LIVE from the Camino Live from the Interior

[Aurigny]

I didn't expect to have any free time until the summer of next year at the earliest. Having chalked up one long (Francés) and one short (Portugués Central) pilgrimage, there wasn't an obvious follow-up on the horizon for me in any event. I'd flirted with the notion of taking a crack at the Via Gebennensis in 2019 or 2020, though the amount of time it would take—sixty days at a minimum—would have required an immense amount of advance planning to enable me to clear my calendar for that length of time.

Having worked for six months without a single day off, however, I was sorely in need of some spiritual renewal. My employer—a cold and stony-hearted entity at the best of times—could hardly deny that I had earned it. With a little moving-around of my schedule, and putting in the appropriate amount of overtime beforehand, I found that it would be possible for me to disappear for two weeks this year. Encouraged by my nearest and dearest, therefore, I've decided to see if I can complete the interior Portugués—largely, it must be confessed, on the basis of its length. There aren't many middle-distance routes out there; the coastal Portugués (on which I spent a day last January before getting bored with all the water and abandoning it for the Central) doesn't appeal; and I have one of those personality defects that stands in the way of my starting a route this year and finishing it next. So the CPI it is.

I'm bound to say, though, that it's shaping up to be a very different experience from either of my previous two trips to SdC. While I may be mistaken about this, it doesn't appear as though a guide exists in any language. No reassuring presence of Saint John B, holding my hand and letting me know to one decimal place how far it is to the next source of fizzy drinks. I do have the excellent set of field notes posted here by Grace the Pilgrim, of this parish (hereinafter GB); some basic night-stop-and-distance information provided by the http://urcamino.com website; and its Portuguese equivalent at http://cpisantiago.pt, which doesn't appear to have been updated in quite a while. But the overall impression I've been getting is that while a certain level of infrastructure exists in some places at least, a lot of the time one is more or less on one's own.

This seems to be what I'm finding at the starting point of Viseu, a medium-sized city in north-central Portugal. I was informed that at present it lacks an albergue. For the moment, pilgrims can be accommodated at the barracks of the 14th Infantry Regiment in exchange for a small donation to a worthy cause. The prospect was appealing, and briefly tempted me, but knowing military guys as I do, I predicted an endless evening of convivial company, vivid conversation, the possibility of adult beverages, and practically no sleep. Hence prioritising the mission, as all good strategists, armchair and otherwise, ought to do, I reluctantly set aside that beguiling option and repaired to the only other non-commercial alternative, the Pousada de Juventude on the east side of town.

Here I met with my first surprise. The youth hostel (EUR 14 a night; open until midnight; games annexe that closes at 18:00) is not only a logical starting point for the pilgrim route, but a yellow arrow is visibly painted on the pavement outside. Yet the nice woman behind the desk, when I asked her to frank my credencial, expressed puzzlement at the request and told me that the hostel didn't possess a rubber stamp. She'd never been asked, she said, for such a thing in the past. In conversation with other people around town, I was to find that this ignorance was general. Both the cathedral and the tourist office having closed before my 'bus arrived in town, and not being willing to hang around until 10:00 tomorrow when they reopened, I made my way to the central police station about ten minutes' walk away and explained my predicament to the officers at the door. They too had never heard of the pilgrimage route or the practice of stamping credencials, but they grasped the concept quickly enough. When they re-emerged from the office, my booklet bore the imprint of the Escuadra de Trânsito of the Comando da Polícia de Segurança Publíca to prove that I had indeed been in Viseu.

All well and good, and I was and am very grateful to them. But I couldn't help noticing that other than the distance-marker in the cathedral square, and the yellow arrows proceeding therefrom, there's nothing I can see in this city to indicate any connection with, or awareness of, the Caminho de Santiago. Everyone with whom I spoke, from waitresses to shopkeepers, disclaimed any knowledge of it. Nor was the usual gimcrack rubbish on sale in even the smallest northern Spanish towns—arrow-emblazoned T-shirts, scallop-shell refrigerator magnets et hoc genus omne—anywhere in evidence.

We'll see how things go. But it's starting to become clear that I shouldn't expect a great deal of hand-holding on this particular trip.

 

[peregrina2000]

Hi, Aurigny,
I've moved your thread to the Interior sub-forum. There is so little activity there, I think it's important to make sure that the few posts we do have are easy for other intrepid pilgrims to find!

What you describe is the same experience I had in 2008 walking from Lisbon. The way was marked, more or less (by the Gallego Association, though, because the two Portuguese Camino Associations were not yet in existence) but no one knew anything about it. I remember getting a stamp in post offices, in the sailing association on the Tejo, in an airplane museum, etc. In fact, it became a kind of a fun quest.

Fingers crossed that you are able to find you way and able to enjoy what looks like a beautiful route! There is a group of us who are eager to hear back from you if you have time to write while walking. And in case of need, don't discount the possibility that you might get some real time help from our little band of Interior junkies if you are in a pinch!
Bom caminho, Laurie

 

[Aurigny]

Saturday, July 29 [these will be posted a few days in arrears: I take contemporaneous notes, but am too exhausted to turn them into legible text except on the rare occasions I'm still awake in the evenings].

Well, I asked for it, and it very much appears that I have got it.

One of the things that drew me to the Interior, other than the fact that I stood a decent chance of completing it in the time allowed, was the possibility of taking the route less travelled. I had the Portugués Central almost entirely to myself when I walked it this winter, and greatly enjoyed the experience. The CPI seemed to be in the same vein, only more so.

And indeed it has lived up to that billing. I'd gathered from the various pilgrim reports that the route is generally well waymarked, some hiccups associated with getting out of town notwithstanding. At first that seemed to be the case. Although the initial direction of departure is to the east—a bit of a pain, inasmuch as I was leaving at first light and the rising sun was blasting in my face and obscuring my vision the entire time—a sufficiency of yellow arrows was to be found. It's necessary to search for them at every junction: instead of being at eye-level as on the Francés, they tend to be painted on the ground or close to it, in inconspicuous places. Still, for the first twenty minutes or so all was well. Then it started to get complicated. At a large roundabout on the northside of town, an arrow pointed up a hilly suburban street. I followed it, and that was the last one I was to see for quite a while. Another roundabout at the top offered several possibilities, only one of which was clearly wrong, as it led southward back to the centre of Viseu. Fortunately an open café was conveniently to hand, and reasoning that they must see many confused pilgrims seeking directions, I made my way there.

Not a bit of it. Nobody there had heard of any pilgrim trail to Santiago. They all wanted to send me along the street back to the centre of Viseu, so that I could take the road route to Santiago, via the bypass. (I was to find this to be the universal response of everybody I asked for guidance.) Lacking better options, therefore, I decided to point myself northwards and hope to pick up the trail later on. A street encouragingly naned Avenida Caminhos de Santiago seemed a reasonable bet and, from the sun, oriented in more or less the right direction, so I set off that way.

And the bet paid off, more or less. The road led up to the town crematorium, then devolved into a farmer's cart-track. I followed it round a bend to the left; descended steeply, covering myself up to the ankles in red dust in the process; and finished up on a small access road parallel to a significant-looking two-lane highway. After less than a kilometre, a yellow arrow abruptly reappeared.

This was to be the frustrating pattern to the day. More yellow arrows, leading me through a pleasant wooded area, but disgorging me at a T-junction in front of the municipal airport with no indication of where to proceed next. Going inside the terminal building, I made enquiries, but you've already guessed the response I received. The pleasant woman at the desk went to consult the air traffic controller on duty; both of them turned to Google to read up on the Caminho de Santiago, which they found fascinating; but neither was able to provide anything by way of advice. The best they could offer me was a road that, they promised, would eventually point north. As indeed it did. (If you do find yourself at the airport, as I did, you want to take the left turn, heading west, with the boundary fence on your right cheek. If you pass an F-86 Super Sabre mounted on a pole as a gate guardian, you're heading the wrong way.)

This northward road soon brought me to another set of yellow arrows along a cobblestoned back-route that got progressively worse. Five kilometres or so in, the state of the overgrowth impeding and ultimately blocking the path forced me to find a large stick with which to try to push, or if necessary slash, my way through. Clearly nobody had been down this part of the Caminho, at any rate, for many weeks. If you're the kind of pilgrim who likes to wear shorts, you might want to think twice about that plan on the CPI. In addition to the ferns and brambles bestrewing the route, there's an especially nasty kind of low green shrub festooned with short but needle-sharp thorns that effortlessly penetrate cloth and nip at one's ankles like a particularly vindictive Chihuahua. In the end I had to put on my rainproof trousers (a humorous spectacle, no doubt, in 28C weather) to make my way through, more or less unscathed.

By way of compensation, the countryside was extremely pretty, and the density of the trees made for pleasant shade on what was otherwise a hot day. It was about noon when I pulled into the village of Almargem, 17 km from my starting-point and less than half the distance to my intended night-stop, the albergue at Ribolhos, south of Castro Daire. However, I now seemed to have established myself properly on the trail, so I was hoping to make much better time on the second leg.

God love my innocence. After stopping on one of the wayside benches for a hefty swig from my water bottle, I was joined by a local worthy who was probably already well advanced in years in the days when Salazar was still teaching economics at college. Reasoning that he would be in a position to set my steps right, I accepted his assurance that the way to Ribolhos was straight through the town and out the other side. And thereby commenced another of my many mistakes. At first all seemed well. I bowled along a narrow but respectable asphalted road that ran, if not straight as an arrow, then close enough for government work. I was a little surprised when I passed through a small village called Várzea that didn't appear on my map, but there again, neither did a lot of the places I'd seen. Continuing ahead, I skirted a small but pretty reservoir, at which point the tarmac ran out and I started up a steep woodland trail. By now I was becoming a little concerned about the length of time since I'd last seen a yellow arrow. The sun was directly overhead, so I was getting no navigational information there. In short, I was transitioning from the status known to pilots as "temporarily unaware of one's position" to the more unambiguous "bloody well lost."

Reaching the top of this junior mountain confirmed for me that the latter was indeed the case, because the now quite miserable trail I had been following abruptly came to an end. The view from up there was magnificent in every direction except the one I had come, but signs of civilisation were nowhere to be seen.

I was told years ago by a member of a Swiss Alpine rescue team that the people who live when lost in the outdoors are the ones who retrace their steps, whereas the ones who die are those who try to mend their course. I was hardly in a life-threatening situation, being only a couple of hours from my last known position, but it seemed good advice nonetheless, so I about-turned. After an hour or so of plodding downhill, the sun started shining directly on my face, confirming that all that time I'd been headed east when I thought myself to be going north. Which was nice to know, but at that stage of the afternoon confirmation of the fact was buttering very few of my parsnips.

Safely if sourly back in Almargem, I conducted a brief post-mortem into the cause of the débâcle. It transpired that instead of continuing through the village as I had been advised, I ought to have turned left in the town square and headed uphill past the albergue (which, GB, now bears a clear identifying sign, containing all the numbers one needs to extract José, the local barman and keyholder). There is indeed an arrow indicating that fact; infuriatingly, you only see it after you've made the correct turn and started uphill, confirming your choice in retrospect, as it were. Nothing on the street on the way into town gives any hint that you're supposed to deviate from the main drag.

That left me contemplating what should happen next. On the one hand, it was now 16:30, so the temptation to fish out José and his magic key was a powerful one. On the other, I don't have unlimited time for this trip, and 17 km for a first day would leave a lot of ground to be made up later on. So, rightly or wrongly, I plunged ahead. If any further complications were to arise from this point onwards, I would be out of ideas.

Fortunately they didn't. The trail varied between forests, cobblestones, and a number of small villages in which not a living soul was to be seen—although their dogs certainly were. But I was finally making good time, even though the sun was rapidly setting. In the end I was disgorged, just about sundown, past the village of Grijô, onto the Nacional 2, the main north-south road in these parts, and only a kilometre south of Ribolhos.

Thus much for the good news. The bad news was that after a 40 km hike in the heat of the day, to say nothing of probably another 15 km spent floundering around in the hill country to the east of Almargem, I was (i) completely shattered; and (ii) arriving far too late to contemplate hauling anyone out to let me into the Ribolhos albergue. For a while I was actively considering the possibility of crawling into the nearest field and taking my chances under the hedge. But after only an additional couple of hundred metres, rescue from this unattractive prospect came in the form of a 'bus shelter on the western side of the N2, featuring a long plank bench seat. Clearly no one else would require it at this hour of the night, which was, moreover, a clear and balmy one. I kicked off my shoes; wrapped myself up in my waterproof jacket; put my head on my backpack, which has served me well as a pillow in the past; and was out like a light in three minutes.

 

[onwayhome]

Phew! An epic day's walking. Hope you had a good night in that bus shelter and tracked down a large and delicious breakfast in the morning.

 

[peregrina2000]

Yikes, this is quite a story. This is exactly why I carry a GPS when I walk on solitary caminos. I just wouldn't have been able to do what you did, Aurigny. I hope things get better for you -- if you have any pictures to post, I'd love to see them. Bom caminho, Laurie

 

[KinkyOne]

Really enjoyed your posts @Aurigny
Very informative but also much more than just a "guidance". Maybe even reminds me of some of my "adventures"

Keep on and take care!

 

[Aurigny]

This is exactly why I carry a GPS when I walk on solitary caminos.

It may have helped to a degree, L. At any rate it would have prevented me from putting in quite so many kilometres in the wrong direction. And yet the very small number of other pilgrims I've encountered here have it, and it's not proving to be as much assistance to them as you might think. The difficulty is that the digital cartography of the cart-tracks and back lanes that make up so much of the route is not sufficiently accurate or detailed for the map function to be of much use. If you want to stick to the paved roads, it'll tell you where to go all right. But if you want to stick to the paved roads, the paper map I've got in my backpack is quite adequate for that purpose also.

I haven't been taking too many pictures, but sometime in the next day or two I'll post what I've got. It's pretty countryside, that's for sure.

 

[Aurigny]

Sunday, July 30

A Swedish woman I encountered at dinner at a night-stop in Castrojeriz and who was in the midst of her fifth journey to SdC said to the rest of us present, who were all on our first, that going on another Camino is like having another baby. The only reason you do it again is because you've forgotten how much it hurt the previous time.

