Live from the Portugues

[Aurigny]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're going. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

 

[Mike Savage]

Definitely interested and following every step. I walked the coastal route last year and hope to do the interior route this year so this could be very informative.

Bom Caminho!

 

[Levi]

Walking this way in April.

Bom Caminho

 

[Lmsundaze]

I hope you keep posting, I am planning to start in Porto at the end of April and am interested in your experiences and where you stay and eat.

 

[joeboybollo]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and being done in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

Very nice post. Thank you.
Was hoping to walk this route(but slower!) in May but looks more like September now.Shall be following so keep up the nice long posts.
Cheers
Joe

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and being done in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

 

[IngridF]

Buen Camino....that's the route I took in July 2015...even then on this portion I walked by myself.

 

[movinmaggie]

I am hopeful to find a Hospitalera spot in 2018 and to walk the Portuguese, but am sure I could not manage 35 per day. Are the Albergues that fewer and farther in between? If so, I may have to re think this.

 

[Anemone del Camino]

I am hopeful to find a Hospitalera spot in 2018 and to walk the Portuguese, but am sure I could not manage 35 per day. Are the Albergues that fewer and farther in between? If so, I may have to re think this.

I found there are many more private albergues than communal ones with volunteer hospies on the Central Portuguese but there is no way you ever have to walk 35 km a day. Rates in a voluntary based albergue with only a cleaning lady and handy man around where they may welcome a hospy as they only have them on weekends.

 

[jmcarp]

Walking this way in April.

Bom Caminho

May is the month for us.

 

[SabsP]

Love your post! Looking forward to more...

Buen Camino!

 

[Jakke]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

Bom caminho!

 

[poogeyejr]

I will be starting Lisbon on March 25th. Love the insight! Thank you for taking the time to post.

 

[Aurigny]

Many thanks to all for the thoughtful replies and kind wishes. Episode 2 herewith:-

Lovely as the people at the S. Clara albergue are, the only thing that saved me from another cold and semi-sleepless night was the fact that they thoughtfully gave me a bunk beside the only heater in the room. Otherwise, all I would have had for covering would have been the single thin synthetic blanket provided with the bunk. I'm at something of a loss to know why albergues, even when the places are mostly (or entirely) empty dole out blankets like the beadle in Oliver Twist. Or why the year-round places, in winter, don't keep a stock of winter blankets. Nice heavy woollen ones...

My normal routine on the Francés was to be up and out before dawn, hoping to break the back of the day's march before the heat became a complicating factor. With a winter Caminho I'm not sure whether it wouldn't be better to be a lay-a-bed. It's bloody cold until the sun puts in an appearance, and nothing seems to open early in the Portuguese country districts. Getting my morning coffee and roll, even in a fairly substantial place lke Vila do Conde, was a bit of a struggle. By far the best option -- the locals to whom I spoke concurred in this -- is Alvar & David's confeitaria, just on the town side of the bridge and run by the eponymous couple of old boys who are in their mid-seventies or thereabouts. It has the appearance of a confectionery from the outside, but in the back they keep a small coffee bar that seems to account for about 90% of their revenue. In that characteristic country way, they can also fix you up with single-malt whisky, children's bouncy balls, or sliced meats if you so require.

The inner man satisfied, it was time to get back on the road. Having brought people here, John Brierley offers no suggestions as to how to hack one's way over to the Caminho Central again. However, it's easy enough. One turns right off the main drag onto the Rua da Lapa, and then it's a straight run into Touguinha, five or six kilometres to the north-east. In Touguinha village, after turning right and crossing the river, there are enough yellow arrows to make navigation without a map easy until one rejoins the main trail at the village of Arcos.

Between Vila do Conde and Touguinha, you'll find several cafes and the occasional small supermarket. If you need anything between there and Goios, about 20 km further on, this is the time to obtain it. São Pedro de Rates, the next substantial town, is one of those numerous places in the Iberian peninsula that have a great many houses and startlingly few commercial establishments. The only place that seemed to be open for lunch was the Cafe S. Antonio, where the flies swarm the food and the customers alike. In fairness, the meal was well-presented and cheap, but so many flies were trying to land on me while I was trying to eat it that it was necessary to keep my hat on indoors. If it's like this in the third week in January, God alone knows how things are when the weather turns warmer. There's a better-looking restaurant 7 km further on at Pedra Furada, but it was closed when I passed. It looks like a dinnertime establishment only.

São Pedro de Rates does, however, have the only working water fountain I passed since leaving Porto, and a donativo albergue of sixty beds. It's a pretty basic place: rooms of ten berths apiece, handbasins for laundry, and a small kitchen (though also the only working bidet I've ever seen in an albergue). It's attended between 14:00 and 22:00, when the doors are closed. I couldn't find evidence of any heating. According to the visitors' book, the most recent pilgrim came through on the 17th. It appears, then, that on the Portugues in winter, the bed race doesn't exist. Show up anytime during opening hours, and you'll get somewhere to stay.

SPdeR also has a fine twelfth-century Romanesque church. As a person who likes to stop along the way, pray, and light the odd candle or two, the fact that most Portuguese churches appear to be locked up tight as a drum during weekdays is somewhat frustrating. This is one of the few exceptions to the rule, and well worth dropping in for a brief while even if you're not out on the trail for religious reasons.

The road between Vila do Conde and Arcos is narrow, mostly cobbled, and surprisingly busy. On most of it there's no footpath or shoulder, and it can be extremely hazardous. I was nearly squashed as flat as a flounder against a high stone wall by the tail of a 'bus coming at speed around a blind bend. The one advantage of the cobblestoned surface is that it makes it easier to hear traffic you can't see. Great caution is necessary for the pedestrian, especially when approaching a bend to the left. I could say a lot about the quiet homicidal intensity with which Portuguese drivers characteristically treat pedestrians, unequalled in my experience anywhere apart from Bangladesh, and perhaps in one of my later posts I will.

After SPdeR , though, the trail turns into the familiar unpaved country lanes, passing through rolling countryside and wooded areas that are a mix of confiers and, incongruously, eucalyptus. It resembles the non-mountainous parts of Galicia in northwestern Spain, though the villages and towns are a lot cleaner and better-tended.

The final six or seven km of the day's journey are a little tiresome, winding in a serpentine way along more cobblestoned streets down the slopes above Barcelos. Tantalisingly, one can see the destination but, for a long time, one hardly seems to be getting closer to it. But then the city centre looms up quite quickly. Accommodation is hardly a problem here. There's a small but comfortable donativo albergue in the centre of town (arrive after 12:00, lights out at 22:00, be out by 09:00 the following morning), along with three or four private or non-profit ones on the main road into town, which also get high marks.

Ponte de Lima tonight (Tuesday), God willing. More to follow.

 

[Jakke]

Many thanks to all for the thoughtful replies and kind wishes. Episode 2 herewith:-

Lovely as the people at the S. Clara albergue are, the only thing that saved me from another cold and semi-sleepless night was the fact that they thoughtfully gave me a bunk beside the only heater in the room. Otherwise, all I would have had for covering would have been the single thin synthetic blanket provided with the bunk. I'm at something of a loss to know why albergues, even when the places are mostly (or entirely) empty dole out blankets like the beadle in Oliver Twist. Or why the year-round places, in winter, don't keep a stock of winter blankets. Nice heavy woollen ones...

My normal routine on the Frances was to be up and out before dawn, hoping to break the back of the day's march before the heat became a complicating factor. With a winter Caminho I'm not sure whether it wouldn't be better to be a lay-a-bed. It's bloody cold until the sun puts in an appearance, and nothing seems to open early in the Portuguese country districts. Getting my morning coffee and roll, even in a fairly substantial place lke Vila do Conde, was a bit of a struggle. By far the best option -- the locals to whom I spoke concurred in this -- is Alvar & David's confeitaria, just on the town side of the bridge and run by the eponymous couple of old boys who are in their mid-seventies or thereabouts. It has the appearance of a confectionery from the outside, but in the back they keep a small coffee bar that seems to account for about 90% of their revenue. In that characteristic country way, they can also fix you up with single-malt whisky, children's bouncy balls, or sliced meats if you so require.

The inner man satisfied, it was time to get back on the road. Having brought people here, John Brierley offers no suggestions as to how to hack one's way over to the Caminho Central again. However, it's easy enough. One turns right off the main drag onto the Rua da Lupa, and then it's a straight run into Touginhos, five or six kilometres to the north-east. In Touginhos village, after turning right and crossing the river, there are enough yellow arrows to make navigation without a map easy until one rejoins the main trail at the village of Arcos.

