – Jan shows restraint and eats a dry bread roll with her coffee. I know – the model of dietary decorum.) We’ve enjoyed balmy breezes off the Atlantic and walked to the sound of waves crashing upon the beach. The churches are numerous and all quite ornate – both large and small. There are numerous stone crosses along the route as well. “Our” yellow waypoint arrows and shell markers – guide us along this diverse winding route of the Compostela seeking pilgrim. This walk is a much easier endeavour than the Via Egnatia! It is also rather more friendly. Here people we pass wish us well on our pilgrimage. It’s friendly and our quest understood.

We have also continued to stay in Albergues – some of dubious comfort. Yesterday evening we were in a damp basement room that could accommodate 64 pilgrims in bunk beds. All in one room. Not my idea of pleasant but – we three have the place almost to ourselves so despite the dampness it was marginally acceptable. The other two occupants were a pair of fellows from Hungary. The showers were hot and that makes up for a lot of other comforts that at lacking. The mattresses are often thin and plastic as are the pillows. There are sometimes no towels. Now the previous night we had flannel sheets on the equally thin mattresses, towels and sheets but the shower was fairly dismal and mixed gender so one never knows. The night before there was a tap – just like Nepal for a shower. 
Tonight our albergue is outstanding! There are comfortable mattresses with sheets, a blanket and pillow with case. All clean and dry! We had a delicious dinner served to us because there’s no where around that’s open…. Really the best place so far. But also the most expensive – 10 euros each! And the water was hot. And there is a place to hang our clothes. Life is good. Internet is generally abysmal. Mostly non existent. With luck this will eventually be sent from an Internet enabled Cafe……
It is our custom to wash our clothes in the evening. This entails a scrubbing and rinse while we shower or in a sink afterwards. We hang them somewhere to sort of dry then in the morning we pin the still wet items around our packs so they finish drying as we walk. A usual scenario is to have a pair of socks, a pair of knickers and a shirt plus a towel draped on our packs as we walk. As the day progresses and things dry they get tucked inside. This evening when Pat went for her shower she had a terrible fright. Her clean knickers that had been drying on her pack were gone. Vanished. Somewhere back on the 25 km trail presumably. We each have two pairs of this essential item. One to wear and one to have drying. So this left Pat in a rather desperate situation. This story ends well. She did eventually find the missing garment hiding and dry at the bottom of her pack! The pilgim’s trials and tribulations know no bounds! 

Back to the scenery – it is lovely here and this is why I walk. Pictures are worth 1000s of words so here are a few….

We had a glorious sunny warm walk today. Much of it on board walk along the Atlantic coast. So very nice to walk on the springy surface of a wood rather than the cobbles. Although we had a fair bit of the dreaded cobble too. We are now about 25 kms further north than we were this morning in a small town called Marinhas. Once again we are in a “by donation” Albergue. This one a nice old stone building. There’s  a large mixed gender bed dorm but only occupied by the three of us, a family of four on a year long trip from Belgium and “our” young Spanish man who was at last night’s hostel. All of us are Camino pilgrims as only pilgrims are permitted to stay in these places. As pilgims we have special credentials which we must get stamped along the route. It’s really quite a fun experience. The local people we meet are very keen to point the way and wish us a good pilgrimage. The way is also well marked with various yellow arrows and shell tiles as signs. Some are obvious, some are in funny partly hidden places but they are always there to guide us on our way. 

Here in Albergue S Miguel there is a kitchen, not well equiped like last night, but we have Jan and she works miricals in ill equiped kitchens. Here too is a washing machine! Oh wow. Pat and I have only had our clothes machine laundered once since we left home so this was an amazing luxury. We now have a rather frightening amount of laundry hanging on a drying rack. Hoping it’s dry by the morning. Back to the kitchen and Jan –  We’ve had a dinner of salad and chicken and a litre of wine for euros 4.00 each! Food here is so much less expensive than Greece or Turkey! And these albergues to stay in are also quite handy! So life is good. Here’s a few pictures from today.