For obvious reasons, I'll never be able to confirm or deny that particular proposition. But if it holds good, I'd offer an addendum. You can never say whether the next one will be easy or hard; you can only say what the last one was like. After only two days, I can state with authority that not a great deal about my former Caminos is much preparation for, or even particularly relevant to, this one. But yes, it hurts quite enough for my liking, and I'm only forty-eight hours in.

Most of my discomfort is, to be sure, self-inflicted. My own navigational errors landed me on a brown-painted bench, although when I stretched myself along it, no feather bed ever felt half as good. Still, this had not been part of my plans. While as a Catholic I'm all for mortification of the flesh within reason, and in my youth had spent a fair number of nights dossing down in the outdoors as a consequence of a lack of funds, forward planning, or both, turning this pilgrimage into a Portuguese version of Down and Out in Paris and London had never been my intention. Where albergues were available, I proposed to stay in them; where they weren't, I intended to encourage the proprietors of the local hotel and B&B sectors. At this stage of my life, to paraphrase a character in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, crashing out in a 'bus shelter is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity.

That said, I passed a less uncomfortable night than one might imagine. Granted, I was exhausted beyond description and would probably have slept through almost anything, but nobody disturbed me and if there was much night-time traffic along the N2, I was too far gone to be aware of it. I woke only once, around 02:00 when I nearly tumbled off the bench, but otherwise was comatose until roused by the sun shining full in my face. Even if I didn't plan things this way, therefore, I can't be said to have been much the worse for my night's misadventure.

Indeed, in some respects I was luckier than I deserve. Continuing northward along the N2, I saw a large hotel a few hundred metres off to the west (I might have stayed there if I'd known about it) and made a short deviation. The considerate people there charged me a modest sum for their excellent breakfast buffet, with lots of hot as well as cold items, and I was also able to use their facilities for a quick wash and brush-up. This was the first food I've had since beginning the pilgrimage: yesterday, although I drank prodigious quantities of water, I had not the least interest in eating. In all truth, I've little more today.

My planned night-stop this time around was the town of Lamego, around 42 km from where I was starting. In contrast to yesterday, the "starting" part at least was easily accomplished. Both the road sign to Ribolhos and the arrows put you on the right path quite quickly, and I was soon passing the albergue at which I'd have been glad to stay if I'd been on time. It's the tiniest thing I've ever seen, resembling nothing so much as a walk-in storage closet attached to the single-storey primary school (and, for all I know, that may well have been its previous incarnation). Thereafter the trail snakes back and forth across the N2. A couple of hours after starting, you get to scramble across a large river, the Pavia, as the ancients did: that is to say, hopping from rock to rock at a ford. It's good fun, but a word to the wise: you want your backpack in your hand while you do this, not on your back. The water is low this year thanks to the extremely arid winter and spring, but even if you're a strong swimmer (as, God knows, I am not), being able to keep afloat with a heavy and sodden pack dragging you down might tax the abilities of Gertrude Ederle.

On the other side of the large town of Castro Daire, the trail was steadily though not disastrously uphill. From being hill country reminiscent of the area around Mos on the Portugués Central, it began to look more and more like a scene from a Hollywood Western of the 1930s: rocks, plenty of scrub and quite a few tall cactus plants. Being now pretty elevated, whatever breezes I encountered were cool and fresh—a very welcome thing, given the noontime heat. But the problem of overgrowth I had encountered the previous day soon presented itself again, in a still more aggravated and aggravating form. Happily I did not get lost this time, although it was a close-run thing. Several times I was to catch the smallest glimpse of yellow out of the corner of my eye and, on beating away the clump of ferns or whatever, to find an excellent way-marker obscured beneath. As a service to my fellow peregino/a I dutifully perpetrated herbicide in all directions whenever I came across one of these, but I wouldn't care to bet very much on these markers still being visible two or three weeks from now. Up in the mountains, moreover, if you miss one of them and continue onward, you're finished. You won't be seeing any more to put you on the right path again.

Just as problematical was the extent to which the foliage was now blocking the way. South of the small village of Moura Morta, the brambles completely covered the trail not just below, but above. For a stretch of thirty or forty metres, the only way through is by wriggling on one's knees and elbows through a kind of tunnel of thorns whose roof was about 50 cm off the ground, dragging one's backpack along behind one. This was very nearly a breaking point for me. I thought about hacking my way eastward to the main road and continuing my journey that way, and indeed would have done so if it hadn't meant retracing my steps for many kilometres. After having added so substantially to my journey the previous day, the idea of that was intolerable to me. If I'd been asked to do this kind of boot-camp obstacle course on a regular basis, though, the CPI would have seen me no more.

I'm glad to say that it didn't. There was only one other stretch the rest of the day that approached this one in terms of degree of difficulty. Even so, I was something of a wet dishrag when I breasted the rise into Moura Morta. At the little chapel that greets one at the top (not to be confused with the church itself, which is in the village half a kilometre away), I was pleased to see that some thoughtful soul had left a 1.75 litre Coke bottle filled with fresh water. I didn't need it, but that might be a life-saver to some distressed wayfarer some day. Perhaps even literally.

My various exertions, and the less than satisfactory nature of my previous night's sleep, though, were beginning to tell on me. On the north side of Moura Morta, back in scrubland affording very little cover, I was stumbling over both the stones and myself. I'd hoped to make Lamego in time for Mass at 18:30, but it was now obvious that there was not the slightest chance of that happening. Before I did myself more of a mischief, I found a shaded spot and lay down on the ground. Black ants were scurrying about, but I no longer cared. Once again I immediately slept.

The couple of hours' siesta I had did me a lot of good, even though my mouth tasted like the bottom of a parrot's cage when I awoke. Continuing downhill, I came across the village of Mézio, where there was a bar. Using its internet connection, I booked a bed in a residencial in Lamego, being determined not to be caught out two nights in a row.

The rest of the day was uneventful if exhausting. I still had a long way to go, but the greater part of it was downhill, assisting me greatly. Mindful of GB's difficulties a couple of years ago, I joined the N2 for the final approach into Lamego. Indeed, the presence of the odd yellow arrow on various lamp-posts seems to indicate that this is the "official" route (though, as on the Francés, there may be more than one of these for all I know). At any rate, though it was after 21:00 when I arrived, at least I knew that a bed (albeit a pricey one—accommodation in these parts isn't cheap) would be waiting for me.

 

[Anniesantiago]

I'm Portuguese so I can say this.

NEVER ask a Portuguese person from Portugal directions.
They would rather DIE than say 'I don't know."
They will point this way and that way and lead you on a goose chase, almost always, rather than say they don't know.
It's just their nature.
:::cackling:::

If you are old enough to remember, think of Fonzi trying to say "Sorry."

 

[epona2011]

I just love what you've written and how you write. Reminds me a lot of Robert MacFarlane. Looking forward to next installment.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

Oh, oh oh! @Aurigny your CPI sounds a lot more ‘overgrown’ than when I did it.
I’m sorry my notes are not more detailed. It is certainly great to have your additional info for those wishing to do this camino in the furure. It definitely will never get as busy as the other Portuguese routes
I think I can say that with confidence.
Stay safe and enjoy the upcoming days of ‘hills’. All worth it for the scenery. Cheers, Grace

 

[solotraveller]

I'm Portuguese so I can say this.

NEVER ask a Portuguese person from Portugal directions.
They would rather DIE than say 'I don't know."
They will point this way and that way and lead you on a goose chase, almost always, rather than say they don't know.
It's just their nature.
:::cackling:::

If you are old enough to remember, think of Fonzi trying to say "Sorry."

as it happened - I did Portuguese Interior last September - that was an experience) I wouldto like say if it wasn't for Portuguese people I've met and asked for right direction.. I'd have added to my Camino walking God knows how many extra kms (I do speak Portuguese fluently BTW)

 

[Aurigny]

Don't think of apologising for one moment about the notes, Grace. They've helped me a lot, and saved me from still further disasters once or twice. I think, though, that the CPI is in some respects like the Sahara. The wind blows; the sand shifts; and what had been a clear landmark yesterday is all but unrecognisable today.

The extent of overgrowth on some of these sections is extraordinary, though. I'll have more to say about that, and its implications, in a later post.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

Glad that they are a little help ! I’ll dig out my notebook later today and see if there is anything else I can help with. Please PM me if you are stuck. Do you use Whatsapp (I’ll PM you)

 

[Aurigny]

Intermission: Some preliminary observations, on the basis of all of two days's hiking:-

The first is that my approach to the CPI thus far has been completely unrealistic. In my previous Caminos, I was a 35-40 km-a day-man. Unless you are disgustingly fit or have had the benefit of Special Forces training, that's a foolishly ambitious figure for the CPI, or the bits of it I've seen, anyway. I've now had two straight fourteen-hour days out on this trail: a couple more of them will without question land me in the hospital. 20 km is, I'd say, an excellent rate of progress for this route; 25 km might be pushing it. If you're contemplating the CPI, using a 50% loading to reflect the degree of difficulty (that is to say, 1 km here will require as much effort as 1.5 km on the Francés) is the minimum required by prudence. On some stretches you might want to double it.

The second is that there is no possibility whatever of successfully negotiating your way to your daily destination, far less to Santiago, on the basis of the yellow arrows alone. Unlike on the well-travelled routes, where you can, in effect, switch off your brain and admire the countryside, the waymarking on the lower reaches of the CPI is wholly inadequate to its professed purpose: getting the pilgrim from A to B. From time to time it's sufficient; even good. But then, just when you've learned to rely on it, it disappears. More often than not out in the sticks, where there's nobody to ask for directions (even taking into consideration Anniesantiago's words of warning above). Previously, I viewed yellow arrows as a reassuring presence. Over the last couple of days, I've learned to regard them with apprehension, knowing that they're all too likely to lead me somewhere remote from which I'm going to have to find my way out on my own. I'm neither the most nor the least skilled cross-country navigator, but I'm getting lost -- and not trivially lost either -- a couple of times a day. It adds an undercurrent of low-level anxiety that I had not expected.

The third is that if you don't know where you are at times, neither will anyone who might be looking for you. This is something to bear seriously in mind. Parts of these trails are reasonably well travelled, although it's apparent from the spoor left by those who have been along it that it's the locals rather than the pilgrims who are keeping it open (i.e. one comes across discharged shotgun cartridges and Portuguese cigarette packets instead of the ubiquitous clumps of white tissue paper one sees elsewhere—and from which this route is mercifully free). It's quite clear, though, that nobody has been down other sections for several weeks at least. Which means, in turn, that an immobilising accident could quickly turn very problematical indeed.

Lastly, if you're out at this time of year, you're going to need water—lots of it. Fountains with potable supplies are few and far between. I'm a tallish and slender individual, and I've never felt the need for too much in the way of hydration. I'd say, though, at the rate the stuff has been flowing out of me (and via my skin rather than the more conventional route) that half a litre an hour is an irreducible minimum when one is hiking up and down small mountains in thirty-degree-plus weather. (That's the high eighties in old money). It would be imprudent to carry any less than a four-hour supply, because that's how long it's going to take on some stretches before you get to replenish your bottles. And an extra couple of litres adds quite a lot of weight in itself to what is probably an already heavy backpack.

 

[solotraveller]

Yah this is not a perfect time of the year to go onCamino Interior - too hot 4 climbs and 4 descents per day were hard enough even in September considering that I did 3 times 40 km per day on my Camino .. hold on and Bom Camino!

 

[peregrina2000]

It also sounds like there may have been an initial splash to present the CPI, with trails cleared and arrows aplenty, so @grace was a lucky peregrina. Without regular maintenance nice trails become overgrowth nightmares! Soldier on Aurigny! Buen camino, Laurie

 

[solotraveller]

On the leg Vidago-Chaves while going uphill in the pine forest the road is forking and there's an yellow arrow pointing left - do not take that direction, go to the right even if there's no arrow ... it will appear after a while
In two places I've seen arrows painted in wrong directon more to that - I followed them ... so it is useful to look up a map sometimes )
Bom Caminho

 

[Aurigny]

Monday, July 31

Following my self-indulging ordinance to take it easier in future, I decided that today I would confine myself to a mere ramble down the road to enable myself to rest up and, especially, to let my feet – bruised and weary after close to a hundred kilometres of scrambling over a series of obstacles during the first two days – have a chance of recovery. Consulting GB's notes, the adjacent town of Peso da Régua (known to everyone around here merely as "Régua"), just 12 km down the road, seemed an ideal destination. I wasn't interested in cooling my heels for another day in attractive-but-expensive Lamego, and because my overnight stop there was fully booked for the following evening, I'd have had to look for new accommodation in any event. Régua, less than three hours away even at a snail's pace, would take me across the Douro River into Vila Real province and afford me a wholly specious sense of achievement.

Using GB's most helpful notes, slightly modified for the fact that I wasn't starting at the tourist office, I had little difficulty in putting myself on the right road out of town, the N-226. For the first time on this trip, the sun wasn't splitting the rocks. Some low stratus cloud kept the temperature pleasantly low and the ultra-violet index within tolerances, although I knew it would burn off later in the day.

There seem to be quite a lot of military bases in these parts, and I was passed by several waves of healthy-looking young men effortlessly maintaining a fast running pace while discussing whether Neymar was really going to sign with PSG. As they shot by, each group wished me a "bom Caminho," the first time on this trip that anyone has tagged me for what I am. This, I decided, augured well for the future.

Yellow arrows out of town were plentiful. I was soon taken eastward off the N-226 onto a residential street running more or less parallel, in a northerly direction. It's kitten season in Portugal, and several came out of their gardens to check out the stranger as he passed. I scratched behind many ears, and had the backs of my legs rubbed up against in return. We parted reluctantly, but on excellent terms.

The yellow arrows and I, however, quickly resumed our previous conflicted relationship. As the street continued northward and narrowed significantly, they emulated the late Douglas MacArthur. They didn't die; they just faded away. My practice in such circumstances is to continue in the last direction indicated until something else tells me to do otherwise. It is, I think, the strategy with the highest rate of return.

On this occasion the street went ever more steeply downhill, culminating in a sharp hairpin bend. Looking ahead, I could see that it ran under the A24 motorway, an expensive high-speed parallel of the N2, and down to what looked like a river. The A24 was shown on my map; the river wasn't; but I could make out a footbridge at the bottom leading across to the opposite bank.