Between Vila do Conde and Touginhos, you'll find several cafes and the occasional small supermarket. If you need anything between there and Goios, about 20 km further on, this is the time to obtain it. São Pedro de Rates, the next substantial town, is one of those numerous places in the Iberian peninsula that has a great many houses and startlingly few commercial establishments. The only place that seemed to be open for lunch was the Cafe S. Antonio, where the flies swarm the food and the customers alike. In fairness, the meal was well-presented and cheap, but so many flies were trying to land on me while I was trying to eat it that it was necessary to keep my hat on indoors. If it's like this in the third week in January, God alone knows how things are when the weather turns warmer. There's a better-looking restaurant 7 km further on at Pedra Furada, but it was closed when I passed. It looks like a dinnertime establishment only.

São Pedro de Rates does, however, have the only working water fountain I passed since leaving Porto, and a donativo albergue of sixty beds. It's a pretty basic place: rooms of ten berths apiece, handbasins for laundry, and a small kitchen (though also the only working bidet I've ever seen in an albergue). It's attended between 14:00 and 22:00, when the doors are closed. I couldn't find evidence of any heating. According to the visitors' book, the most recent pilgrim came through on the 17th. It appears, then, that on the Portugues in winter, the bed race doesn't exist. Show up anytime during opening hours, and you'll get somewhere to stay.

SPdeR also has a fine twelfth-century Romanesque church. As a person who likes to stop along the way, pray, and light the odd candle or two, the fact that most Portuguese churches appear to be locked up tight as a drum during weekdays is somewhat frustrating. This is one of the few exceptions to the rule, and well worth dropping in for a brief while even if you're not out on the trail for religious reasons.

The road between Vila do Conde and Arcos is narrow, mostly cobbled, and surprisingly busy. On most of it there's no footpath or shoulder, and it can be extremely hazardous. I was nearly squashed as flat as a flounder against a high stone wall by the tail of a 'bus coming at speed around a blind bend. The one advantage of the cobblestoned surface is that it makes it easier to hear traffic you can't see. Great caution is necessary for the pedestrian, especially when approaching a bend to the left. I could say a lot about the quiet homicidal intensity with which Portuguese drivers characteristically treat pedestrians, unequalled in my experience anywhere apart from Bangladesh, and perhaps in one of my later posts I will.

After SPdR , though, the trail turns into the familiar unpaved country lanes, passing through rolling countryside and wooded areas that are a mix of confiers and, incongruously, eucalyptus. It resembles the non-mountainous parts of Galicia in northwestern Spain, though the villages and towns are a lot cleaner and better-tended.

The final six or seven km of the day's journey are a little tiresome, winding in a serpentine way along more cobblestoned streets down the slopes above Barcelos. Tantalisingly, one can see the destination but, for a long time, one hardly seems to be getting closer to it. But then the city centre looms up quite quickly. Accommodation is hardly a problem here. There's a small but comfortable donativo albergue in the centre of town (arrive after 12:00, lights out at 22:00, be out by 09:00 the following morning), along with three or four private or non-profit ones on the main road into town, which also get high marks.

Ponte de Lima tonight (Wednesday), God willing. More to follow.

You'll love Ponte de Lima! Take a day off there if you can. Bom caminho!

 

[Anemone del Camino]

These posts are making me rewalk my last Camino. For instanceI remember very well the curve to the left where one doesn't see oncoming traffic. Rest assured, it was the only place on the rest of the route where one comes into such close proximity to oncoming traffic.

As for blankets, I can certainly understand why albergues don't chose to have them: upfront coast and especially cleaning cost. Also, for Sta Clara in particular, this is their first winter in operation which may mean that they are opting not to invest before they evaluate the need.

It's a pity the cafe in Piedra Furada was not open as the mother and daughter who run it are lovely, full of energy and offering service with a smile. And freshly squeezed orange juice. Yum.

Finally, Rates. The flies in the Rates restaurant: there wasn't a single fly in May last year, so why they would have them in January is a mystery. I had soup and a nicely prepares grill salmon steak for 5€. As for laundry at the albergue, it had a washing machine last May as well as a just renovated kitchen with a well stocked up pantry.

Looking forward to reading about today's walk!

 

[Aurigny]

Episode 3 (Tuesday)

On trips like these, some days are a joy, others a struggle. Yesterday fitted solidly into the latter category. I'm afflicted with one of those jobs in which you're never on break as such, but are always on standby in case of emergencies. Thus it was that it was necessary for me to be about my employer's business in the morning-time, and I didn't get out of Barcelos until shortly after noon. Which, as the Americans say, put me squarely behind the eight-ball in terms of making my destination at Ponte de Lima, 35 km away according to St John B's calculations.

(Let me pause here for a second to say that I'm not one of those who disparage St JB. He performs a most useful service; I love him dearly, though we've never met and never will; and even if his stuff isn't perfect, neither is mine.)

Things got off to a bad start. I was hunting for the approved Av. Manuel Pais exit, on the northwest side of town, and had the devil of a time finding it. I've learned to view cities with some apprehension. If it's a small town, getting in and out is easy; if it's a large one, I'm apt to lose half the morning looking for the way out. On this occasion I demonstrated my usual uncanny ability to stop for directions only those people who turned out not actually themselves to be from Barcelos but nonetheless to be anxious, even determined, to help. Eventually I was put on the right path and picked up the yellow arrows at the beginning of Av. Pais. So far so good. By dint of following them religiously, however, I was bemused to find myself, half an hour of mostly uphill work later, standing at the very pretty church of Abade de Nieve, one of the scenic alternatives to the main trail and at a precise right-angle thereto. Any other day I would have been charmed, but this was not the day to add superfluous kilometres to my journey.

However, nothing to be done about that. By now I was resigned to the necessity of doing my least favourite kind of walking, a forced march against the clock. There are many people who take the view that "the journey, not the arrival, matters," an excellent attitude of mind to adopt. Others find their inner peace from the accomplishment of a defined task, and I fit solidly within the second category. Giving up on Ponte de Lima today in effect meant giving up on the possibility of reaching SdC by noon on Sunday, the latest moment I can do so before having to leave Iberia. Any number of things, granted, may make it impossible for me to reach my destination in time, but I wasn't willing to concede that that moment had come yet.

Still, I think I startled the hospitalero at the very nice-looking albergue at Portela when I rolled in at 14:30, requesting the first of my two daily stamps. He too has nobody at present staying in his establishment, which has been open just seven years, and although he was too well-mannered to express the view that I was unhinged for wanting to press on to PdL at that hour of the day, his eyebrows did the job for him. I will say that if I'm doing this trip again, as I may with my wife and/or daughter, I'll look to make this place one of my night-stops.

And so back on the road. I regret to say that, for those who have been following this chronicle for tips about where to eat, I've little guidance to offer. I was briefly tempted by the Arantes restaurant, about 5 km north of Barcelos, which had an attractive-looking menu, but by that point the few daylight hours remaining to me were too precious. I grabbed some road food at a mini-mercado and chewed it on the way. As for water, once I hit the half-way point at Balagues, five or six excellent and newly-constructed fountains presented themselves. This stretch has the advantage of also being a component of the Caminho de Fatima, for pilgrims heading to the site of the Marian apparition, though that one goes in the opposite direction. Almost everywhere you see a yellow arrow pointing north, its twin, coloured blue, points southward. Having to serve two sets of pilgrims, therefore, it benefits from a higher level of infrastructure than one would otherwise expect.

The daylight definitively ran out on me at around 18:00, just as I passed the very picturesque church of Vitorino dos Piaes. That left me with around 12 km to run. Whether to walk in the dark on these trails is not something to leave as a spur-of-the-moment decision; it requires forethought, preparation and experience. The degree of difficulty increases exponentially. Even with good illumination, it's ridiculously easy to miss the yellow arrows after nightfall. (I know I missed plenty of them, because suddenly there were far fewer, it seemed, than there had previously been.) Good torches -- and, in fact, a redundancy in torches -- become a paramount necessity. On this particular stretch, the danger is not so much that you're likely to get lost. Last night, though there was no moon, every star was shining, making navigation easy. Even if they hadn't been, the villages on the way to Ponte de Lima, and the town itself, blast so much light pollution into the night sky that you're hardly likely to be unable to orient yourself. The problem you're facing, instead, is that over rough ground, if you can't see where you're putting your feet, it won't be many hundred metres before you either sprain something, bust something, or tumble off the edge of the trail altogether. If you're doing this with a single torch, and it gives up the ghost, your only recourse is to find the nearest rock and sit on it until the dawn. At this time of year, dawn breaks very late indeed.