We spent most of a day flying Thessaloniki – Munich – Lisbon – Porto. All connections went well. Our trekking poles showed up – we’d checked them. They were a tiny bundle which slid down into the carousel in a huge plastic bin. Pat had checked her knife carefully stowed in her pole bag but it had done a mysterious escape during transit. Otherwise just a long uneventful day of airports and planes.

Getting metro tickets to ride into Porto from the airport was a mission. A very user unfriendly system. Just four machines for all the people coming off planes. Very poor instructions  so there is one person per two machines helping people. The process was excruciatingly slow so the line ups long. We did finally hop on a very crowded metro train and were deposited within a few short blocks of our hostel. Pat and I arrived in daylight and have the aid of “pocket earth” on our iPads  so it was a quick and easy find. Poor Jan arrived about 11pm in the pouring rain with no pocket earth so she wandered around in the dark for quite some time before locating the small unlit red door which is the entrance to the hostel. Needless to say Pat and I had been fretting for a few hours about where she was as her plane had arrived much earlier. We were very relieved to see her! Jan seemed pretty relieved to be in out of the rain!

The day before yesterday we became pilgrims. I’ll tell you more about that in a separate blog. We set off under sunny skies! The clouds having emptied themselves overnight. Our first day of walking took us out of Porto to just north of the airport! Seems funny that we spent the entire day retracing the distance of the previous day’s half hour metro ride. City walking is noisy and hard underfoot. It’s not my favourite by a long stretch. The achetecture is really interesting here though. Many houses and buildings are faced with tile. Entire walls of blue, or yellow, or green or brown tiles. Some are plain – just one colour – but many are patterned. It’s distinctive  to this area I gather and it is very pretty. Most of the roads we walked along are cobbled. Even the newer ones. Vehicles driving on cobbled roads make a tremendous rumbling racket. Our walking poles click away incessantly and sometimes get stuck in the cracks. One has to be careful to not trip over the uneven bits which are especially prevalent at the roads edges. Hmmm – cobble stone looks nice but I’ll be glad when we’re walking on a quieter softer surface.

We stayed the night in Vilar de Pinheiro. Our hostel was an OK place. Three little beds in a row. Bedding dubious – we used our sleeping bags. An ancient dysfunctional TV. One light bulb to light the entire room which burnt out so we packed up in the morning with our head lamps. Damp towels – straight off the line with their drying incomplete. Hot water for our showers though, despite a scuzzy bathroom. Our dinner was at a delightful family owned menu-less restaurant where, through the suggestion of our charming and amusing waiter, we enjoyed an enormous plate of fried cod and chips washed down with excellent wine. Of course a second bottle managed to find its way back to our room with us for a wee night cap. That bottle cost us 3.00 euros! OMG after the crazy prices Pat and I had been paying in Istanbul, this is a wonderful change!

Yesterday’s walk brought us into a less heavily populated area but we’ve essentially been walking through the extended hinterland of Porto. We are now in Povo de Varzim. Still the hard on the feet cobble roads all the way. Pretty much more of the same scenery – tiled houses, lots of churches, rumbling traffic, but a bit more green space. We are staying in a “by donation” hostel. Our nicest accommodation in Portugal so far. Huge well equiped kitchen/dining room. But no crockscrew. What kind of self respecting kitchen is lacking this esential item? Pat and I are however now experts at breaking into bottles with our special chip and hammer technique. The only other downer of this place – not much hot water. My shower was cold – I detest cold showers. No towels of course. We shopped for groceries and ate in – total cost for the three of us including supplies we bought for breakfast euros 4.40 each! Now there’s a deal. We enjoyed another warm sunny day too which is another bonus as the weather forecast had not been promising.

Will send pictures a bit later. Am writing this while Pat and Jan sleep (it’s 6:30 am) and I’ll rustle around too much during the process of getting my pictures loaded from camera to I Pad.