Crossing the bridge, I was hoping, though on previous form hardly expecting, to pick up another arrow. Instead I found myself confronted with a trio of cart-tracks from which to choose. A steep escarpment, perhaps 400m high and heavily terraced for vines, loomed straight in front of me. It was consistent with my "last indicated direction" rule, but looked like a vineyard version of the north face of the Eiger. Nor was anything like so lung-popping an ascent mentioned in GB's notes, as it surely would have been. The turn to the right proceeded up the same slope at an oblique angle, but appeared to peter out close to the top. The one to the left, however, followed the opposite bank of the river and, moreover, was marked by the yellow-and-red two-bar symbol of an established hiking route. Reasoning that this one, at least, clearly went somewhere, I elected to follow it.

Whether it was the correct one or not–and I soon developed a strong suspicion that it wasn't—it might have been worth a detour in any event. After meandering along the riverbank, endless vines on endless terraces looming above me to my right, it brought me back via another bridge downstream and through a small wood. Emerging from there, it threaded its way through the terraces on the far side. This was the first time I'd ever been up-close-and-personal with a working vineyard, and I found it fascinating. The vines were practically doubled over with heavy clumps of grapes, crowded so close together in the bunch that they looked like a single large knobbly fruit. Stones that had obviously been displaced in the course of making the terraces were positioned so as to make a series of steps and dry stone walls: a kind of Tetris game in granite. From time to time, a peach tree, also fully in fruit, grew at the corners of these rows, its unharvested produce piled up thickly along the ground. Every square centimetre of highly unpromising soil seemed to have been dedicated to generating the maximum quantity of grapes, and to my untutored eyes appeared to be doing so to spectacular effect. I can't imagine the amount of manual labour it must have taken—over the course, surely, of centuries—to create a system like this.

Even on this side, though, the sheer verticality of the terrain was getting to me, and I was wondering whether I might have been better off scaling the initial ridge after all. Above me, though, I could see not one but two mountain villages, so I was confident of being able to pinpoint my location before very long. Thirty sweaty and thigh-trembling minutes later, I reached the access road; walked up to the main street; and asked an elderly woman where I was. She told me that I was in Figueira. This made everything clear, for, scanning my map, I had already wondered to myself whether that was a possibility. I had no idea why the yellow arrows out of Lamego should have taken me off the N-226 which, had I only stayed on it, would have set me infallibly on the right road to Régua. But because it had done so, I would then have needed to make a ninety-degree left turn at some point to keep heading in that general direction. No such turn having been indicated, I continued on; crossed the Balsemão and Varosa Rivers (rather than, as I had supposed, a single one twice); and was now due east of Lamego, slightly further from my destination than when I had started.

Well, my way was prettier. I saw that I would have little difficulty mending my course from this point, staying on narrow but picturesque paved roads via Valdigem and Fundo da Vila, even though I'd end up walking three sides of a square to get to Régua. I've no regrets for taking the long way round, which I very well might have done intentionally if I had been given it as a scenic option. The views truly were, as the Guide Michelin has it, vaut le voyage.

Nonetheless, here's another object-lesson in excessive faith in way-marking. I hadn't even left the precincts of Lamego before I was already heading off in the wrong direction. What was supposed to be Sunday's walk turned into an 18-km hike with a couple of mountains in the way—very nearly a full Brierley-day on the Francés.

It is rapidly being borne in upon me that I've been making a mistake in assuming that there is a single "authentic" CPI route, and that my task is to ferret it out, wherever it may be, and follow it religiously all the way to Santiago. The truth of the matter is that no such route currently exists, and perhaps none ever did. I'm not well up on the history of the Interior Camino, so I don't know whether any authoritative trail was blazed at some stage in the past, by somebody or some combination of somebodies qualified to do such a thing.

In the year of grace 2017, however, it hardly matters. The way-markers on the CPI, where they are to be found, may be indicative. For severely practical reasons, they can't be regarded as authoritative. They're not sufficiently present to deserve any such status. It's evident, then, that I need to start regarding this route as our mediaeval ancestors did. They knew from where they were starting. They knew where they needed to go. The precise direction they took to get there was largely up to them. As of tomorrow, that's the philosophy I'll be adopting as well.

 

[Anniesantiago]

as it happened - I did Portuguese Interior last September - that was an experience) I wouldto like say if it wasn't for Portuguese people I've met and asked for right direction.. I'd have added to my Camino walking God knows how many extra kms (I do speak Portuguese fluently BTW)

It was a joke

 

[caminka]

love reading about your adventures, aurigny! also highly appreciative, as this is on my next camino list. I really hope that people maintaining the route will do something about the brumbles, they do not go well with my linen dresses.

 

[Aurigny]

To be honest, C, you might obtain a nice sharp machete before you catch the 'bus from Porto to Viseu. Steel is a great deal cheaper than linen. I say this only partly in jest.

 

[Aurigny]

Tuesday, August 1

Today's was unquestionably my favourite outing thus far. Part of it was because of the attractiveness of the scenery; part was because, after spending the first few days of this pilgrimage in a haze of exhaustion, I was finally sufficiently rested to begin to take an intelligent interest in my surroundings. Even so, as fast as old problems are resolved, new ones appear to take their place. I hope I'll get to finish this trip, but at the moment it's far from a certainty that I will.

I can tell you little about Régua, because I spent almost all my time there sleeping. The approach is a reasonably attractive one, crossing the very broad Douro River via a wide wood-planked bridge. The town itself, on the north bank, didn't greatly impress me from the aesthetic and architectural standpoints. One thing that did was the number of wine tourists who are to be found around these parts. It seems that half of Western Europe spends part of its summers driving down here (often from amazingly long distances: I was seeing cars with number plates from the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland) and touring the local vignobles—staying at residences than run in excess of EUR 500 a night at the upper end for a single room. Every third shop in Régua seemed to be devoted to the sale of some gastronomic delight or other: wine, olive oil, honey, incredibly expensive vinegars, and the like.

This, for me, is richly ironic, inasmuch as since starting this trip four days ago, my appetite has essentially disappeared. Indeed I don't even want to drink anything except plain water, and that in very large quantities. Something as simple as freshly squeezed orange juice now seems to be too cloying and syrupy to be palatable. Of course I do have to eat. I don't know how many calories I'm burning in the mountains each day, but it's quite a few thousands. I make it a point at least to eat dinner in the evening. But I have to choke it down, and if given the option would prefer to skip it altogether. I'm not quite sure what's causing this. It can't be an illness, as I feel perfectly fine otherwise.

In every respect except one. Those first two days in the mountains, it's now clear, impacted me more than I realised. The bones in my feet—under both the ball and the heel—are badly bruised, the result of too much pounding over rough surfaces, and remind me of it every time I take a step. I seem to be carrying some kind of low ankle strain (happily, not sprain) on both sides, and the muscle above my left knee tries to give way on me every so often. Lastly, unusual though it is for me, I'm becoming extremely badly blistered. The situation hasn't yet turned critical. Previously, in the course of some of my very long walks, I've been as badly banged up; sometimes worse; and still managed to complete the job. It's worryingly early, though, for such a catalogue of ailments to manifest itself. I don't have much room for manoeuvre should anything else go wrong.

On the other hand, if I needed a boost to my morale—and I probably did—this was a good day for it. Firstly, and almost miraculously, I didn't get lost once. Part of that is the result of my using the Nacional 2, the road that parallels this trail all the way to the Spanish frontier, as my security blanket. If I didn't like the look of where I was going, I took the first little road I found westward until I hit the N2; continued north for a couple of kilometres; and then usually had an opportunity to pick up the arrows again. This is something I ought to have been doing since the day I started.

Secondly, the terrain today was more attractive than anything I've yet seen in Portugal. The mountains here are not intimidatingly high, but they are intimidatingly numerous. Whenever you reach the top of one, you can see a dozen more standing in your way. Just the same, the views have been magnificent, aided by that kind of gin-clear air that lets you see forever.

The day's hike starts out slowly. You take the main road out of town and begin what will be a long, sustained climb as far as the small town of St Marta. There it abruptly inverts itself, and you have to give back all the height you gained. But it's worth it anyway, because St Marta is a pleasant little place. I had my morning coffee at the first bar I saw, encouraged by the fact that it displayed a scallop shell on its exterior. A very nice coffee it was too.

But the real delight of the day comes when you strike off to the east, along a mixture of winding but narrow asphalted roads and unpaved trails. Each has its charm. The climbs and descents become much steeper, but you're now travelling through serious wine country, and learning all sorts of things you mightn't have previously known (were you aware that green grapes, red grapes and black grapes all start life as green ones? I confess I wasn't). From the tops of the mountains, though, the amazingly intricate patterns of the terracing reveal themselves in their full glory, looking like brushstrokes in an Impressionist painting. If you've ever been to the tea plantations in south Asia—the hill country above Sylhet, for example—you'll see something similar, but here, because it's vines rather than tea (which grows bushily in all directions) the lines are much more sweeping and sharply defined. Visually it's one of the most remarkable and pleasing things I've seen, certainly in Europe and perhaps anywhere.

I was also amused, and slightly gratified, by the number of people grinding up these tiny roads in their cars who stopped to offer me a lift. Some seemed a little perplexed when I refused, even after I explained why, but it was a very heartening demonstration of generosity and trust nonetheless.

When one gets past the village of Bertelo, west of the N2, the trail becomes somewhat woodier and less visually arresting, but still very attractive, although one last energetic climb for the day is in the offing. There is, I believe, an albergue in Assento—I saw the sign for it, though I managed somehow to miss not only it but the entire village to which it belongs— but I was pressing on to Vila Real, close to 30 km from my starting point. If I'm to complete the trip, that's about the daily average I'll need to maintain. If necessary, though, I can probably increase my pace once I'm in the flatter country on the Spanish side of the frontier.

Vila Real is a much more attractive town—a small city, really—than Régua. Not wishing to take my chances, I had booked a bed at the Douro Village Hostel near the historic centre. The people there were nice, but I can't say I was massively impressed by their operation. This is one of the new breed of "boutique hostels" that cost nearly as much as a basic hotel room in these parts—EUR 23 for a bed in a six-bunk room. For this you get sheets (but no towel! EUR 2 extra), an ornamental garden with deck chairs (but no washing machine!) and a lockable drawer (but nowhere to put your backpack, unless you take it to bed with you!). Somehow it seemed as though they had expensively avoided all the things that hard-core hikers, to say nothing of weary pilgrims, would be likely to find most useful on their journey. At least the wi-fi signal was good.

So, too, was the dinner I ate. After all that worrying about my appetite, the place to which the hostel referred me—Restaurante 22, only 300m down the same street—found a way of rekindling it. If you find yourself in Vila Real, eat there. You can thank me later.

 

[JohnnieWalker]

23 euros for bed only in a 6 bed dorm?

These are wonderful posts. Thank you very much. Ánimo!

 

[KaridadP]

Phew! An epic day's walking. Hope you had a good night in that bus shelter and tracked down a large and delicious breakfast in the morning.

I am reading your comments with great interest since I start the CPI August 28th.
Here is my start-up blog.
https://www.weebly.com/editor/main.php

I may include some of your comments, if you don't mind, since this is still a route in need of education and guidance. Aurelio Simones has been an invaluable aid to my own planning.

Will be checking in every day and wish you the biggest BON CAMINHO!
K

 

[JCLima]

(...) I was seeing cars with number plates from the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland) (...)

That can be easily explained by Portuguese emigrants coming to spend their vacation in Portugal with their family. Every year, in August, Portugal is "invaded" by cars with Swiss, French, etc. plates.

Btw, this thread is making me want to do the CPI...

 

[Aurigny]

Wednesday, August 2

The way-marking on the road into Vila Real—from a couple of kilometres south, anyway—is excellent. On the way out, for my shortish (27 km) leg to Parada, it's miserable, thereby providing a microcosm of the route as a whole thus far. Happily, it's very difficult to get off track. Any street running east or northeast will quickly bring you to the N2, the main road out of town, and from there onward it's a straighforward and uncomplicated run. One stays on the shoulder of the N2, dodging traffic, for quite a while, and then joins a succession of trails that weave back and forth across it, before definitively settling down on the eastern side. The countryside lacks the spectacular visuals of yesterday, but the trails are often shady and cool, a great blessing on what was otherwise another extremely hot day.

Bearing in mind GB's difficulties in negotiating the last stage of today's leg, I elected to stay on the N2 for the last few kilometres, from Vila Chã northwards, which makes the navigation ridiculously easy. You simply take the right-hand turn, signposted "Parada," immediately after the Girassol restaurant. Such a procedure also made it possible for me to drop in at the BP petrol station, about 500m before the turn, to stock up on cold drinks.

The directions provided by GB make finding the albergue easy (although those are conifers rather than poplars in front of the building: and there are three of them, not two. Regardless, they're the tallest trees by far in the village). I was pleased to find that (i) some other pilgrims, a trio of young Portuguese people who had started in Viseu the same day I did, were also staying; and that (ii) they had already summoned Senhora Adelaide, the hospitelera, on their mobile telephones, making it unnecessary for me to recapitulate the conversation I'd had with her the previous afternoon. My Portuguese (appalling) is just a hairsbreadth better than her English, French, German or Italian (nonexistent). For all that, we did manage to communicate well enough when it came down to it. With sufficient mutual patience, all things are possible.

The Portuguese trio and I had enough linguistic competencies in common, however, for us to be able to talk quite freely. They were as pleased to see me as I was them, having found the going over the past four days to be both difficult and lonely. The feet of the two young men were in shocking condition, although they were all travelling with medical kits of which a professional could be proud. The young woman was faring much better. All three wanted to know why I seemed to be managing so well. I'm just at that awkward age where I don't know whether to be insulted or flattered by such a question. At all events, I prudently refrained from showing them my own feet. (One of the Watergate conspirators, Gordon Liddy, used to impress people at Washington cocktail parties by holding his bare hand in the flame of a cigarette lighter for dozens of seconds at a time. When someone asked him, "What's the trick?" he replied: "The trick is not minding.")