Having lots of independent light sources, and experience in hill-walking after nightfall, I elected to press on. And although care was definitely required, it wasn't massively challenging. There are some muddy downhill stretches where one does exceedingly well not to wind up slithering along on one's backside a couple of times. At least half of the final 12 km, though, were cobblestoned back lanes skirting the villages of Facha and Seara. Eventually you get spat out onto the busy N201 road on the south side of town. It took me the better part of three hours, but that slow rate of progress was more the result of my making absolutely certain I was on the right path than anything else.

I roosted overnight at the Old Village Hostel, which, contrary to its misleading name, is a newly-opened private albergue on the east side of town. I recommend it highly, though it's a little out of the way. Breakfast and -- bliss -- a clothes-washing service (though not drying, which is EUR 2 extra) is bundled with the price. While it too is unheated, and the overnight temperature was around the freezing point, a warm woollen blanket was provided, so I slept comfortably. Let me say at this juncture that while, from a personal perspective, I regard these pilgrimages as essentially penitential exercises undertaken for the good of my soul, this can be taken entirely too far, and the refusal of albergues either to heat their establishments or to provide an adequate bed-cover falls in the latter category for me. Human beings, not possessing fur, require a warm blanket in cold weather. They are apt to become unwell if they don't get one; they certainly aren't likely to sleep very well, if at all. If an albergue isn't willing to supply so basic an amenity, the logical conclusion must surely be that they need to think about the necessity of remaining open in the wintertime. Pilgrims will be little worse off if they stay in a 'bus station overnight. Perhaps even a 'bus shelter.

I've been fortunate to enjoy good weather thus far. That ends today, I'm told. Rain later, and lots of it for tomorrow also. By day's end I hope to be in Valença, for my last night in Portugal.

 

[Jakke]

You are an eloquent writer! Too bad you (probably) did not have enough time to have a good look at PdL. My iPhone's single led lamp saved my bacon on my way out of Mos, where I encountered a lot of crossings with arrows that were not always easy to find. So, yes, good lamps are necessary if you walk in the dark. I totally understand your remarks about blankets. I understand that electricity is very costly in Portugal and Spain. Maybe the albergues should ask for a little more money so they can heat the place? Buen camino, peregrino!

 

[alexwalker]

Don't you carry a sleeping bag?

Very interesting reads, thank you: Will be walking that camino after Easter.

Buen Camino!

 

[Aurigny]

In the interest of making my destination on time, I mashed together two Brierley-days today: Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes, and Rubaies to Valença. I'm going to have to do that at least once more during the second half of the week if I'm to get to SdC on Sunday.

I was sorry to leave Ponte de Lima after so little time. It looks like a very pleasant country town, with some nice restaurants and shopping streets, not to mention the marvellous old bridge from which it takes its name. I was particularly impressed by the clever way in which the city authorities have insinuated hidden speakers into the lamp standards, so that you can listen to fine recordings of classical music by putting your back against one of them, but if you move even a few feet away, the music fades entirely into the background. Somebody had his or her thinking-cap on when coming up with that one.

For anyone travelling at this time of year, I recommend making a very good breakfast at PdL, and also acquiring there any road food that might be required en route. Though Brierley lists quite a few commercial establishments, I didn't see a single one that was open between PdL and Rubiaes, nor anything that looked as though it had been open in the recent past. I'd hoped to have a cup of something hot at the cafeteria-cum-fish farm a couple of kilometres before Revolta and to talk with the owners about their very interesting-looking set-up. But the only place the entire way whose doors were open was the Chapel of Our Lady of Nieves, small but evocative, and with a statue of St Roque, of whom there seems to be a local cult, in one corner.

There was a little bit of hill-work to be done to get over the Alto da Portela Grande, but nothing about which to write home to mother. Forty-five minutes' genteel huffing and puffing gets you there. The fountain (actually, tap) at the summit produces unusually sweet and clear water; they leave it running permanently, I imagine to prevent it from freezing up in the cold weather. Unusually, the descent from the hill is easier than the way up, and it doesn't take much more than an hour before you're in Rubiaes.

The pickings here are fairly slim, amenities-wise. I'd passed innumerable advertisements promising me the moon with a fence around it, but everything was closed except the municipal albergue itself (a donativo, but from the looks of things quite a modern and well-equipped place) and the Bom Retiro restaurant, about a kilometre away. The hospitalera at the albergue has good French, so we were able to have a conversation. It's the old story: her place was empty also. She asked me whether I'd passed anyone on the way, and I had to confess that I hadn't encountered a single pilgrim since leaving Porto. I've no idea where they all are. Perhaps they're doing the coastal route, where facilities are much more expansive. If so, I ought to start running into them tomorrow at Redondela.

Personally I think I've got the better of the two routes. I enjoyed my day on the coast, but if you've seen one beach, you've seen most of them, and I daresay it could get a bit monotonous. (I've heard this complaint ventilated frequently by those who've done the Norte.) As for me, during the past two days the central route has turned into what I'd heard, and hoped, it would be. The scenery isn't extravagant in its grandeur, but it rarely fails to please. Enough ridges and valleys to keep the eye interested; well-kept fields, divided about equally between pasture and tillage and separated by intricately-constructed dry stone walls; plenty of wooded areas with narrow roads and rough tracks; and great lungfuls of clean, oxygen-laden air, often smelling of juniper or pine. It would be a fastidious soul indeed who wasn't charmed by what he or she was seeing.

It's also nice to observe the patterns of rural life. Today the fish man and I kept bumping up against each other. The fish man drives a small white Ford van, and, whenever he hits a village, graunches through in second gear, honking his horn continually. If you want fish you emerge from your house or field; flag him down; and make your transaction. All very Dickensian. I couldn't figure out at first what he was doing. He seemed to be stalking the countrywomen as they worked outside, and I expected somebody to call the police on him until I saw him flog somebody a chunk of what looked like skate and realised what was going on.

The only dining option in Rubaies being, as I say, the Bom Retiro, I stopped there for what was my first cooked meal since São Pedro de Rates, a couple of days ago. It looked a little sketchy at first sight -- the only other patrons, a couple of elderly gentlemen who were putting themselves outside a considerable quantity of red wine, were engaging in a full and frank exchange of views at such a volume that I feared it might at any moment escalate into an exchange instead of fisticuffs. Meanwhile the owner ignored them and me, staring fixedly at what, I later saw, turned out to be a list of advertisements of the weekly specials at the local supermarket. It took a long time to distract his attention from these items. The meal he set before me thirty minutes later, however, was absolutely enormous. Although I hadn't been eating much for the previous forty-eight hours and had just completed a reasonably strenuous mountain hike, the chances of my finishing that gargantuan heap of food were zero. I've no idea how he makes a profit on it.

After that it was time for the second, and much the less interesting, leg, on to Valença. Most of it was downhill, and most also was cobbled, which is very hard not only on the feet, but the tendons. Both are registering vigorous protests as I write, my nightly intake of vitamin I notwithstanding. A couple of quite precipitous descents also present themselves, requiring careful negotiation. The second half, from the little village of Paços onward, in familiar fashion snakes along the backs of people's houses and through an industrial estate before eventually ejecting you on the outskirts of Valença. Yellow arrows are plentiful, but hardly required. The twin towns of Valença and Tui are clearly visible from the slopes, a dozen kilometres out. Just keep trudging toward the big splodge of houses at the foot of the mountain range, and you'll get there.

This is my last night in Portugal. I had not previously been here, other than to change aeroplanes in Lisbon or Porto to go somewhere else. I'll take away from it nothing but fond memories. Without exception, I've found the people here kind and considerate to a fault. They don't appear to have become jaded by the pilgrim phenomenon to the degree that has occurred in Spain, nor does their economy seem so dependent on it. Communication has often been challenging, with my eighteen words of pig-Portuguese being used to convey a startling variety of meanings, but never problematical.

The only real flies in the ointment have been first, to mix my biological metaphors, the dogs. Every Portuguese house has a dog (more usually, several); every dog behaves as though it has never previously seen a human being in its life. If I had a euro for every slavering beast that has hurled itself against the fence separating us, baying or yelping hysterically according to size and breed, I'd be flying home in first class. I've triggered off entire villages, one animal taking up the foaming-at-the-mouth routine from another as I pass. My abiding memory will probably be this unmusical canine chorus, following me (or, at night, anticipating me) wherever I went. A British friend of mine, now dead, was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the last war and spent five years in German captivity, during which time he made several unsuccessful escapes. He used to say that the greatest threat he encountered while crossing the countryside was not the guards or the guns or the identity checks, but the dogs, which made it impossible for him to be inconspicuous for five minutes. I now know exactly what he meant.