There isn't a tremendous amount to do in Parada. A small stone church is to be found there, but as is typical of all Iberia, it was tightly locked up against the appalling possibility that somebody might use it for worship or prayer. The centrepiece of the town is one of those communal washing pools—the square-shaped things with the stone ledge sloping down at an angle on each side. One dunks one's clothes in the water; lays them out on the ledge; squirts liquid detergent over them; and lays into them with a scrubbing brush. The women thus engaged (from all I've seen in Portugal, this is an exclusively feminine activity) kindly made room for me, and appeared amused either by the limitations of my technique or by my sotto voce rendition of "She Was Poor, But She Was Honest" while I was getting mediaeval with the laundry.

This is not the place for a sociological disquisition on consumption patterns, but on both my previous trip to Portugal and the current one, I've been struck by the amount of hand-washing that goes on in the country districts—and not just by members of the older generation. Admittedly this is not a wealthy country, and Parada in particular is not the most affluent part of it, but most of the houses in this village have satellite dishes and some quite nice cars are parked in the streets. I didn't see anybody, old or young, without a smartphone, which doesn't come cheaply. A basic washing machine, on the other hand, can be had for less than EUR 250. Yet people seem to prefer to pound away at their washing in the manner familiar to my grandmother. To judge from what I see hanging on the clothes lines, the results do not justify the effort expended—even an eco-wash on the cold cycle results in cleaner laundry—nor can the scrubbing-brush treatment do much for the longevity of the clothes in question.

Parada is a place for people-watching. A bunch of elderly gents in the tiny town square were playing what looked to be a local version of bridge in which the lowest-value cards seemed to be trumps. At one corner, unidentified by any sign, a microscopic bar is to be seen. Going in, I found it occupied by two more elderly gentlemen, ignoring and being ignored by all, and three teenage girls who glanced up from their telephones only to scowl at the intrusion of the newcomer. The patronne greeted me, to my surprise, in respectable French, for some reason mistaking me for a member of that tribe. But she sold me a cold Coke, and courteously invited me to enjoy it in the shade outside. There I stayed until the shadows lengthened, and I went back to the albergue to check on the progress of my drying clothes. On the way up, I passed one of the teenagers from the bar being smacked vigorously on the back of the head by a voluble and agitated older woman, obviously her mother, before the latter thrust her into the rear seat of a car with the brusqueness of a police officer making an arrest on one of those American reality shows. The insouciance with which the victim bore this treatment led me to believe that such a scene was not an uncommon occurrence in that particular family.

After that moment of excitement, there was nothing to do except to retrace my steps down to the Girassol restaurant, the only game in town (or, to be strictly accurate, some way outside it), for dinner. I've had good luck with Portuguese country restaurants, and this one is no exception. Mine host is a taciturn sort—a single raised eyebrow for him is a soliloquy—but he keeps a clean and attractive establishment and his wife, who does the cooking, sends out an excellent meal. Well-nourished, I made my way back to the albergue under a sky full of stars, to find that the Portuguese pilgrims had already gone to bed. I soon followed them.

 

[peregrina2000]

Love your posts, Aurigny, and please don't stop the "sociological disquisitions," they are so interesting!!

 

[Aurigny]

Second intermission

One learns a lot about the state of the pilgrim economy, so to speak, from albergue registers. The one at Parada provides a glimpse of the current health of the CPI. Since the beginning of this year (the place is open all twelve months), about sixty people have stayed here—but only four in the past five weeks. The month of May is the peak season; nobody showed up before St Patrick's Day. More than two-thirds of the visitors are Portuguese, the majority of them having begun their trek either at Viseu or at Vila Real. A handful were not on the Caminho as such, but were heading south towards Fátima. A few even had no connection with pilgrimages of any kind. I met one of them today as she was departing, a young French girl who was taking a year off to travel Europe on foot and was on her way to the Algarve. The hospitalera clearly didn't see this as a problem and, given the extent of this facility's under-use, I daresay it isn't.

Still, the story it tells of the CPI is not an encouraging one. Although by no means everyone on the trail will necessarily pitch up here—there are other sources of accommodation, notably at Vila Pouca de Aguilar—not so many albergues or albergue-like places exist as alternatives around these parts. Parada is an attractive stopping option and, being located about 140 km from Viseu, should provide a good cross-section of those who are likely to make it all the way to SdC (the easily-deterred will have dropped out before now). Yet, with the season for this particular route already close to its end, it will not break three figures in the number of visitors it sees for the entire year.

This serves as further confirmation of the picture I've been forming all along the route. The CPI is struggling, and largely failing, to demonstrate its viability. Far too few people know about it, in terms both of potential participants and, more seriously, of those who live and work along the way. In a number of districts, local enthusiasts have clearly put in some effort, especially by way of establishing or maintaining the trail-markers. It's notable, though, that these tend to be most profuse where they are least needed, being thickly congregated on the approaches to towns. From this one is led to infer that voluntary support for the CPI is primarily an urban phenomenon. Out in the countryside, however, markers are far too often faded to the point of virtual invisibility; overgrown by greenery; or were never there in the first place. As for the trail itself, it too is densely overgrown in spots, sometimes to the point where I've stood for three or four minutes trying to figure out through which of the living walls of chest-high thickets confronting me I'm supposed to plunge. No doubt it's easier going in the springtime, before the foliage really gets a chance to bloom, or in the late autumn when a lot of it has withered away and once again exposed the outline of the path beneath. I'm probably travelling at the worst possible time of year in that regard. The fact remains, though, that every other day I'm confronting sections that can only be negotiated at serious hazard to the integrity of my clothing, my epidermis, or both.

Pilgrimage routes are not equities, to be bought and sold on the Stock Exchange. If they were, though, I fancy I'd be liquidating my position in this one—and perhaps even looking to short it. To be sure, not every route need or ought to be like the Francés, where one's next source of café con leche is never more than a couple of kilometres away. Speaking personally, I greatly prefer the Caminho less travelled. But there is an irreducible minimum of infrastructure that must be provided to make any route viable, and the ability to know just where it is and where it goes is surely that. Without it, the pilgrims won't come, nor will those that do recommend others to follow in their footsteps. That seems to be pretty much where the CPI is at present.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

Oh @Aurigny , what an epic journey.
I’m loving your ‘turn of phrase’ and can picture myself in many of the spots you mention. It certainly has become a lot more overgrown since 2015, it seems.
I also had a love-hate relationship with the first week on the CPI. Those steep climbs followed by equally steep descents were a massive challenge.
The strange thing is that I neither suffered from blisters nor tendon/shin issues as I did on the ‘flat’ Levante this year.
I am sure you’ll find the going a lot easier now. Enjoy Chaves and then you’ll be on the Sanabres from Verin. Will you do the ‘lower’ leg through Allariz?
Keep on posting and take care with your feet and legs.
Bless, @gracethepilgrim

 

[peregrina2000]

I don't disagree with anything you say, but I wouldn't necessarily jump to the same conclusion you seem to be reaching. I think it's just too early to tell whether the CPI will "make it" or not. Going back to the first forum thread on the topic, the CPI was described as a "new caminho" in 2012 (meaning newly re-signed and re-discovered). That's only 8 years. I know I mentioned walking the central route from Lisbon for the first time in 2009. I had vague written instructions and there were some arrows off and on. But I got lost several times, found myself walking in circles several times, and occasionally alongside a road that I knew I was not supposed to be on. Fast forward less than 10 years and it's a totally different animal. But this is because of two important things, I think -- an active Camino Association (the Via Lusitana in the case of Lisbon) and mayors/town councils willing to take a gamble and promote the caminho. If those don't happen with the CPI, you are likely to be right about its demise. Those groups that hang in there and keep clearing the trail and remarking it every year in the face of tiny numbers are my heroes. Fingers crossed it will happen here.

I've walked a number of other "languishing caminos"-- Ruta del Ebro, Castellano-Aragones, Baztan, Olvidado, St. Jaume, Vadiniense (where I shredded my pants sliding down the maleza to get to a clearing) and I feel your pain. But just think of the bragging rights in a few years if the camino is bustling and you can remember it way back when.

 

[Aurigny]

It may be as you say, L. As a countryman of yours, Yogi Berra, is supposed to have said (but regrettably probably didn't), "Predictions are hard, especially about the future." My own credentials as a prognosticator are minimal; more correctly miserable. A good way of going broke is to bet on the sports teams I favour.

Yet in my own sphere of work, things are either getting better or they're getting worse. They rarely stay just the way they are. I see little evidence out here that things are getting better for the CPI. I may be misreading the statistical breakdown from the Pilgrims' Office at SdC, but if I'm interpreting it correctly, sixty-two people last year started at Viseu and made it all the way to the far end. That isn't a figure that's going to impress many Chambers of Commerce.

It's the old chicken-and-egg situation. If infrastructure isn't provided, people won't come; until people come, nobody wants to put their hands in their pockets to set the infrastructure in place. The CPI supporters have already taken a run at the problem, but they seem to have underestimated the level both of initial and of sustained investment that it takes to get one of these routes off the ground. That will make it more difficult for those coming along behind them to try to breathe new life into the project.

 

[Aurigny]

Will you do the ‘lower’ leg through Allariz?

Following your route, GB, but direct from Xinzo to Ourense. Time is a very real consideration for this trip -- I have a maximum of fourteen days in which to complete it.

 

[Aurigny]

Thursday, August 3

On summertime pilgrimages I'm up before the cows. Unless I'm able to break the back of the day's journey before, say, 10:00, things are apt to become unpleasant indeed for me. However, when I arose at 04:30 this morning, it was to an empty albergue. My Portuguese friends had departed even earlier, thereby earning my admiration. The only disadvantage to such a procedure is that one is much more likely to miss a crucial yellow arrow in the dark. All the more problematical if there aren't a huge number of yellow arrows to begin with.

As it transpired, getting out of Parada was quite uncomplicated. After closing up the albergue and depositing the keys in the letter-box by the gate, it was simply a matter of hiking down the hill to the disused railway station and turning right. The trail runs along the former rail-bed of the old narrow-gauge railway, now paved over and turned into a walking/cycling route. As the sun came up I was able to explore a couple of the abandoned stations, which are small time capsules of a now-disappeared Portugal. (Having seen the bathroom arrangements for passengers, there's quite a lot of the latter about which it's unnecessary to feel nostalgic.) In general, the navigation for today's leg was uncomplicated by the CPI's standards. The going was also a great deal easier, being either flat or gently downhill.

In fact, there was only one problem about which to worry, but that was and is a serious one. As the sun came up this morning, I found myself looking at a large brown plume in the eastern sky with the appearance of a junior mushroom cloud. I thought it might be a building on fire, but before long twin-engined yellow-and-red water-bomber aircraft began to pass over my head, making it clear that something much more disturbing was occurring.

I didn't have to puzzle for too long over what it might be. Some of you, I'm sure, will recall the dreadful wildfires of mid-June this year a bit to the south of here, down in Leiria province, that killed about seventy people. Things haven't got better since then, to put it mildly. This has been an exceptionally dry winter and spring across Western Europe—in Switzerland, where I've spent the past six months, it's been the second driest since records began about a century and a half ago. Surprisingly, a lot of growing is still going on. The grape crop of the Douro valley doesn't appear to have been adversely affected in the slightest, and I can testify to the rude health of the brambles, ferns etc. on the trail. But in the non-cultivated fields and the verges of the road, huge chunks of terrain no longer feature a single blade of living grass. Everything is scorched to hell and gone. Meanwhile the forests consist of blasted conifers and large numbers of eucalyptus trees, which from the fire-prevention standpoint are about as useful as a gallon of petrol and a match. They shed large quantities of long narrow leaves that, when dry, are as combustible as paper. They regularly shed their bark, which droops down off the trunk in large strips and is just as well adapted to helping along a blaze. And they're full of eucalyptus oil, which burns about as well as resin. Long story short, if a fire gets started—and the sun refracting through the broken glass of a beer bottle thrown from a car window is all it takes—there's very little in these parts that can stop it.

That's what's now happening, all around me. In addition to the big blaze north of Vila Pouca on which the water-bombers were working, I could see, as I came on top of a small rise, no fewer than four different wildfires underway within a twenty-five-kilometre radius. That's actually a little misleading: all four were ahead and to the west of me, with the wind blowing the conflagrations across my path from west to east.

Here's a new and most unwelcome complication. I'm spending a lot of time in a countryside that's primed to go up like a fire-cracker. I'm also downwind of those wildfires that are already under way. As I pulled into my night-stop of Vidago—where, I discovered, the tourist office is in the midst of moving to new premises on the south side and hence wouldn't be able to provide a sello—I had much to think about.

 

[Former member 49149]

Aurigny, is your day job writing? Thanks for your clear and lively account of your Camino thus far. Buen Camino!

 

[Kanga]

@Aurigny please take care and err on the side of caution. I urge you to stay put in a village or town if fires are in your path. I will be worrying about you until you get past this! We in Australia have the terrible example of runners in an organised marathon incinerated in a bush fire.

 

[Kanga]

And see this thread: https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/wildfires-coimbra-mealhada.49932/#post-543727

 

[Aurigny]

It's a definite concern, K. If one in this neck of the woods these days, knowing the wind direction and the location of the nearest major road is, I'd say, an imperative necessity in one's daily route planning for as long as the danger persists.

 

[Aurigny]

Friday, August 4

In the ordinary course of events, Vidago is a small but thriving town with a vigorous tourist trade. Its short but attractive main street, decorated with many flowers, is essentially a continuous double strip of café-bars, restaurants and hotels. Lots of foreigners were in evidence; on the streets, I was hearing nearly as much French spoken as Portuguese.

Yet on this occasion the mood was a little awkward, and nobody was quite sure how to behave. According to the locals, more than 200 firefighters, both full-timers and bombeiros voluntários, had been brought in from outside to wage war on the wildfires that were raging just north of the town and had already closed the N2 between there and Verín. In all the restaurants to which I went, it was impossible to get a seat. Waiters and waitresses were rushing around with enormous platters of churrasco in their hands, serving tables of twenty or thirty bombeiros at a time. As far as I could tell, Vidago was being used as a distribution centre rather than a home base. Vanloads of bombeiros arrived in town; were fed and watered; and then taken elsewhere. They didn't seem to be returning from the front, so to speak.

To add to the mixed feelings, last night was some kind of fiesta night for Vidago. Banners proclaiming the fact were strung across the main street, and the town was lit up after dark like a Christmas tree with the aid of those arches of electronic illuminations that you'll see spanning the principal thoroughfares of a lot of Portuguese small country towns. I don't know whether it was part of the celebrations, or simply because they happened to be there, that a squad of forty or so bombeiros in their red uniforms marched in procession along the road. Either way, it too was illuminating. From all appearances, to be a bombeiro is to enjoy a distinct status in society, and the marchers were taking full advantage of it. As, for that matter, were the spectators. Whenever a bombeiro saw a woman in the crowd he found attractive, he would emit a piercing wolf-whistle in her direction. More surprisingly, the women standing beside me were ear-splittingly reciprocating, accompanied by a great deal of jocular comment the precise content of which, no doubt fortunately, passed over my head. I know nothing about the rules of public decorum in Portuguesee society, but this was all a great deal more uninhibited than anything I've previously seen in this country. Moreover, about one in ten of the firefighters were in fact bombeiras, and I wondered how they were taking all this. As far as I could tell, they had no visible reaction whatever. One of them was having a quick drag on a cigarette as she paraded, but that was about it.

Having an early start, and observing that the party was about to turn raucous, I proceeded to bed in the modest residencial I'd booked the previous day (O Resineiro on the main street, attached to the restaurant of the same name; EUR 28; not bad), and was almost instantaneously asleep.


* * * *


Getting out of a town the size of Vidago this morning didn't seem to present much of a challenge. The procedure for making my way to Valverde, the next village on the route, according to the people at the residence, was to head uphill; pass the entrance to the stadium of the Vidago Football Club; and pick up the yellow marker from there. Leaving early in the morning, I followed this recommendation and located the arrow in question. In front of me were two streets: one more or less continuing straight in front of me; the other to the right. The marker arrow, nailed to a wooden telegraph pole, pointed precisely to the midpoint between them.

At this hour of the day there was nobody to ask. Mulling it over for a while, I arrived at the conclusion that if those who placed the arrow had wanted me to turn right, they'd have nailed it onto the telegraph pole directly in front of me, not alongside and to my left. The sun, moreover, was just comng over the horizon, and showed that the straight-ahead road led approximately in the right direction—that is, northeast—whereas the other pointed southeast, and might be the road to Vila Verde which I was keen to avoid. Northeast seemed the better bet, so that's the one I chose.

The trail quickly devolved into the standard sandy cart-track, but an occasional faded blue (Fátima) arrow pointing back the way I had come seemed promising. Though it was a steep uphill climb, the path through the pine woods was pleasant. I was interested to see how the bark of the trees had been scarifed and plastic bags nailed beneath, for the purpose of collecting resin as it dripped down. It looked very similar to the way that syrup is harvested from maple trees in North America. It also explained a lot about the ferocity of the forest fires in the area.

All things must come to an end, and so, after forty-five minutes or thereabouts, did the track. My feelings can be imagined when at the top, in addition to the crude blue arrows pointing downward along the way I had come, there was now a yellow one accompanying them and saying precisely the same thing. Breathing heavily, I was about to turn on my heel when a tiny red Peugeot emerged from nowhere and decorously honked me out of the way. I took the opportunity to have a word with the driver. Valverde? Oh, just go down this laneway here on the left to the bottom. Suiting the action to the word, she rolled her window up and headed in that direction herself.

I followed at a prudent distance from the enormous dust-cloud stirred up in her wake, marvelling once again that there is never a thoroughfare so remote, so rutted or so rough that a Portuguese driver will not bring his or her car up it without hesitation. At least this time I didn't have to worry about getting off track. There was only one possible direction in which to proceed, straight down, although I noted with some disquiet the presence of the sun on my left cheek, which is not where I would wish to have it at seven in the morning.

Three quarters of an hour later, the lane flattened out, and disgorged me directly opposite the entrance to the stadium of the Vidago Football Club.

I stared at it in disbelief for thirty long seconds. Then I executed a smart right turn; strode briskly downhill to the junction of the N2, and walked along its shoulder all the way into Chaves.

I can take a joke as well as the next man, but there is a limit.

 

[Aurigny]

Saturday, August 5

I don't have any route guidance to offer about yesterday's leg, because wherever the trail from Vidago goes, I never succeeded in finding it. There was one stretch, though, where I was off the main road, though for a very different reason. These wildfires are becoming a serious matter.

For the past couple of days, the CPI has been paralleling a long ridge to the west that might just deserve to be called a small range of mountains (i.e. peaks above 3,000' AMSL). Winds have been westerly or northwesterly, and all the fires I've seen have been on that side of the trail as well. I've been looking to the ridge to provide a kind of natural firebreak between me and any possible troubles from that direction. North of Vidago, however, the ridge gives out. The terrain is by no means plain-like thereafter, but if something starts burning, there are no more natural obstacles standing in its way.

I don't think it at all coincidental, then, that for the first time, fires began to appear here on the eastern side as well. North of the town, traffic was being diverted off the main road. I could see what looked like a good pathway—probably a regular hiking trail—a short distance to the east, so I elected to follow it around the obstacle. As it turned out, this worked very well indeed. I was able to look down the slope to the N2, below me and to my left, for the time I was off-road, which wasn't long at all. When I saw traffic flowing again, I descended from the track, making my own way down the hill through the dense scrub. All in all, quite uncomplicated.

But for the next couple of kilometres I had the opportunity to see up close and personal what the aftermath of a wildfire looks like. The section of the N2 I was now walking had only been reopened fifteen hours previously. All around me the ground was, literally, smouldering, with plumes of grey smoke rising from various spots, and so hot that I needed to be careful where I was putting my feet in case the soles of my hiking shoes started melting. The smell of burning was indescribable, and the light breeze was blowing large chunks of ash all over the place. Road signs had been obliterated by the heat. On the slopes to the east, a helicopter was scurrying around, filling up a kind of bucket on a cable from a swampy-looking river and then discharging the contents—somewhat ineffectually, it seemed to me—on the still-burning uplands. Evidently, even the locals thought this was out of the ordinary, as almost all the southbound traffic was stopping so that the drivers could get out and take pictures of the scene on their mobile telephones. I shot off a couple of snaps myself, and if I can re-teach myself how to upload them onto this site, I'll do so.

I have to believe that things will be better once I cross into Spain. Galicia, even in high summer, is usually agreeably cool and damp. Every kilometre to the north that I can get will reduce the risk. For those coming behind me, though, be aware that things will be a lot worse before they get better. The long-range weather forecast is predicting high temperatures and no rain for this area for weeks to come. Definite caution is required.

I had the devil's own job finding the tourist office in Chaves. It's clearly depicted on the excellent tourist maps the municipal authorities have put up on billboards in many places; unfortunately, those maps are out of date. I sculled three times up and down the street on which it was supposed to be before giving the task up as a bad job and trying the cathedral as a fallback option. It turns out that the tourist office is now located in the museum directly opposite, where it is accompanied by first distance marker I'd seen since leaving Viseu. The helpful woman at the office, who provided me with a sello, told me that the only reason the wildfires this year aren't worse is because the same area burned down this time last year, so there isn't all that much fuel left to be consumed.

Chaves is the half-way point on this route—209 km to go if one believes the marker—though I've spent so much time off-piste that I'd like to think I've less distance ahead of me than behind me. It's taken me seven days to get here, and that's about as fast as anyone can, or ought, to do it. It puts me right on schedule, inasmuch as I started with two weeks available to complete this trip. Apart from the wildfires, the only question now is whether my body will hold up. It's rare for me to have bad blisters on a long hike—usually they form early on; burst in their own time; and then I'm fine—but I'm currently carrying one on the side of my right foot that's nearly as big as my daughter's fist. It's taking up so much room in my hiking shoe that I've had to improvise a cardboard sleeve to place in my sock on the opposite side so as to prevent the skin of my ankle from being rubbed raw. Every step I take hurts, and I've taken a couple of hundred thousand already, with as many to go. At the start of each day I'm hobbling rather than walking until things loosen up after the first four or five kilometres. Just the same, things don't seem to be getting worse at any rate and I remain a going concern, which is not something on which I would have wagered a great deal of money four or five days ago.

After a most indifferent meal—a rarity in Portugal—and a night's dreamless sleep, I was back on the road at a respectable hour this morning for the crossing into Spain. I found it reasonably straightforward, with a couple of opportunities along the way for early coffee. The crossing-point is at a small town called Feces (oh, stop giggling, you Americans!), where you're greeted by a helpful information board marking out your path to Verín and beyond. I didn't plan to go further than that, so on arrival I checked in at the excellent albergue recently established by the Xunta de Galicia (EUR 6). The hospitalera that GB remembers is gone; she's been replaced, though, by an equally helpful young man with a shaven head and a caring manner. Once again the facility is much under-used: with a capacity of forty or so, it's currently occupied by my three Portuguese friends from Parada, who I was delighted to see again; a strange individual with few teeth and fewer clothes who intends to join the Via de la Plata at Ourense; a German pilgrim in her early fifties, and myself. However—sheerest bliss—it features both a washing machine (detergent provided) and a dryer. Whatever about my feet and legs, this much is certain: I'm not moving another step until I've taken full advantage of both.

 

[Mike Savage]

Stay safe Aurigny and enjoy every step. I am very much enjoying your posts every day and can't wait to leave for Portugal in two weeks.

Bom Caminho!

 

[Aurigny]

Sunday, August 6

The Book of Love, as Peter Gabriel sang, is long and boring. Much the same can be said of the trail from Verín to Xinzo, on the river Limia. All the same, I'll take it.

I'd forgotten just how nice it is to be able to bowl along without worrying where you're going. Still nicer is not having to haul around a full day's food and water—and, depending on where you are, food and water for the first half of the following day also. Having heard Mass last night—twenty-nine people in attendance; by my calculation I was the fifth-youngest worshipper present—I was able to start my day in the luxurious Francés fashion, with a steaming cup of café con leche. Even before dawn on a Sunday morning, the Café-Bar Monterrey (the one mentioned by GB in her notes, next to the Repsol petrol station) was open for business and doing a thriving trade. When I hit the road with the better part of half a litre of the stuff sloshing around my innards, then, I was disposed to be charmed by everything I saw today, no matter how intrinsically uninteresting it might be.

Admittedly, this particular leg doesn't make a huge number of concessions to the spectator. Instead of the magnificent views of the Alto Douro, through gorgeous vineyards bursting with fruit, this is potato-growing country: flat, featureless, sandy soil. Parts of it are highly redolent of the meseta—or would be if it weren't for the fact that most of the day the trail is sandwiched between the A75 motorway, often only metres to one's left, and the parallel N-525 national primary road, an equivalent distance to one's right. One is never out of earshot of the first, and only rarely unable to see the second. Every so often, indeed, one gets ejected onto the N-525, presumably because no right of way exists along those stretches to carry the trail along.

Still, there is a trail, and a very nice and level one at that. I didn't encounger any other peregrinos, but quite a few families were enjoying the fresh air with their kids on various stretches. The waymarking may not be fully up to Francés standards, but it's more than sufficient for ordinary purposes. On the rare occasions when ambiguity arises, a quick visual or auditory reference to one or other of the main roads quickly suffices to put one back on track. Moreover, all those seemingly pointless redirections onto the N-525 do provide the wayfarer with nicely-timed temptation toward more café con leche and the means of succumbing to it. The village of Viladerrei (or Vila del Rey, depending on whether one is using the galego or Castilian nomenclature) makes a convenient stopping-point for this purpose. I recommend the Calahorra bar, a pleasant establishment with excellent bathrooms. It's also just across the road from the brand-new Xunta albergue on the main street, which to all appearances is a clone of its Verín counterpart. (The rules, incidentally, for all these places are uniform: EUR 6 a night, inclusive of one of those tissue-paper fitted sheets; open at 13:00; doors closed at 22:00; everybody to be out before 08:00 the following morning.) Unfortunately the two are only about 18 km apart, which is too short a day for me, especially now that I'm in the flatlands.

There isn't too much to report about the second half of the journey. At one point I found the trail to be almost completely obliterated—not, this time, by overgrowth, but by the decision of some especially irresponsible locals to turn it into an impromptu rubbish dump. Fly-tipping—the illegal depositing of refuse on the side of the road—is a problem all over Iberia. This, though, looked like a lot more than a casual, one-vehicle affair, making me wonder once again just how much traffic this section of the route ordinarily gets.

After about 35 km, I rolled into Xinzo in time for a late lunch. It's one of the many northern Spanish towns that have fallen on hard times. Plenty of impressive buildings were to be seen, but a considerable proportion were boarded up or abandoned, and appeared to have been for a long time. The hospital seems to be the major local employer. This being Sunday afternoon, I decided that the dining options were likely to be few and far between, so I stopped at the first open hostelry I could find. Many locals were eating there, which is usually a good sign. On this occasion it wasn't. The food set in front of me was fairly atrocious, both in the ingredients and in what had been done to them, though in fairness the restaurant staff were graciousness itself and went far to compensate for the deficiences of the meal. However, a pilgrim has to eat what is set in front of him or her, and be grateful for the fact that it exists. I shovelled it down philosophically; found the place at which I was staying; and had an early night in preparation for a long leg to Ourense, about 45 km away, first thing tomorrow.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

Oh, try to stay in Allariz, it’s lovely

 

[peregrina2000]

And just a quick note about Allariz, if you have time, there is a great little company run by three or four liberal arts majors who are dedicated to cultural and natural patrimony. Long way of saying that they give tours, but not standard tours. I went with them when I was visiting the Sil River Canyons this past February and had a great trip. Manuel took me to Santa Mariña das Aguas (about 15 minutes outside Allariz). It's a pretty fascinating place with a large Romanesque church, the ruins and underground sauna of an earlier church, a hill fort, some Roman ruins, a basket weaving cooperative, all in all it was a great way to spend an afternoon!

You can see what they do here -- http://xeitura.com/

An earlier thread with more explanation -- https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/if-you-take-the-alternative-through-allariz.46822/

 

[caminka]

To be honest, C, you might obtain a nice sharp machete before you catch the 'bus from Porto to Viseu. Steel is a great deal cheaper than linen. I say this only partly in jest.

I might even consider your proposition, Aurigny . I do plan to walk CPI in May or June, so hopefully the brambels and bushes won't yet have the time to overgrow all the paths.

it's good that you are out of the fire territory at last!