The other regrettable shortcoming is the driving, which, as a pedestrian, has turned my hair a couple of shades greyer. I don't know why it is that the Portuguese citizen's unfailing thoughtfulness and courtesy deserts him or her as soon as she or he gets behind the wheel. But it is so. I was hit once, a smart blow on the arm by the wing-mirror of a woman driving a black Toyota Yaris as I crossed the river at Barcelos. I was on the (narrow) footpath on one side; she was on the equally narrow roadway, trying to squeeze past an oncoming vehicle. I'm certain she was perfectly well aware she'd made contact with me: there was a loud bang as the mirror was knocked from its spring-loaded position and then jumped back into place. She did not stop. Frankly, though, with what I've seen, I consider myself to have got off lightly.

Another long leg tomorrow through the rain to Redondela. Half the trip is now behind me. I hope, though I can't promise, that I'll be able to sustain the same pace during the second half.

 

[Jakke]

At least you saw something you enjoyed in PdL. When I was there, there was a huge market and celebrations. The walk along the other side of the river, the Roman gardens, the old city... I could live there. Such a pity you have to hurry. I like dogs, so their barking did not bother me. They are just doing their job and most of them are just greeting you. Also Tui is a nice place for a good break and you'll enjoy the walk through Galitia if your legs allow. Plan to do Porto-SdC again some day when there are some people around. The Fall was a good time for me. Ultreia!

 

[Michw26]

What amount of money do you suggest is enough to budget per day on this route.
That includes accommodation, food and drinks?

 

[Jakke]

What amount of money do you suggest is enough to budget per day on this route.
That includes accommodation, food and drinks?

This is really for another thread, but short answer:
I'd say 30€-35€, but have a reserve for unforeseen things. I ended up buying shoes and sandals. I also needed to see the doctor (EU card) and the dentist (35€).

 

[Michw26]

This is really for another thread, but short answer:
I'd say 30€-35€, but have a reserve for unforeseen things. I ended up buying shoes and sandals. I also needed to see the doctor (EU card) and the dentist (35€).

Thank you

 

[Aurigny]

Episode 5: A red-letter day in two respects: the appearance of another pilgrim, and fun in the woods.

Valença to Redondela is a fairly long run for a Brierley-day: a little over 37 km according to his calculations, which probably aren't far off the mark. It was also raining heavily
when I started, lending an air of gloom to the proceedings. However, I've good and light waterproofs, so I wasn't too concerned about that. It was also probably as well that I get out of Valença quickly, as it has more fabric shops, selling more nice bedspreads, towels, dishcloths, etc., than I've seen for a long tme. My pack is heavy enough as it is. After being exposed to the temptations of Valença's textile emporia for any length, it would have been a great deal heavier still.

Once clear of the place and its unprepossessing twin town of Tui, moreover, things picked up. The rain continued and even intensified, but I was now in pleasant woods, along a slightly squelchy trail that was balm to my feet after the endless cobblestones of Portugal. I made reasonable time, and before too long found myself at the small village of Orbenlle for my first coffee-break of the day. For a brief moment I was confused at a crossroads. There were two duelling sets of yellow arrows at right angles, which, it appears, have been the occasion of local controversy, as some of them had been obliterated with black paint. Flipping a mental coin, I followed what seemed to be the more emphatic set to the right, and it turned out that this was indeed the correct direction. This seemingly inconsequential episode is significant, for a reason that I'll explain later on.

Soon thereafter I arrived at the massive Poligono industrial estate on the southern side of Porrino. There's supposedly a turn-off that carries the official trail around this area, but I didn't find it, something that didn't worry me too much. One can be as close to God in an industrial estate as anywhere else -- arguably, sometimes, closer. I've seen many great and impressive cathedrals in my time; on this trip I've also come across a lot of hand-scribbled prayers and devotions, tucked under a stone at a wayside cross or chapel and certain to be washed away by the first rains. As I grow older, I've increasingly come to wonder which is nearer to the spirit of true Christianity. For its first three hundred years, the Christian church as a corporation owned no property at all -- meetings and services were held at the houses of believers. I'm not sure that these were the least successful or holy three centuries in our ecclesiastical history.

Those unintentionally comical Galician official markings, correct to three decimal places, are much in evidence in these parts, and just like everybody else, I took a selfie at the one on the south side of Porrino that shows you're under the 100 km mark. Other than a quick visit at the main church, I didn't stop in the town itself -- the only albergue I saw was closed -- but continued on, hoping to make the most of the available daylight. North of Porrino, things become semi-countrified again: unpaved trails and narrow roads, but rarely being out of sight of at least one human habitation.

The albergue at Viegadana, where I'd planned to pause for a stamp and coffee, bore a sign saying it was closed "for personal reasons," so I deferred my break until Mos. Here I encountered my first fellow peregrino, another lone male traveller, in his late teens. It turned out that he's from Porto, and is doing the pilgrimage in two tranches: to Valença last year, and from there to SdC this. Mos was as far as he was going that day, so the nice people at the cafe opened up the albergue for him, leaving him in lonely splendour. I, having just 10 km to get to Redondela and nearly two hours of daylight in which to do it, declined their kind invitation to occupy a bunk for the night and continued on.

And therein lay the seeds of my undoing. It was mostly road work north of Mos, but the Brierley-map showed the trail going through a wooded area, the Monte Cornedo, parallel to the main N-550 road from Tui to Redondela. Sure enough, just after coming abeam Vigo airport, the yellow arrows pointed decisively to the left. I followed them downhill, as one does, and after passing the Restaurante Choles set off on a track through the woods, heading northwards. Nothing unusual about this: there are many such detours as one approaches a town or city.

It was now fairly dark, and after checking my progress with the aid of a couple of the official Xunta markers, I was using my light more and more to pick out the yellow arrows. Fortunately these were plentiful, as they needed to be, because the trees became more dense and the trail bifurcated or was crossed by others at many points. After a while I noticed that the arrows I was following were painted on stones on the ground rather than the trunks of trees or along walls, but even this isn't uncommon.

With the passage of time and distance, though, the story they were telling me became less and less plausible. The trail became narrower and muddier, with uphill stretches that were hard to reconcile with the Brierley profile view indicating that I ought to be descending. I seemed to be doing a lot of twisting and turning, and it was all taking far too long. After an hour of what seemed like footage from a Spanish version of The Blair Witch Project, I was certain that the plan had sprung a leak somewhere. And yet I had never ventured further than a couple of hundred metres from the previous yellow arrow before the next one reassuringly appeared, telling me I was on the right path.

The breaking-point finally came when an arrow pointed uncompromisingly up a steep embankment, albeit one that others had clearly scrambled up in the past. I followed suit, swearing mightily, and found myself on a narrow asphalted road with a high wall -- and no more arrows -- in front of me. My sour thoughts were interrupted by a loud roar, and swivelling around, I saw, not more than 800 metres away, the tail of a large commercial aircraft on an escarpment above me, beginning its take-off run.

I now knew exactly where I was. Walking in the direction of the nearest street-light, I flagged down the first car I saw and had the bad news confirmed. You're a peregrino, right? Yes, I knew as soon as I saw you. No, no, that's not the way to Redondela. You're at the airport. How to get to the pueblo? Just continue on this street until the end and turn left, then go down to the N-550. It's just six kilometres from there.

My kindly interlocutor knew his stuff. Following his directions, I pitched up on the very road I had left ninety minutes previously, less than 500 metres before the point at which I abandoned it for my ill-starred forest adventure. Cursing a blue streak, I determinedly ignored the arrows that I saw and stayed on the road. Perhaps another kilometre and a half later, I encountered yet another set of yellow arrows coming ahead and from the right, leading into a wooded area again to the left. These too I spurned. Instead, as soon as I reached the N-550, I followed it down an immensely long incline until, sure enough after 6 km or so, I was in Redondela proper.

Moral of the story? Put not your trust in princes, nor in yellow arrows either. I don't know that I'd recommend sticking to the main road as an entry-route for Redondela. Traffic flies up that road at immense speed, far more than the posted limit of 80 kph, and the shoulder is narrow and, on a few stretches, non-existent. I had a good bright light and a high-visibility jacket with which to signal my presence to oncoming traffic. It would be most hazardous to attempt that road after dark without these.