 

[Kanga]

And thanks to a previous post from @peregrina2000 I contacted the same company in Ourense and we had a very interesting afternoon at Santa Mariña das Aguas. Unfortunately no miracle when I immersed my injured foot into Santa Mariña's miraculous hole filled with sacred water (supposedly formed from her footprint).

 

[Aurigny]

Monday, August 7

GB stayed in this town a couple of years ago at the Hotel Orly; my resting place last night was a similar one-star establishment, the Hotel Xinzo, about fifty metres further down the same street. The pair of them are very nearly the only choices one has. They are, I daresay, much of a muchness, being ludicrously overpriced for what and (especially) where they are. But the people running the Xinzo were kind-hearted and anxious to please. If I'm to be gouged, as I unquestionably was, having it done by courteous and considerate individuals does much to take the sting out of the experience.

I looked upon the task ahead of me today with some foreboding. My lower limbs are in a sorry state. I'm bleeding a little from the right foot, in addition to the blisters that are now so large that merely manoeuvring myself into the hiking shoes takes something of an effort. For the past few days I've been relying on the maxi-pad trick, which is the only thing that's still keeping me in the game. Without it I would no longer be mobile, and this pilgrimage would have come to a premature conclusion. But it's a partial and improvised expedient at best. Every step is now a source of considerable discomfort, and for the first several kilometres of each day I'm walking, or rather limping, like an arthritic old man. After that the pain level reaches a plateau – usually, at any rate – that makes a more normal stride and pace possible. The final few kilometres of the day, though, are invariably exercises in endurance. The fact of the matter is that everything below the knees got badly beaten up in the mountains during the first couple of days of this pilgrimage, and every journey since then has re-aggravated the injuries. A couple of rest days would almost certainly make a big difference; they would also make reaching SdC on time impossible. This was the same inflexible calculus I was facing on the Portugués Central last winter. I can't help thinking that the experience of going on pilgrimage when the calendar isn't a factor must be vastly different from what I'm doing now. But for we working stiffs, the choice is either to break up these things over a couple of years, or to do whatever it takes to complete it within the allotted time. Given that alternative, I've decided (as have my Portuguese fellow pilgrims from Parada) to pursue the latter objective. If I definitively break down, then I'll know it wasn't meant to be.

One of the minor blessings of today's leg for me was what justifiably annoyed GB when she walked this route a couple of years ago: the fact that so much of it was along the shoulder of the N-525. Hiking along a national primary road is normally an unrewarding way of travelling a country. When one's legs and feet are banged up, though, a level surface is far easier to negotiate than cobbles, rutted paths or loose stones. With almost thirty miles (in old money) separating me from my night-stop, I was deeply grateful for any concession I could get.

Had I had any sense, instead of roosting expensively at Xinzo last night, I should have continued on to today's first village, Sandiás, where there's a Xunta albergue, and put up there. The downside to that arrangement would have been a lack of dining opportunities. As far as I could see, only a single catering establishment, the O Encontro bar, is to be found there, and it doesn't sell anything more elaborate than a croissant. The village, though, does feature a nice public fountain at which water-bottles can be replenished, a relative rarity on this trail.

The half-way point of today's leg was the town of Allariz, small and pretty, but with cobbled paving that my feet did not appreciate. Given time pressures, I was able to stop only for a cup of coffee and a hunk of fairly rancid tortilla (I fell for the "display tortilla" trick: the slice I received came not from the beautiful pie in the cabinet but from a much older one beneath the bar that no doubt had been suppurating away quietly for some days). After that it was back out on the trail: a conventional path running through some quite attractive farmland. Again I marvelled at the health and obvious well-being of the Galician cattle: I have never seen better-looking cows anywhere in the world. About half-way along one passes under the motorway, and from then on one is rarely out of earshot of the traffic. Perhaps 3 km out of Ourense one re-crosses the N-525 and keeps going out the other side, making one's approach to the city centre via the broad and busy Avenida de Zamora. The way to the albergue is well-marked, although it's a heck of a long way up a street that becomes steeper and steeper the closer one approaches.

Woe to the latecomer, though. Ourense is a night-stop on the Via de la Plata, but it's also to that route what Sarría is to the Francés—the closest point to SdC from which one can still receive a compostelle. (It's just 103 km from the cathedral.) I had made miserable time en route, so it was about seven in the evening when I showed up, dusty and travel-stained, at the albergue, which is located in a disused convent. I found it stuffed full of hundred-kilometre heroes: eighteen-year-old Spanish kids, all decked out with enormous backpacks (God alone knows what they keep in them); brand-new hiking gear; and graphite walking poles that must have cost hundreds. None of them looked as though they had ever travelled further on foot than to the bathroom. The hospitalero, when I arrived, looked at them, looked at me, gave me a "what can you do?" shrug (the kind with both palms turned upward), and stamped my credencial by way of compensation. I limped off to the nearest bar with a weef connection, and booked my second expensive hotel room in as many nights.

Well, nobody's fault but my own. If you turn up at this hour of the night, that's what you must expect. The important thing is that I got here. Today was a make-or-break day in terms of reaching SdC. There'll need to be at least one more of them if I'm to complete this trip.

 

[KinkyOne]

That's a shame @Aurigny that the albergue was completo (although I don't have very fond memories of it because of bedbugs and hospitalero) after such long stage. But if you would descend down the Rua Pena Trevinca shortly after Ourense-San Francisco train station there's a Grelo Hostel (albergue type: https://www.gronze.com/galicia/orense/ourense/grelo-hostel) on the right hand side of the street. More than adequate for 15€.

Keep on! Enjoying your posts very much!

 

[caminka]

cheering you on, Aurigny!

 

[Aurigny]

Tuesday, August 8

One of the advantages of experience as a pilgrim is the knowledge that one's lower limbs will never hurt as much as first thing in the morning.

This was my only consolation as I swung my legs over the side of the bed, half an hour before dawn. The journey to the bathroom took me about three minutes, punctuated by yelps, florid curses, and experiments in putting weight on my right foot that would not cause me immediately to resume hopping on my left one. I was also displeased to see that the heel of that same foot had left a thin red trail behind me on the tiled floor that needed to be wiped off with paper towels. I have been in as bad a state in the past, but never, I think, worse. It was, it seemed to me, no more than a fifty-fifty proposition that I would be able to complete the day's leg.

Fortunately, it was scheduled to be a short one. Yesterday I decided that if I made it to Ourense, I shouldn't try to go further today than Cea, just 21 km or so to the northwest. For such a brief leg, there was no point in getting up in the wee small hours. Even at my current unimpressive pace, I wasn't going to be on the road for more than five hours at the very outside—if, in fact, I was going to be out there at all.

Initially, I wasn't sure that I would. The first few hundred metres were very hard indeed, and I don't think I had travelled even a kilometre before I decided that things would go better with a café con leche and a croissant inside me. Ourense is chock-full of establishments eager to provide those very things, so I was able to act upon the thought within a very few seconds. The caffeine-and-calories jolt did, in fact, make a difference. Half an hour later, my gait was by no means a thing of beauty, but I was covering ground at a respectably geriatric pace.

Ourense, a university town, is a pleasant-looking small city, and I regretted not having more time to spend in it. The way out is excellently signposted, with plenty of yellow arrows painted on lamp-posts at eye level (this is how you do it, Viseu!), and takes you through interesting districts. You cross the River Minho over an impressive pedestrian bridge, the Ponte Vella, and then pitch up by the railway station, where some enthusiast has parked a steam locomotive in surprisingly good condition at the crossroads opposite. Other peculiarities are to be found along the way. I was intrigued to see a lot of public recycling bins for used cooking oil, something that seems to me to be an excellent idea (it does terrible things when it's simply sluiced down the kitchen sink). This is something that other cities could profitably emulate. Further on in the outskirts, I was also pleased to come across road-signs pointing to familiar destinations like Pontevedra and Caldas de Reis, evoking happy memories of previous pilgrimages.

There are two different ways of getting to Cea. The distances are identical to within a kilometre, so I didn't much care which one I took, and elected to let the road make the decision for me. In the event I found myself on the more westerly of the two, via Castro de Beiro and Reguengo. I don't know what the other is like, but I do recommend this one. Visually it's pleasing and, except for a single stretch, undemanding. Not far out of Ourense, a low but fairly stiff ridge looms up ahead. I eyed it with some resentment, hoping that I had left the requirement to climb behind me in Portugal. But it's easily enough negotiated. The gradient is steep—a bit worse than one in five, according to the road-sign—but you get to walk along a narrow paved road lined with trees and flowers the entire way, and it only lasts a couple of kilometres. Once you reach the top, you've done all the hard work for the day. From that point on, you've just got a pleasant country ramble along a flattish and well-defined trail, with plenty of trees to shade you from the heat and the occasional village if you feel in the need of liquid refreshment.

As it happened, I didn't. After my unfortunate experience last night, I was determined not to come last in the bed race today. And despite my moderate pace, far slower than my usual, I didn't see that happening so long as I kept moving. One thing about the hundred-kilometre heroes (I speak here of the Spanish teenagers who do the Camino merely so that they can include it as an item on their CVs—does this really impress employers? and if so, why?) is that the second they come across a hostelry, all tools are downed and not a further step will be taken until they have put themselves outside a can or two of Nestea and fired off a couple of dozen texts on their smartphones. So it was today. I came across a massive gaggle of them at Casa de César in Reguengo, and gave them a cheery wave as I passed by (all right, hobbled by: but the cheery wave was real enough). I knew that my chances of being overtaken by them again were zero.

So indeed it proved. The Xunta albergue in Cea opens, like all the others in Galicia, at 13:00. I had timed my arrival for 12:30. When I got there, the only people ahead of me were half a dozen veterans of the Via de la Plata. We sat around, exchanging pleasantries and stories; snagged the good bunks when the place opened; and tried not to look too smug as the smartphone generation filtered in later in the afternoon. (As it turned out, there's what looks to be a very nice private establishment just two kilometres further on in Piñor, so perhaps we veterans were too damn clever for our own good.)

Regardless, I'm pleased to have arrived early. Although my allotted time in Iberia is fast running out, I've just 80 km to go to SdC, and I now have the better part of twenty-four hours to do nothing but keep my legs horizontal and allow things to heal up before the final assault. Everything hurts like the dickens, up to and perhaps including my hair. But I haven't landed in the hospital yet, and I'm close enough to the destination that I can almost smell it. One more big push, and I'll have broken the back of this thing.

 

[Anemone del Camino]

In case you are curious, the "other way" would have taken you to the beautiful Monastery of Oseira.

 

[KinkyOne]

In case you are curious, the "other way" would have taken you to the beautiful Monastery of Oseira.

Not on the leg from Ourense to Cea, Anemone! Monastery of Oseira is (optional) after Cea

 

[Anemone del Camino]

Not on the leg from Ourense to Cea, Anemone! Monastery of Oseira is (optional) after Cea

You're right. And I'm glad as I hope Aurigny will go by the monastery and report back as the description will no doubt be wonderful as the description of the rest of his Camino has been.

 

[Aurigny]

Wednesday, August 9

They say that one of the great moments in any pilgrimage is when you pass the 100-km mark, and only have double figures remaining. For me, the more important milestone is when I'm 50 km out. That's when I know that if I had to, I could, barring serious injury, reach SdC in a single day.

Knowing precisely how far I have to go is a luxury that has largely been denied to me on this trip. There's a distance marker at the starting-point in Viseu; another at the half-way point in Chaves. Since crossing the border into Galicia, I've passed innumerable official shell-markers. Every last one of them, without exception, has had its distance-plate chiselled off and taken away as a souvenir by vandals on whom the point of this pilgrimage is completely lost.

Every so often, though, I come across a road-sign conveying approximate information. At the entrance to Cea yesterday, I passed one giving the distance to SdC as 79 road kilometres. The trail is just a little longer than this, I believe, though not by more than three or four km. Today is my twelfth day of a total of fourteen available to me. Come hell or high water, I have to be on the first train to Madrid at 06:00 on Saturday morning. For that reason, I decided to make Silleda, about 43 km away, my next night stop. One thing I deeply dislike doing is to paint myself into a corner with the clock winding down and only a single course of action available to me. If I reach Silleda, then I'll be in a position either to get to SdC with one more major effort, should circumstances so demand, or cash in my remaining time by having two fairly short legs over the final forty-eight hours.

Some people will no doubt dispute me over this, but Cea, for me, is the sort of place that encourages an early departure. It's a town constructed largely of crumbling and in many cases abandoned Galician rough-hewn stone dwellings, with little in the way of amenities. The streets, when I arrived, were almost completely deserted with the exception of a large number of frighteningly undernourished cats. The Xunta albergue, seemingly a converted farmhouse, likewise does not over-impress. It's not the worst place in the world; I've stayed at far less desirable facilities. Standards of hygiene, though, are lower than I'd like to see, and the fly-to-human ratio extremely high. Nor are there many places in the vicinity to eat. One passes a bar-café about half a kilometre away from the albergue on the way in. I didn't much fancy what I saw other peregrinos consuming there, and once again the flies seemed to have had first crack at the dishes, long before the pilgrims did. After checking in and depositing my bag, therefore, I backtracked as far as the junction with the N-525, where I found a larger and cleaner-looking establishment with the curious name of Kanela Drink. The food they set before me would have won no Michelin stars; the best that can be said of it is that it filled a hole. But the people there were so charming and considerate that it hardly mattered. Throughout this trip, I've been fortunate enough to benefit from either good food or gracious service, so that I've never had occasion to regret visiting any of the restaurants I've patronised.

The inner man satisfied, or at least refuelled, there was nothing for me to do but to limp back to the albergue and try to keep off my feet as much as possible. A large upstairs balcony, well supplied with chairs, made this easy. Other than to do some hand-washing of clothing, I passed a very quiet day and made an early night of it, setting the alarm clock for 04:15 this morning.