Reliable as they usually are, there are places where the arrows can play you false. Orbenlle is one of them; the approach to Redondela is another. I don't know if the ones I followed were put there by teenagers playing silly buggers or for some other reason, but there can be no question that for most of the time last night they were sending me in precisely the wrong direction. In the long run it did me little harm, beyond leading me on a 6-7 km wild-goose chase at the end of a long and tiring day. Looking at the map afterwards, it's clear that my peregrinations were confined to a relatively small forested area, of which I did a complete anti-clockwise loop to the west and south. I don't get overly upset by such things. But if my wife or daughter had been with me, they'd have been completely terrified.

In any event, the next time I approach a night-stop in the dark and see the yellow arrows inviting me to take the scenic route into town through the shrubbery, I fancy I will politely decline their kind offer.

 

[AllanHG]

This is great reading and I hope you continue writing throughout your camino! I'm adding lots of notes in my Brierley book to help while we're on that leg of the camino.

We are starting the "new-fanged-start-in Lisbon" route in early May so I expect we won't be in Porto until late in the month. Hopefully the weather is warmer by then! We are debating whether we take our light sleeping bags as well as our silk liners. We rarely used the sleeping bags on the Camino Frances last year (fall) but I'm wondering if we'll need them on this route.

Any recommendations?

 

[MeliCunn]

I am on the edge of my seat! Please continue!!

 

[jsalt]

I made reasonable time, and before too long found myself at the small village of Orbenlle for my first coffee-break of the day. For a brief moment I was confused at a crossroads. There were two duelling sets of yellow arrows at right angles, which, it appears, have been the occasion of local controversy, as some of them had been obliterated with black paint.

I am really enjoying reading about your journey – very well-written, thank you!

For others coming after you, wondering what to do at Orbenlle, take a look at this thread:

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/the-alternative-route-into-porrino.42507/

Jill

 

[Aurigny]

Episode 6:-

As practically everyone I've met on this trip has generously explained to me -- making the pardonable assumption that I'm an even greater halfwit than my physiognomy would lead one to believe -- seven days is too darn short for a trip like this. No argument here. But the fact of the matter is that I don't have eight. Nor can I expect to receive any more time off work until the summer of 2018 at the earliest. The pilgrimage either gets done this week, or it doesn't get done at all.

I could, I suppose, have cut my cloth according to my measure and begun at Tui or Valença, which seem to be to the Portugues what Sarria is to the Frances. That, though, would have meant forgoing both the historical evocations of the Porto-to-SdC route, which has a strong resonance for me, and also the opportunity to see Portugal up close. I was, and am, unwilling to give that up. The only way of squaring the circle is to put in another very long day -- closer to 50 km than 40 -- before the clock runs out on Sunday. And there are now only two possible permutations remaining for me, if I'm to make the pilgrim's Mass at noon before beating it to the airport in a taxi. Either I can mash together the two Brierley-days of Redondela-Pontevedra and Pontevedra-Caldas de Reis; or, if I'm feeling especially ambitious, have one extremely long run of Pontevedra-Padron and on to A Picarana for my final overnight. Accourding to St JB, that's about 51 km, which is a lot in anybody's language. (To be sure, I did as much a couple of times on the Frances, while trying to discover my personal limits.) On the other hand, it would give me the opportunity to have a short preparatory day to Pontevedra, after which I could rest up for the challenge. It would leave me very nicely positioned on Sunday morning. And -- the decisive factor -- as a general rule, the closer you approach SdC, the more forgettable the surrounding countryside becomes. I found this to be true on the Frances; from all I hear, it's even more true if you're coming from the south.

After mulling it over, I decided to roll the dice with the second option. Today, then, would be a comparative jog down the road of just 20 km. It would also be the day of my big splurge: a hotel room with actual heating that I could control. A place called the Boa Vila, which gets good ratings on the usual review sites, had a single for EUR 29, and could hardly be better located, slap in the middle of Pontevedra. The choice -- and the booking -- was quickly made.

Bearing in mind the weather I encountered, I'm happier with my decision than ever. The rain was coming down in sheets as I left Redondela -- an attractive town that I hope to revisit someday -- and headed into the countryside along narrow but asphalted lanes. After a while these gave way to the usual tracks, which, unfortunately, became steadily more morass-like with each passing kilometre. For the most part there was no way around these. One simply had to grit one's teeth and wade through. On the whole, the terrain on the Portugues is very good -- firmer, I'd say, than on much of the Frances. I daresay that in summertime one could get by with very little difficulty just with a pair of hiking shoes. In the winter, though, good high boots are a necessity. Even so, your feet are going to get wet. Plan accordingly.

The trail runs for a while to the east of the expensive-looking lakefront properties of the Ria de Vigo, and then descends into the considerably more downmarket town of Arcade. If you're interested in eating en route, do it here, because you won't find anything else until you reach Pontevedra. Quite a few private albergues are scattered in and around the town, but as far as I could see, none was open.

On the other side of Arcade, the trail climbed upward through a sweet-smelling forested area, studded with a couple of tiny hillside villages. For all that it seemed from time to time as though I was swimming rather than walking, it was pleasant going, and the rain didn't seem to put the birds off their music. The AP-9 motorway is clearly visible to your left, but far enough away that the sound of the traffic doesn't reach you even with a westerly wind.

All too soon I found myself descending toward Pontevedra. At Bertola chapel I changed into dry socks, something that quickly turned out to be premature. Following the yellow arrows once again sent me somewhere I had no particular desire to be: the supposedly scenic option at the Rio Gafos, about four and a half kilometres from the centre of town. If you weren't already mud up to your ears, this junior bog, the trail through which meanders back and forth across the stream via a series of improvised wooden bridges half of whose planks seemed to have rotted away, will finish the job quite adequately. I was extremely lucky not to go down like a wet fish a couple of times, and even so I was scraping the mud off my lower limbs for many minutes after I finally emerged into the midst of civilisation.

Pontevedra is another of those places that rewards a second look. The outer approaches of the town don't make much of an impression, and the arrows run out past the railway station, leaving you to figure things out for yourself (the Brierley inset map was particularly unhelpful, I thought). But the historical centre, while small, is very pretty indeed, with lots of street life and many attractive restaurants and shops. Again, if there's the opportunity for a rest day, this would be a good place to hole up before the final assault on SdC.

An early night tonight, and an extremely early departure tomorrow. However it goes, I'll be a very tired kiddie in twenty-four hours' time.

 

[Mariab]

Definitely interested and following every step. I walked the coastal route last year and hope to do the interior route this year so this could be very informative.

Bom Caminho!

Mike would love some info on accommodation on the coastal. Going in sept 2017

 

[nz feebee]

In the interest of making my destination on time, I mashed together two Brierley-days today: Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes, and Rubaies to Valença. I'm going to have to do that at least once more during the second half of the week if I'm to get to SdC on Sunday.

I was sorry to leave Ponte de Lima after so little time. It looks like a very pleasant country town, with some nice restaurants and shopping streets, not to mention the marvellous old bridge from which it takes its name. I was particularly impressed by the clever way in which the city authorities have insinuated hidden speakers into the lamp standards, so that you can listen to fine recordings of classical music by putting your back against one of them, but if you move even a few feet away, the music fades entirely into the background. Somebody had his or her thinking-cap on when coming up with that one.

For anyone travelling at this time of year, I recommend making a very good breakfast at PdL, and also acquiring there any road food that might be required en route. Though Brierley lists quite a few commercial establishments, I didn't see a single one that was open between PdL and Rubiaes, nor anything that looked as though it had been open in the recent past. I'd hoped to have a cup of something hot at the cafeteria-cum-fish farm a couple of kilometres before Revolta and to talk with the owners about their very interesting-looking set-up. But the only place the entire way whose doors were open was the Chapel of Our Lady of Nieves, small but evocative, and with a statue of St Roque, of whom there seems to be a local cult, in one corner.

There was a little bit of hill-work to be done to get over the Alto da Portela Grande, but nothing about which to write home to mother. Forty-five minutes' genteel huffing and puffing gets you there. The fountain (actually, tap) at the summit produces unusually sweet and clear water; they leave it running permanently, I imagine to prevent it from freezing up in the cold weather. Unusually, the descent from the hill is easier than the way up, and it doesn't take much more than an hour before you're in Rubiaes.