Surprisingly, I was by no means the first one out the door. Quite a few of my fellow pilgrims had had the same bright idea of a very early start, and I turned out to be the last-departing member of the cock-crow contingent when I wobbled along the darkened streets of Cea at a quarter to five. Some of my very nicest moments, though, have come on the trail in the pre-dawn hours, and so it was this morning. The air was almost breathlessly still; the temperature perfect; and the sky, free from light pollution, choked with stars and planets. Venus, low in the eastern sky, seemed the size of a grapefruit. It was so bright that initially I mistook it for the lights of an aircraft: only after stopping and squinting for a minute or two was I sure that it really was what I thought I was seeing. Every couple of kilometres, a small village popped up to mark my passage and confirm my navigation. It was so delightful that I completely forgot the state of my feet until the sun began to rise at about seven o'clock.

The advent of daylight made navigating the trail, which was pleasantly though not densely afforested, a good deal easier than it had been during the hours of darkness. Switching off my torch, I found myself making surprisingly good time until I descended into the small town of Castro Dozon, 16 km or so from my point of departure, at around 08:30. Several cafés and an albergue are to be found here. I had my morning coffee at one of them and collected my first sello of the day, a minimum of two being required each day from Ourense inbound.

It's said that the last hundred kilometres of the Via de la Plata are the most attractive of all the approaches to SdC. In all honesty, I wouldn't consider the Dozon-to-Silleda stretch to stand out in any particular way. The first part, if in Scotland or Ireland, would be called moorland: fairly featureless and never as far away from the N-525—which is very busy in these latitudes—as I would like. Later on it does become more tree-lined and trail-like, with the occasional rocky or cobbled portion to provide painful reminders of the condition of my lower limbs. (In that context, I should mention that anything that added distance to my journey, like the 10-km side-trip to Oseira, might have finished me off completely. As Clint Eastwood famously said, a man has to know his limitations.)

The trail rejoins the main road at Taboada, where I arrived ten minutes too late to obtain my second sello at the local church (open only five hours a day, except on Tuesdays when it's not open at all. Sometimes my Catholic Church can be very trying). It's a straight and somewhat boring run uphill from there into Silleda, a medium-sized country town. It doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, have a publicly funded albergue, but I found a very acceptable substitute in the form of the private Albergue Turístico Silleda in the Rúa Venezuela. I gather that this was a somewhat charmless establishment in the past, but it has recently been renovated and now features actual beds (!), three to a room, for EUR 10 a night. The young hospitalera/barmaid is also kind and helpful to weary travellers.

I'm glad I didn't have further to go today. My right heel bled quite extensively in the course of the journey, and although the maxi-pad took care of most of it, I still had to take a bit of time soaking my sock off my foot so as not to re-open the wound. I believe I could make SdC from here if I had to crawl the rest of the way: and if I had to, I would. Nonetheless, while I don't think I'm in any worse a state than I was at Ourense a couple of days ago, my physical condition this entire fortnight has left, and continues to leave, a great deal to be desired. I've been praying for the strength to finish the job, and my prayers have thus far been answered. I don't want to tempt the Almighty, or fate, by doing anything stupid now.

 

[Anemone del Camino]

Bon courage, one more day to go. And then please take good care of that foot.

 

[Mike Savage]

I too am praying you have "the strength to finish the job" Hang in there Aurigny and take care of those feet the best you can.

 

[Aurigny]

Thursday, August 10

When one is 40 km away from one's destination, the time has come to assume that one will in fact reach SdC and to begin planning one's arrival. After a sound night's sleep in Silleda, I ordered the fixed-price breakfast at the café-bar attached to the albergue (good value for EUR 3) and considered my options.

The most straightforward idea, and one that had a definite attraction, was simply to hit the road and keep walking until I reached the cathedral. In other circumstances I might have done just that, reasoning that a bird in the hand was better than any number of feathered friends in the shrubbery. The principal argument against that course of action is that SdC is full to the gills. I've been following the updates on this site and elsewhere, from which it's clear that (i) for reasons that remain unclear, a historically unprecedented number of visitors appear to be descending this weekend upon the city; and (ii) accommodation of any kind is not to be had for love, but only for a very considerable sum of money. Checking out the hotel sites, the cheapest available single room for tonight is starting at nearly EUR 200, which is a damn sight more than I paid to fly to this country. If I'm not willing to shell out (yes, pun intended) that kind of money, it seems all but certain that I will finish this trip the way I began it: by sleeping in a 'bus shelter. While that has a perversely symmetrical appeal, I can think of alternatives that I would find even more attractive at this stage of the game.

One of them is to use both days remaining to me—today and tomorrow—to complete the journey, staying tonight somewhere outside SdC. A quick internet search turned up a nice-looking place, the Pensión Victoria, just a few hundred metres off the trail in Santa Cruz de Ribadulla/Rivadulla, about 16 km from SdC and 26 km from Silleda. It was affordable, and had a room available for both nights. A few clicks secured it for me, and I now had a plan of campaign.

There are no arrows or other way-markers out of Silleda, or if there are, I never saw any of them. Instead I simply followed the traffic northward along the main street in the expectation that sooner or later the flow would carry me down to the N-525 and that I could pick up the trail from there. It took about three kilometres of shoulder-walking, but the procedure worked well enough. After a while a blue-and-white pilgrim sign pointed me off to the right, and I was safely back in the beam.

After feeling a little underwhelmed by the second half of yesterday's leg, I had nothing whatever to complain about today. Had my lower limbs been in decent working order, this would have been one of the most enjoyable jaunts I've had in Iberia. Six or seven kilometres along, the village of Bandeira looms up. It seems to consist almost entirely of cafés, but it being too close to breakfast for me to feel the need for further caffeination, I ignored them all. I did make a short detour off the main street, though, to the Xunta albergue about 100m up a side-road to the right. The charming and helpful hospitalera kindly gave me my first daily sello, and sent me on my way with her best wishes.

Soon after Bandeira, the trail once again dives off to the right and proceeds in a wide anticlockwise loop around Outeiro, Piñeiro and microscopic-but-picturesque Dornelas, the latter featuring a wonderful church (inevitably locked up tighter than Fort Knox). The trail in these parts is a mixture of narrow asphalted roads and leafy laneways. Greatly to my surprise, I had it almost to myself. The only other pilgrims I passed were a Spanish family group—father, mother and two teenage daughters, who didn't look as though they'd come very far—and half a dozen or so Italians who were having a cigarette break at the O Emigrante bar (I dropped in myself for a Kas limón, but was on my way again within five minutes, before my muscles stiffened up). The countryside isn't spectacular, but pleasant, cool and above all easy going underfoot. Almost for the first time on this trip I was able to switch my brain off from contemplating the various problems (above all navigational) to be dealt with and simply absorb the restful and restorative environment around me.

All too soon, it seemed, it was over. Before the small town of Ponte Ulla there's an ugly modern bridge, carrying the N-525 across the eponymous river, and a couple of hundred metres upstream a much more attractive stone one, along which the pilgrims pass. The thoughtful concello of Silleda has established a tiny office in the main street of Ponte Ulla for the dispensing of sellos, which enabled me to pick up my second one with great convenience. From there on, one can either rejoin the trail through some slightly uphill woodlands before hacking one's way back down to the N-525 to reach Ribadulla or, more prosaically, follow that road directly there. I opted for the former and soon lived to regret it. I was additionally handicapped by the fact that Google Maps shows the pensión that was my destination in entirely the wrong location: about 1.5 km west-north-west of where it really is. The result was that I performed two complete circumnavigations of the confusing maze of narrow roads in the hills between Pumariño, Famelga, Castrelo and Santardao, including—humiliatingly—passing for a second time the elderly couple in Famelga I'd asked for directions forty-five minutes previously, before a kindly farmer north of Raxoi took me in hand, laughed heartily at Google Maps, and set me on the right path. I suppose, while we're talking symmetries, that it's only appropriate I should take this opportunity to get myself lost for a final time.

However, all's well that ends well. I have 16.5 km left to do, and all of tomorrow in which to do it. Twelve days ago, that barely seemed imaginable. I've been a very lucky kiddie indeed.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

Oh gosh. What an effort. Almost there. Well done

 

[Former member 49149]

Oh gosh. What an effort. Almost there. Well done

Thursday, August 10
I have to say that your turn of phrase is really refreshing. Painfully honest too, which is both a pun and a fact. Makes me wonder about walking the Portuguese route again, instead of juggling in my head about one of two in my native land that are tempting me. I will be sorry when your posts are finished, but glad that you will be able to say: YES! before getting your feet attended to. Buen Camino, though Insuppose by the time this reaches you, you will be home and dry.

When one is 40 km away from one's destination, the time has come to assume that one will in fact reach SdC and to begin planning one's arrival. After a good night's sleep in Silleda, I ordered the fixed-price breakfast at the café-bar attached to the albergue (good value for EUR 3) and considered my options.

The most straightforward idea, and one that had a definite attraction, was simply to hit the road and keep walking until I reached the cathedral. In other circumstances I might have done just that, reasoning that a bird in the hand was better than any number of feathered friends in the shrubbery. The principal argument against that course of action is that SdC is full to the gills. I've been following the updates on this site and elsewhere, from which it's clear that (i) for reasons that remain unclear, a historically unprecedented number of visitors appear to be descending this weekend upon the city; and (ii) accommodation of any kind is not to be had for love, but only for a very considerable sum of money. Checking out the hotel sites, the cheapest available single room for tonight is starting at nearly EUR 200, which is a damn sight more than I paid to fly to this country. If I'm not willing to shell out (yes, pun intended) that kind of money, it seems all but certain that I will finish this trip the way I began it: by sleeping in a 'bus shelter. While that has a perversely symmetrical appeal, I can think of alternatives that I would find even more attractive at this stage of the game.

One of them is to use both days remaining to me—today and tomorrow—to complete the journey, staying tonight somewhere outside SdC. A quick internet search turned up a nice-looking place, the Pensión Victoria, just a few hundred metres off the trail in Santa Cruz de Ribadulla/Rivadulla, about 16 km from SdC and 26 km from Silleda. It was affordable, and had a room available for both nights. A few clicks secured it for me, and I now had a plan of campaign.

There are no arrows or other way-markers out of Silleda, or if there are, I never saw any of them. Instead I simply followed the traffic northward along the main street in the expectation that sooner or later the flow would carry me down to the N-525 and that I could pick up the trail from there. It took about three kilometres of shoulder-walking, but the procedure worked well enough. After a while a blue-and-white pilgrim sign pointed me off to the right, and I was safely back in the beam.

After feeling a little underwhelmed by the second half of yesterday's leg, I had nothing whatever to complain about today. Had my lower limbs been in decent working order, this would have been one of the most enjoyable jaunts I've had in Iberia. Six or seven kilometres along, the village of Bandeira looms up. It seems to consist almost entirely of cafés, but it being too close to breakfast for me to feel the need for further caffeination, I ignored them all. I did make a short detour off the main street, though, to the Xunta albergue about 100m up a side-road to the right. The charming and helpful hospitalera kindly gave me my first daily sello, and sent me on my way with her best wishes.

Soon after Bandeira, the trail once again dives off to the right and proceeds in a wide anticlockwise loop around Outeiro, Piñeiro and microscopic-but-picturesque Dornelas, the latter featuring a wonderful church (inevitably locked up tighter than Fort Knox). The trail in these parts is a mixture of narrow asphalted roads and leafy laneways. Greatly to my surprise, I had it almost to myself. The only other pilgrims I passed were a Spanish family group—father, mother and two teenage daughters, who didn't look as though they'd come very far—and half a dozen or so Italians who were having a cigarette break at the O Emigrante bar (I dropped in myself for a Kas limón, but was on my way again within five minutes, before my muscles stiffened up). The countryside isn't spectacular, but pleasant, cool and above all easy going underfoot. Almost for the first time on this trip I was able to switch my brain off from contemplating the various problems (above all navigational) to be dealt with and simply absorb the restful and restorative environment around me.

All too soon, it seemed, it was over. Before the small town of Ponte Ulla there's an ugly modern bridge, carrying the N-525 across the eponymous river, and a couple of hundred metres upstream a much more attractive stone one, along which the pilgrims pass. The thoughtful concello of Silleda has established a tiny office in the main street of Ponte Ulla for the dispensing of sellos, which enabled me to pick up my second one with great convenience. From there on, one can either rejoin the trail through some slightly uphill woodlands before hacking one's way back down to the N-525 to reach Ribadulla or, more prosaically, follow that road directly there. I opted for the former and soon lived to regret it. I was additionally handicapped by the fact that Google Maps shows the pensión that was my destination in entirely the wrong location: about 1.5 km west-north-west of where it really is. The result was that I performed two complete circumnavigations of the confusing maze of narrow roads in the hills between Pumariño, Famelga, Castrelo and Santardao, including—humiliatingly—passing for a second time the elderly couple in Famelga I'd asked for directions forty-five minutes previously, before a kindly farmer north of Raxoi took me in hand, laughed heartily at Google Maps, and set me on the right path. I suppose, while we're talking symmetries, that it's only appropriate I should take this opportunity to get myself lost for a final time.

However, all's well that ends well. I have 16.5 km left to do, and all of tomorrow in which to do it. Twelve days ago, that barely seemed imaginable. I've been a very lucky kiddie indeed.

 

[Former member 49149]

Thursday, August 10

Somehow, I got this posted into your own entry..... so here it is again.
I have to say that your turn of phrase is really refreshing. Painfully honest too, which is both a pun and a fact. Makes me wonder about walking the Portuguese route again, instead of juggling in my head about one of two in my native land that are tempting me. I will be sorry when your posts are finished, but glad that you will be able to say: YES! before getting your feet attended to. Buen Camino, though Insuppose by the time this reaches you, you will be home and dry.

 

[donalomahony]

Well done. This has been a most interesting well written thread. Donal

 

[caminka]

thank you for the beautifully written posts, aurigny. you must be home by now and your feet well taken care of, I hope. well done!

 

[alexwalker]

For a cheap place to stay in SdC, call Jose Ramon at: 0034626323680. Say I sent you.

 

[Aurigny]

Friday, August 11

On the final day of my first pilgrimage, the Francés last summer, I was nostalgic over the imminent end of what, after nearly a month on the road, had become a way of life. During the last day of my second, the Portugués Central this winter, I was mentally seeking to hurry on the hands of the clock and the kilometres. I had been cold and wet for several days, and was more than ready to reach the end. This time around, I feel relief above all, mingled with profound gratitude. Since the end of my second day on this trip, when through a mixture of stupidity and lack of advance planning I had caused myself serious physical difficulties, I've never been certain whether each successive morning might find me unable to put one foot in front of the other. It's a privilege to get to finish one of these pilgrimages, and this time around it's very probably more than I deserve.

My only duty today was to get to the Pilgrims' Office at a respectable hour, and the Pilgrims' Mass afterwards if at all possible. Accordingly I rose early, and was out on the road at 05:00. As has been the case every day this outing except one, the temperature was comfortably warm and the sky mostly clear. After my comedy of errors yesterday evening, I had little difficulty re-establishing myself on the trail. One thing I did note in the course of my peregrinations was how to get back on to it, even if I hadn't a clue where my night-stop was.

Of the three approaches to SdC that I've done—from the east, the south and now the southeast respectively—today's was by far the most attractive. I started on a very broad and well-defined track through the pine forest, so elaborate and professionally surfaced that I'm sure its primary purpose is to afford access to loggers and woodcutters. Before very long, though, one finds oneself travelling back-roads and quiet streets through the outer suburbs. The trail crosses the N-525 at A Susana, which will be the first and last opportunity to obtain coffee before reaching the destination. I was glad in retrospect, then, that I took advantage of it. As I was departing, a taxi arrived and disgorged a quartet of German peregrinos outside. They followed on my heels, but I soon outdistanced them. They were to be the only other people I saw out on the trail for today's abbreviated journey.

As I say, I must congratulate the people who selected the entry-routes for this portion. The only time you encounter Civilisation with a capita 'C' is when you scramble up a steep bank—at present festooned with construction vehicles; they're building a new bridge—to cross the motorway. For the rest, even though you must be very close to the main highways, you get to walk along tranquil back-roads, encountering very little vehicular traffic and hearing none. Official way-markers are provided in profusion, at the rate of about three to the kilometre. It continues like this until you're decanted onto the city streets, 2.5 km from the destination. At this point all navigational assistance ceases. You won't need any, though, as you'll be able to look straight down on the roof of the cathedral from there.

I arrived at the Pilgrims' Office fairly soon after it opened. If I'd been hoping to avoid a long wait, though, I arrived a good deal too late. The queue of peregrinos in greater or lesser stages of dishevellment snaked through the building, out around the little courtyard, down the stairs, and around three sides of the garden at the bottom. I've seen it busy in the past, but never anything like this. Nonetheless, everybody was in good humour: a bunch of hefty gentlemen behind me, who had arrived the previous night having begun at Sarría, if anything rather too much so. Evidently they hadn't wasted the night-time hours doing anything so prosaic as sleeping, and arrived to pick up their compostelles while feeling no pain, as the saying goes. Their conduct wouldn't have been out of place at a Liga football match; it was a little out of place in these rather more spiritual surroundings. However, both the staff and their fellow pilgrims were indulgent of their exuberance.

The rest of us (in my section of the queue, Italians who were extraordinarily kind in pretending not to notice the manner in which I was butchering their language) exchanged war stories, pictures of the notable sights we'd snapped along the way, and discreet mutual displays of each other's injuries to the extent that these, to quote Siegfried Sassoon, had been sustained in a mentionable place. The queue moved as fast as it could reasonably be expected to, with no fewer than seventeen people on duty. Even so, it was a couple of hours before my number finally came up.

The young woman at the desk was a little surprised to hear that I had begun at Viseu, and inquired as to how I had managed with the wildfires, which have been getting plenty of coverage on Spanish TV news. My credencial, replete with Portuguese stamps from cop shops, post offices and an elaborate hand-drawn one by the assistant manager of the hotel outside Castro Daire, after he was unable to produce a real carimbo but was reluctant to send me away empty-handed, seemed to amuse her greatly. At all events, she swiftly filled out my compostelle and offered her congratulations.

It was now too late to attend the Pilgrims' Mass: the queue to get into the cathedral was far longer than the one at the Pilgrims' Office. One thing that SdC is not short of, however, is churches, so I was able to drop into the Iglesia de San Francisco nearby and give thanks there. After that, in the anti-climactic way that these things end, there was nothing to be done but to have lunch (at the San Clodio churrasqueria on Rúa San Pedro, very convenient for those arriving from the Francés; recommended), and limp off to get my feet seen to.

In a few days' time, I'll upload a picture or two, and offer a couple of final thoughts.

 

[KinkyOne]

Well done and congratulations @Aurigny !
I have enjoyed your posts immensely and I really hope you'll continue with your Caminos (and postings)

 

[Anemone del Camino]

Aurigny,

Glad you arrived and can now take care of those feet.

Thank you for sharing this adventure with us, it has been a wonderful read.

 

[CaminoDebrita]

Very well done! Your courage and your determination have only been matched by your exceptional writing. I would encourage you to continue collecting your journeys and publish a book of them.

Thanks for such good entertainment.

 

[Mike Savage]

Congratulations Aurigny, I'm so glad you made it and I look forward to reading your recap and the healing of your feet.

 

[alexwalker]

@Aurigny : I have enjoyed your writings immensely! Although, also with much empathy for your mishaps. I started yesterday afternoon, and have kept on reading the whole morning today. Your writing style, spirit, and humour despite blisters and missing directions, is fantastic! Thank you so much!

I can safely say, that based on your detailed writings, the CPI is veery low on my bucket list... So is also the CP from Lisbon (in April this year) : Poorly marked, first days only/mostly highway, very few albergues: Not to be repeated soon.

Buen Camino!

 

[CaminoDebrita]

@Aurigny : I have enjoyed your writings immensely! Although, also with much empathy for your mishaps. I started yesterday afternoon, and have kept on reading the whole morning today. Your writing style, spirit, and humour despite blisters and missing directions, is fantastic! Thank you so much!

I can safely say, that based on your detailed writings, the CPI is veery low on my bucket list... So is also the CP from Lisbon (in April this year) : Poorly marked, first days only/mostly highway, very few albergues: Not to be repeated soon.

Buen Camino!

@alexwalker --I had a chuckle reading your post to Aurigny realizing that his writings also demotivated me from the route, especially the one in which he mused that an accident off trail would probably go undiscovered for some time

I share my route to the best of my ability with a few trusted pilgrim friends, but who knows where someone might wander?

If I chose to do a more adventurous route, I think I'd need to get better with a GPS and also with the terrain, although that said, we have people get lost in Oregon all the time. I wandered a bit further west on our property one time and had a few people out yelling my name...into the expanse of the Eastern Oregon mountains and wilderness. Fortunately, a fence at the N. end of the Ochoco mountains guided me back, as I just needed to go East to find camp. But I digress!

Because we have so much wilderness here, I am quite happy to put myself on auto pilot on Camino Frances--although this time, probably C. Porto Coastal--and walk, walk, walk without fear of having to put in a 30-k. day. I can do those rarely (and usually on about day 10), much preferring about 20 k. days.

Buen Camino!

 

[alexwalker]

@alexwalker --I had a chuckle reading your post to Aurigny realizing that his writings also demotivated me from the route, especially the one in which he mused that an accident off trail would probably go undiscovered for some time

Yes, the thought has hit me a few times lately, being 63. Solitude is ok, but desolation...

 

[Aurigny]

Many thanks for your extremely kind wishes, all. I'll come back to this later in the week, when I've more time for writing, but I'd like to say at this juncture that the last thing I intended was to put people off the CPI. It is, to be sure, something of a niche market; that is, not for everybody. One of the things that made it difficult for me were the constraints, especially of time, within which I was operating. If I'd had, say, another week to allow me (i) to rest up and heal when I damaged myself; and (ii) to get lost and not have to redouble my efforts so as to make up the additional mileage, it would have been a very different experience.

But the possible combination of a wrong turning and an immobilising injury is one that must be soberly considered. A plan 'B' in these circumstances is a definite necessity. Let me say that it's not something that need be worried about once one has crossed into Spain. From the frontier northward, the waymarking is always adequate; sometimes very good. For me, the real area of concern is the first hundred kilometres or so out of Viseu. Granted, it's not the Western Sahara (which I have also seen at first hand). One is never a great distance away from human habitation. If one can't reach it, though, and is expecting somebody to come along the same way, one might be waiting a very long time indeed.

My own solution was firstly, never to be without a minimum of a day's supply of water over this kind of terrain—and yes, that does add greatly to the amount of weight it's necessary to haul around—and secondly, to let my wife know by e-mail each day my point of departure and intended destination. If I was twenty-four hours overdue and she hadn't heard from me in that time, she was to call out the gendarmes. That's not a complete guarantee of safety, of course, but it tilts the odds back in one's favour quite sharply. There are only so many places where the incautious pilgrim can get lost or break something, and the locals are likely to have a fairly shrewd idea of where those places are to be found.

GPS might be very useful, but a still more basic navigational device, and one that can be trusted to work under all circumstances, would have helped me even more. A small but reliable magnetic compass, practically weightless and available for a comparatively insignificant sum of money from one of those outdoorsman's shops, would have prevented me from going as far astray as I did on the first and third days. Having one, I couldn't have travelled more than a couple of kilometres without realising that my cunning plan had sprung a leak somewhere. It'll definitely be in my backpack the next time round.

 

[gracethepilgrim]

I’m thrilled that you’ve made it to Santiago ‘safely’ albeit rather ‘war-torn’ from the CPI.
A great adventure you’ve had, and I’m sure you’ll be back to do another camino.
Rest up, eat and drink aplenty and give yourself a massive pat on the back. A job well done.
Thanks for sharing with us.

 

[laineylainey]

Aurigny thank you for your postings which I have just read from start to finish.
Like a good book I couldn't stop til the last page. Your story of your Camino journey has been the best thing I have read on this forum. Apart from the details of your route I was just enthralled by your honesty and the way you described your rections to the events in a day or section of tbe journey. You have a fabulous style of telling a story and involving the reader in it. Your courage and determination as you encountered setbacks especially your physical condition are for me a wonderful example of a true pilgram. Some of the incidents -sleeping on the bus stop bench and crawling through those brambles after Moura Morta- will stay in my mind for a while.
It was a privilege to read this and I hope your legs and feet have enow fully recovered.
Thanks again
Elaine

 

[Aurigny]

Deepest thanks for your most kind messages of support, E, GB and all the generous well-wishers. My apologies to everyone for the appalling length of time I've neglected finishing this thread. Since I got back from SdC I've been working like a dog, with neither time nor thought to devote to my sojourn in Portugal. I did promise to post some pictures, which you'll find below, and also some concluding thoughts that I'll add in the next couple of days.

I'm still carrying a reminder of the CPI with me. As those who've read above will know, I did something of a number on my feet during my first two days in the mountains. After getting badly lost, and greatly underestimating the difficulty of the terrain, I contrived to rack up very close to 100 km during those first two days, over ground that was sometimes exceedingly rough. The injuries I acquired there never really had a chance to heal, so that by the time I reached Ourense nine days later, I was very nearly crippled. The right foot was the visually spectacular one, bleeding slowly but more or less continuously from the bottom of the heel (I used a sanitary towel placed inside my sock to sop up the blood and reduce the pounding, a trick that has saved my bacon in the past) and featuring a massive blister on the left-hand side. But both of those problems resolved themselves within a couple of weeks of my return home. The left heel, in contrast, has been the source of lasting difficulty. To this day, I find myself hobbling to the bathroom upon rising in the morning, though the pain becomes less with the approach of afternoon. It appears to be a classic case of plantar fasciitis, and there's not much to be done about that except to give it time. My own damn fault. I pushed the envelope, and am now reaping the reward of my folly. Even so, I can't say that I'm sorry. There's a Russian proverb, "'Take what you want—and pay for it,' says God." It's a maxim I try to live by.

Herewith the snaps. I didn't take too many; these just give a hint of what's out there.



Flying fish at Viseu



Douro Valley vineyard (near Figueira)



Pause (yes, pun intended) with a friend



Terraces west of Pousada



Waymarking at Vila Real



Aftermath of a wildfire (Oura)



Daybreak north of Parada



It exists! There's a sign!

 

[Former member 49149]

Deepest thanks for your most kind messages of support, E, GB and all the generous well-wishers. My apologies to everyone for the appalling length of time I've neglected finishing this thread. Since I got back from SdC I've been working like a dog, with neither time nor thought to devote to my sojourn in Portugal. I did promise to post some pictures, which you'll find below, and also some concluding thoughts that I'll add in the next couple of days.

I'm still carrying a reminder of the CPI with me. As those who've read above will know, I did something of a number on my feet during my first two days in the mountains. After getting badly lost, and greatly underestimating the difficulty of the terrain, I contrived to rack up very close to 100 km during those first two days, over ground that was sometimes exceedingly rough. The injuries I acquired there never really had a chance to heal, so that by the time I reached Ourense nine days later, I was very nearly crippled. The right foot was the visually spectacular one, bleeding slowly but more or less continuously from the bottom of the heel (I used a sanitary towel placed inside my sock to sop up the blood and reduce the pounding, a trick that has saved my bacon in the past) and featuring a massive blister on the left-hand side. But both of those problems resolved themselves within a couple of weeks of my return home. The left heel, in contrast, has been the source of lasting difficulty. To this day, I find myself hobbling to the bathroom upon rising in the morning, though the pain becomes less with the approach of afternoon. It appears to be a classic case of plantar fasciitis, and there's not much to be done about that except to give it time. My own damn fault. I pushed the envelope, and am now reaping the reward of my folly. Even so, I can't say that I'm sorry. There's a Russian proverb, "'Take what you want—and pay for it,' says God." It's a maxim I try to live by.

Herewith the snaps. I didn't take too many; these just give a hint of what's out there.

View attachment 37324

Flying fish at Viseu

View attachment 37323

Douro Valley vineyard (near Figueira)

View attachment 37325

Pause (yes, pun intended) with a friend

View attachment 37326

Terraces west of Pousada

View attachment 37327

Waymarking at Vila Real

View attachment 37328

Aftermath of a wildfire (Oura)

View attachment 37329

Daybreak north of Parada

View attachment 37330

It exists! There's a sign!

Delighted to see the continuation! I am rushing out the door today to get a topup on my local accent for a few days, but would like to say that plantar fasciitis responded in my case to a few sessions of physiotherapy, and other exercises given by the physiotherapist, for knee problems. I could scan in the exercises, and send them by pm if you let me know you are interested. Not before Friday though.