The pickings here are fairly slim, amenities-wise. I'd passed innumerable advertisements promising me the moon with a fence around it, but everything was closed except the municipal albergue itself (a donativo, but from the looks of things quite a modern and well-equipped place) and the Bom Retiro restaurant, about a kilometre away. The hospitalera at the albergue has good French, so we were able to have a conversation. It's the old story: her place was empty also. She asked me whether I'd passed anyone on the way, and I had to confess that I hadn't encountered a single pilgrim since leaving Porto. I've no idea where they all are. Perhaps they're doing the coastal route, where facilities are much more expansive. If so, I ought to start running into them tomorrow at Redondela.

Personally I think I've got the better of the two routes. I enjoyed my day on the coast, but if you've seen one beach, you've seen most of them, and I daresay it could get a bit monotonous. (I've heard this complaint ventilated frequently by those who've done the Norte.) As for me, during the past two days the interior route has turned into what I'd heard, and hoped, it would be. The scenery isn't extravagant in its grandeur, but it rarely fails to please. Enough ridges and valleys to keep the eye interested; well-kept fields, divided about equally between pasture and tillage and separated by intricately-constructed dry stone walls; plenty of wooded areas with narrow roads and rough tracks; and great lungfuls of clean, oxygen-laden air, often smelling of juniper or pine. It would be a fastidious soul indeed who wasn't charmed with what he or she was seeing.

It's also nice to observe the patterns of rural life. Today the fish man and I kept bumping up against each other. The fish man drives a small white Ford van, and, whenever he hits a village, graunches through in second gear, honking his horn continually. If you want fish you emerge from your house or field; flag him down; and make your transaction. All very Dickensian. I couldn't figure out at first what he was doing. He seemed to be stalking the countrywomen as they worked outside, and I expected somebody to call the police on him until I saw him flog somebody a chunk of what looked like skate and realised what was going on.

The only dining option in Rubaies being, as I say, the Bom Retiro, I stopped there for what was my first cooked meal since São Pedro de Rates, a couple of days ago. It looked a little sketchy at first sight -- the only other patrons, a couple of elderly gentlemen who were putting themselves outside a considerable quantity of red wine, were engaging in a full and frank exchange of views at such a volume that I feared it might at any moment escalate into an exchange instead of fisticuffs. Meanwhile the owner ignored them and me, staring fixedly at what, I later saw, turned out to be a list of advertisements of the weekly specials at the local supermarket. It took a long time to distract his attention from these items. The meal he set before me thirty minutes later, however, was absolutely enormous. Although I hadn't been eating much for the previous forty-eight hours and had just completed a reasonably strenuous mountain hike, the chances of my finishing that gargantuan heap of food were zero. I've no idea how he makes a profit on it.

After that it was time for the second, and much the less interesting, leg, on to Valença. Most of it was downhill, and most also was cobbled, which is very hard not only on the feet, but the tendons. Both are registering vigorous protests as I write, my nightly intake of vitamin I notwithstanding. A couple of quite precipitous descents also present themselves, requiring careful negotiation. The second half, from the little village of Paços onward, in familiar fashion snakes along the backs of people's houses and through an industrial estate before eventually ejecting you on the outskirts of Valença. Yellow arrows are plentiful, but hardly required. The twin towns of Valença and Tui are clearly visible from the slopes, a dozen kilometres out. Just keep trudging toward the big splodge of houses at the foot of the mountain range, and you'll get there.

This is my last night in Portugal. I had not previously been here, other than to change aeroplanes in Lisbon or Porto to go somewhere else. I'll take away from it nothing but fond memories. Without exception, I've found the people here kind and considerate to a fault. They don't appear to have become jaded by the pilgrim phenomenon to the degree that has occurred in Spain, nor does their economy seem so dependent on it. Communication has often been challenging, with my eighteen words of pig-Portuguese being used to convey a startling variety of meanings, but never problematical.

The only real flies in the ointment have been first, to mix my biological metaphors, the dogs. Every Portuguese house has a dog (more usually, several); every dog behaves as though it has never previously seen a human being in its life. If I had a euro for every slavering beast that has hurled itself against the fence separating us, baying or yelping hysterically according to size and breed, I'd be flying home in first class. I've triggered off entire villages, one animal taking up the foaming-at-the-mouth routine from another as I pass. My abiding memory will probably be this unmusical canine chorus, following me (or, at night, anticipating me) wherever I went. A British friend of mine, now dead, was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the last war and spent five years in German captivity, during which time he made several unsuccessful escapes. He used to say that the greatest threat he encountered while crossing the countryside was not the guards or the guns or the identity checks, but the dogs, which made it impossible for him to be inconspicuous for five minutes. I now know exactly what he meant.

The other regrettable shortcoming is the driving, which, as a pedestrian, has turned my hair a couple of shades greyer. I don't know why it is that the Portuguese citizen's unfailing thoughtfulness and courtesy deserts him or her as soon as she or he gets behind the wheel. But it is so. I was hit once, a smart blow on the arm by the wing-mirror of a woman driving a black Toyota Yaris as I crossed the river at Barcelos. I was on the (narrow) footpath on one side; she was on the equally narrow roadway, trying to squeeze past an oncoming vehicle. I'm certain she was perfectly well aware she'd made contact with me: there was a loud bang as the mirror was knocked from its spring-loaded position and then jumped back into place. She did not stop. Frankly, though, with what I've seen, I consider myself to have got off lightly.

Another long leg tomorrow through the rain to Redondela. Half the trip is now behind me. I hope, though I can't promise, that I'll be able to sustain the same pace during the second half.

 

[Linda V]

Did you make it in time?

 

[La Rubia]

Loving this thread - cannot wait for the last installments. Planning a 2018 coastal Portugues.

 

[nz feebee]

Episode 5: A red-letter day in two respects: the appearance of another pilgrim, and fun in the woods.

Valença to Redondela is a fairly long run for a Brierley-day: a little over 37km according to his calculations, which probably aren't far off the mark. It was also raining heavily
when I started, lending an air of gloom to the proceedings. However, I've good and light waterproofs, so I wasn't too concerned about that. It was also probably as well that I get out of Valença quickly, as it has more fabric shops, selling more nice bedspreads, towels, dishcloths, etc., than I've seen for a long tme. My pack is heavy enough as it is. After being exposed to the temptations of Valença's textile emporia for any length, it would have been a great deal heavier still.

Once clear of the place and its unprepossessing twin town of Tui, moreover, things picked up. The rain continued and even intensified, but I was now in pleasant woods, along a slightly squelchy trail that was balm to my feet after the endless cobblestones of Portugal. I made reasonable time, and before too long found myself at the small village of Orbenlle for my first coffee-break of the day. For a brief moment I was confused at a crossroads. There were two duelling sets of yellow arrows at right angles, which, it appears, have been the occasion of local controversy, as some of them had been obliterated with black paint. Flipping a mental coin, I followed what seemed to be the more emphatic set to the right, and it turned out that this was indeed the correct direction. This seemingly inconsequential episode is significant, for a reason that I'll explain later on.

Soon thereafter I arrived at the massive Poligono industrial estate on the southern side of Porrino. There's supposedly a turn-off that carries the official trail around this area, but I didn't find it, something that didn't worry me too much. One can be as close to God in an industrial estate as anywhere else -- arguably, sometimes, closer. I've seen many great and impressive cathedrals in my time; on this trip I've also come across a lot of hand-scribbled prayers and devotions, tucked under a stone at a wayside cross or chapel and certain to be washed away by the first rains. As I grow older, I've increasingly come to wonder which is nearer to the spirit of true Christianity. For its first three hundred years, the Christian church as a corporation owned no property at all -- meetings and services were held at the houses of believers. I'm not sure that these were the least successful or holy three centuries in our ecclesiastical history.

Those unintentionally comical Galician official markings, correct to three decimal places, are much in evidence in these parts, and just like everybody else, I took a selfie at the one on the south side of Porrino that shows you're under the 100 km mark. Other than a quick visit at the main church, I didn't stop in the town itself -- the only albergue I saw was closed -- but continued on, hoping to make the most of the available daylight. North of Porrino, things become semi-countrified again: unpaved trails and narrow roads, but rarely being out of sight of at least one human habitation.

The albergue at Viegadana, where I'd planned to pause for a stamp and coffee, bore a sign saying it was closed "for personal reasons," so I deferred my break until Mos. Here I encountered my first fellow peregrino, another lone male traveller, in his late teens. It turned out that he's from Porto, and is doing the pilgrimage in two tranches: to Valença last year, and from there to SdC this. Mos was as far as he was going that day, so the nice people at the cafe opened up the albergue for him, leaving him in lonely splendour. I, having just 10 km to get to Redondela and nearly two hours of daylight in which to do it, declined their kind invitation to occupy a bunk for the night and continued on.

And therein lay the seeds of my undoing. It was mostly road work north of Mos, but the Brierley-map showed the trail going through a wooded area, the Monte Cornedo, parallel to the main N-550 road from Tui to Redondela. Sure enough, just after coming abeam Vigo airport, the yellow arrows pointed decisively to the left. I followed them downhill, as one does, and after passing the Restaurante Choles set off on a track through the woods, heading northwards. Nothing unusual about this: there are many such detours as one approaches a town or city.

It was now fairly dark, and after checking my progress with the aid of a couple of the official Xunta markers, I was using my light more and more to pick out the yellow arrows. Fortunately these were plentiful, as they needed to be, because the trees became more dense and the trail bifurcated or was crossed by others at many points. After a while I noticed that the arrows I was following were painted on stones on the ground rather than the trunks of trees or along walls, but even this isn't uncommon.

With the passage of time and distance, though, the story they were telling me became less and less plausible. The trail became narrower and muddier, with uphill stretches that were hard to reconcile with the Brierley profile view indicating that I ought to be descending. I seemed to be doing a lot of twisting and turning, and it was all taking far too long. After an hour of what seemed like footage from a Spanish version of The Blair Witch Project, I was certain that the plan had sprung a leak somewhere. And yet I had never ventured further than a couple of hundred metres from the previous yellow arrow before the next one reassuringly appeared, telling me I was on the right path.

The breaking-point finally came when an arrow pointed uncompromisingly up a steep embankment, albeit one that others had clearly scrambled up in the past. I followed suit, swearing mightily, and found myself on a narrow asphalted road with a high wall -- and no more arrows -- in front of me. My sour thoughts were interrupted by a loud roar, and swivelling around, I saw, not more than 800 metres away, the tail of a large commercial aircraft on an escarpment above me, beginning its take-off run.

I now knew exactly where I was. Walking in the direction of the nearest street-light, I flagged down the first car I saw and had the bad news confirmed. You're a peregrino, right? Yes, I knew as soon as I saw you. No, no, that's not the way to Redondela. You're at the airport. How to get to the pueblo? Just continue on this street until the end and turn left, then go down to the N-550. It's just six kilometres from there.

My kindly interlocutor knew his stuff. Following his directions, I pitched up on the very road I had left ninety minutes previously, less than 500 metres before the point at which I abandoned it for my ill-starred forest adventure. Cursing a blue streak, I determinedly ignored the arrows that I saw and stayed on the road. Perhaps another kilometre and a half later, I encountered yet another set of yellow arrows coming ahead and from the right, leading into a wooded area again to the left. These too I spurned. Instead, as soon as I reached the N-550, I followed it down an immensely long incline until, sure enough after 6 km or so, I was in Redondela proper.

Moral of the story? Put not your trust in princes, nor in yellow arrows either. I don't know that I'd recommend sticking to the main road as an entry-route for Redondela. Traffic flies up that road at immense speed, far more than the posted limit of 80 kph, and the shoulder is narrow and, on a few stretches, non-existent. I had a good bright light and a high-visibility jacket with which to signal my presence to oncoming traffic. It would be most hazardous to attempt that road after dark without these.

Reliable as they usually are, there are places where the arrows can play you false. Orbenlle is one of them; the approach to Redondela is another. I don't know if the ones I followed were put there by teenagers playing silly buggers or for some other reason, but there can be no question that for most of the time last night they were sending me in precisely the wrong direction. In the long run it did me little harm, beyond leading me on a 6-7 km wild-goose chase at the end of a long and tiring day. Looking at the map afterwards, it's clear that my peregrinations were confined to a relatively small forested area, of which I did a complete anti-clockwise loop to the west and south. I don't get overly upset by such things. But if my wife or daughter had been with me, they'd have been completely terrified.

In any event, the next time I approach a night-stop in the dark and see the yellow arrows inviting me to take the scenic route into town through the shrubbery, I fancy I will politely decline their kind offer.

I'm really enjoying your posts shall be there in May 2017 looking to do the coastal so the next part of your camino I'm keen to read.

 

[Deleted member 56069]

Arrive in Porto with my wife on April 7th with my first day of walking on the 8th. Our pace will be a little less ambitious than yours. Have enjoyed your daily write ups immensely.

 

[jerby]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

Aurigny, thanks for an enjoyable read. I hope you don't mind but I have now started following your blog.
I am also doing the Portuguese route next October but only have 2 weeks but will be starting in Lisbon and ending in Porto. Then hopefully do the final stage next year.
It is interesting that it is so cold around Porto, but with you heading up north and the climate change, it's to be expected. Take care. Jerry

 

[Dawn Blais]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

 

[Dawn Blais]

Thanks so much for the info. We will be doing this route in September so we will be following your posts
closely.

 

[Aurigny]

Setting out on a pilgrimage, one never knows whether one is going to get to complete it. So many things can go wrong that it sometimes seems miraculous to me that anyone arrives in one piece at the end. On the Frances last year, I saw people much fitter, stronger and younger than I go down like ninepins. Probably the most heartbreaking case was a young Dutch girl, tall and strong, who tore a muscle in her leg with about 60 km to go and more than seven hundred behind her. Her flight home was leaving in three days, but there was no possibility of her being able to hobble anywhere more distant than the bathroom by that stage. It had been a long time since I'd seen anybody weep so bitterly.

So I was aware of the very real chance that I might not make SdC by Sunday, and I made no promises to myself or to anyone else. My plan was simple. I'd get up early; leave the hotel at 05:00, and walk either until I reached A Picarana, or until I could no longer put one foot in front of another. As a scheme it had the merit of simplicity. Either I would get there or I wouldn't.

My genial host at the Boa Vila was taken aback when he learned of my plans. At first he misunderstood me to mean that I intended to walk to SdC non-stop. When I told him that my aim was a little more modest, he still opined that I was loco -- the first time anybody in real life has favoured me with that description, at least in Spanish. I might, he conceded, have an outside chance of making Padron before one or both legs dropped off, but he didn't see me getting any further than that.

I didn't feel in any position to contradict him. It was in a spirit of determination rather than expectation that I set off across the Puente del Burgo and almost immediately plunged into the darkened countryside. Dawn breaks late at this time of year -- close to 09:00 -- so I was going to have to put in the first four hours or so by torchlight. It was both rainy and misty, cutting visibility to a couple of dozen metres and casting an eerie ambience over the proceedings. Fortunately, the trail was a great deal more straight than the one above Redondela through which I had floundered a couple of nights previously. After I passed the starting-point for the Variante Espiritual, moreover, I could hear both the river and the high-speed train to my left, even if I could see neither, confirming that I was where I needed to be.

I knew that there was an albergue with an attached cafe at Barros, a couple of hours past my departure point, but I didn't seriously expect it to be open at this time of year, so I wasn't disappointed when it wasn't. In anticipation of a long day on short commons, I'd raided one of the Pontevedra supermarkets the previous evening and was self-sufficient in sandwiches, fruit and drinks. I fed myself on the march between Barros and Briallos, it being much too cold and wet to make stopping anything other than an exercise in misery. Eventually the sky to the east started to lighten, and I paralleled my old friend the N-550 into Caldas de Reis, arriving about half past nine and feeling that I'd made a good start to the day.

Caldas looks like a place that's struggling economically, as are many of these northern Spanish towns. One of the few establishments that seemed open for business was the Timonel combination bar-and-private-albergue, just before the bridge across the River Umia. Its window advertised its willingness to provide coffee and credencial stamps to passers-by, and being in want of both, I dropped in.

Usually I prefer to obtain my stamps from churches, given the religious nature of the pilgrimage, or from official albergues. It surprises me how few of the former are prepared to provide this facility. On the entire trip I found only one place, the chapel at Bertola, that had a self-service sello for pilgrims. It seems to me that they're missing an opportunity, not least inasmuch as visitors are positively correlated with donations. On the other hand, every bar and watering hole along the trail has a stamp available and is more than happy to provide it to all comers. I've always felt somewhat inhibited about making use of this facility, not wanting to present to the Pilgrims' Office in SdC a credencial that looks as though I've been on a three-hundred-kilometre-long pub crawl. But in wintertime, one has to take one's stamps wherever one can find them, so the Timonel it was.

Shortly after I arrived, to my surprise and pleasure, a second pilgrim showed up. This was a powerfully-built young man with a military haircut and a backpack almost as big as himself. He stayed only to toss down a cafe con leche and give me a bone-crushing handshake before continuing on his way. After finishing my own coffee, I followed shortly afterwards. On the way out of town I passed the "official" albergue, a sign on whose door announced that it wouldn't be open until 15:00, ratifying my decision to get the Timonel's stamp.

The slanting rain, which had eased off for a bit as I pulled into Caldas, now came down again in earnest, and I regretted my decision to have just a single coffee. Five km out of town a cafe called the Esperon, at a spot where the trail crossed the main road, looked like a place to rectify that omission. When I got there, though, I found that it was closed until February. Still, the 'bus shelter across the road seemed like a good spot to have lunch in comparative comfort, so I holed up there and made inroads on my sandwiches. As I was doing so, my friend the fellow pilgrim pitched up, surprised to find that I had passed him en route. (As, indeed, was I. I walk faster than most people, but I would have laid long odds on his leaving me in the dust.) It trainspired that he too was from Portugal, married, but not yet having any children. His English was about as good as my Portuguese, but by pooling our combined linguistic resources we were able to communicate quite well. He needed his alone time, he told me, and his wife was more than willing for him to get it in this form. But he wouldn't be going nearly as far as me: thirty kilometres or so was his daily limit.

After we had swallowed our respective lunches, we headed uphill. Each walking at our natural pace, it turned out that I was indeed the faster of the two. Being on a schedule, I forged ahead, though I was sorry to forgo his company after so much solitude. The trail now weaved back and forth across the N-550, which parallels the Portugues in the same way that the N-120 does the Frances, before finally settling down on the eastern side. There wasn't very much to note about the countryside it passed through, though the fact that the cloud base was down to around 100' AGL would have made admiring the view difficult in any event.

At least I was making good time. At this stage of the game, a lot of one's appendages hurt in one way or another, and one always worries that the ever-present dull ache in calf or tendon will suddenly flare up into something more problematical. Gratifyingly, though, my body was standing up to both the pace and the distance. Over the past couple of days I've felt it hardening as I begin to get into proper shape once again. I now felt pretty confident of making my destination.

I rolled into Padron at the 41 km mark, around half past three, feeling that I'd earned my second coffee of the day. The approach loops around a large factory whose three chimneys belch an enormous plume of some noxious substance into the sky, and then follows a canal whose water resembles minestrone soup. The centre of town is in keeping with what precedes it, and I was a little surprised to see a small tourist office on what looked to be a large traffic island in the middle of the main drag. The official there seemed equally surprised to see me, or indeed anyone, carefully noting my nationality, point of origin and destination for his records. But he generously stamped my credential, and courteously wished me the best of luck in reaching A Picarana, ten kilometres further on.

Happily, given the length of my day thus far, this was quite a fast run. Nearly all of it is along paved roads, just a few hundred metres east of the N-550, with a tall wooded ridge on one's right-hand side and nothing much except traffic to look at on one's left. There was still half an hour's daylight left when I squelched back onto the main road and checked in at my night stop, the Hostel Glorioso. Amusingly, given what brought me here, this is located next door to a large pole-dancing establishment with a gaudy neon sign on top and vivid decorations on the frosted glass doors that leave little about the nature of the business to the imagination.

That aside, the day could hardly have gone better for me. The distance-marker outside the hostel shows 14.4 km to run to the cathedral tomorrow. I am wetter and colder than it's possible for me to describe, and the Arctic conditions of the Glorioso, in which, yet again, I'm the only guest, give little promise of my being able to do much about the second problem, anyway. I have a single set of dry clothes for the morning, though that's forecast to be even rainier than what I encountered today, if such a thing is possible. Still, I'm an extremely cheerful bunny. Starting out this morning, it was odds-against my reaching SdC in time to finish the job. Now, setting my alarm for a 06:00 departure tomorrow, I greatly fancy my chances.

 

[naplesdon]

Love sharing your story. Unlike your rainy, cold journey I started out of Porto on a extremely hot day in July 2013; I'm not sure which is worse. Those section of road walking that squeeze you between a guardrail and truck traffic is nothing but white knuckle territory. I remember several pilgrims who described the cobbled part of the CP as blister massagers. Fortunately for me I only got turned around once due to the the railroad construction north of Padron, it was a 2 hour detour to "nowhere." I agree the markings are quite confusing sometimes.

 

[Tim Greig]

Setting out on a pilgrimage, one never knows whether one is going to get to complete it. So many things can go wrong that it sometimes seems miraculous to me that anyone arrives in one piece at the end. On the Frances last year, I saw people much fitter, stronger and younger than I go down like ninepins. Probably the most heartbreaking case was a young Dutch girl, tall and strong, who tore a muscle in her leg with about 60 km to go and more than seven hundred behind her. Her flight home was leaving in three days, but there was no possibility of her being able to hobble anywhere more distant than the bathroom by that stage. It had been a long time since I'd seen anybody weep so bitterly.

So I was aware of the very real chance that I might not make SdC by Sunday, and I made no promises to myself or to anyone else. My plan was simple. I'd get up early; leave the hotel at 05:00, and walk either until I reached A Picarana, or until I could no longer put one foot in front of another. As a scheme it had the merit of simplicity. Either I would get there or I wouldn't.

My genial host at the Boa Vila was taken aback when he learned of my plans. At first he misunderstood me to mean that I intended to walk to SdC non-stop. When I told him that my aim was a little more modest, he still opined that I was loco -- the first time anybody in real life has favoured me with that description, at least in Spanish. I might, he conceded, have an outside chance of making Padron before one or both legs dropped off, but he didn't see me getting any further than that.

I didn't feel in any position to contradict him. It was in a spirit of determination rather than expectation that I set off across the Puente del Burgo and almost immediately plunged into the darkened countryside. Dawn breaks late at this time of year -- close to 09:00 -- so I was going to have to put in the first four hours or so by torchlight. It was both rainy and misty, cutting visibility to a couple of dozen metres and casting an eerie ambience over the proceedings. Fortunately, the trail was a great deal more straight than the one above Redondela through which I had floundered a couple of nights previously. After I passed the starting-point for the Variante Espiritual, moreover, I could hear both the river and the high-speed train to my left, even if I could see neither, confirming that I was where I needed to be.

I knew that there was an albergue with an attached cafe at Barros, a couple of hours past my departure point, but I didn't seriously expect it to be open at this time of year, so I wasn't disappointed when it wasn't. In anticipation of a long day on short commons, I'd raided one of the Pontevedra supermarkets the previous evening and was self-sufficient in sandwiches, fruit and drinks. I fed myself on the march between Barros and Briallos, it being much too cold and wet to make stopping anything other than an exercise in misery. Eventually the sky to the east started to lighten, and I paralleled my old friend the N-550 into Caldas de Reis, arriving about half past nine and feeling that I'd made a good start to the day.

Caldas looks like a place that's struggling economically, as are many of these northern Spanish towns. One of the few establishments that seemed open for business was the Timonel combination bar-and-private-albergue, just before the bridge across the River Umia. Its window advertised its willingness to provide coffee and credencial stamps to passers-by, and being in want of both, I dropped in.

Usually I prefer to obtain my stamps from churche, given the religious nature of the pilgrimage, or from official albergues. It surprises me how few of the former are prepared to provide this facility. On the entire trip, I found only one place, the chapel at Bertola, that had a self-service sello for pilgrims. It seems to me that they're missing an opportunity, not least inasmuch as visitors are positively correlated with donations. On the other hand, every bar and watering hole along the trail has a stamp available and is more than happy to provide it to all comers. I've always felt somewhat inhibited about making use of this facility, not wanting to present to the Pilgrims' Office in SdC a credencial that looks as though I've been on a three-hundred-kilometre-long pub crawl. But in wintertime, one has to take one's stamps wherever one can find them, so the Timonel it was.

Shortly after I arrived, to my surprise and pleasure, a second pilgrim showed up. This was a powerfully-built young man with a military haircut and a backpack almost as big as himself. He stayed only to toss down a cafe con leche and give me a bone-crushing handshake before continuing on his way. After finishing my own coffee, I followed shortly afterwards. On the way out of town I passed the "official" albergue, a sign on whose door announced that it wouldn't be open until 15:00, ratifying my decision to get the Timonel's stamp.

The slanting rain, which had eased off for a bit as I pulled into Caldas, now came down again in earnest, and I regretted my decision to have just a single coffee. Five km out of town a place called the Esperon, at a spot where the trail crossed the main road, looked like a place to rectify that omission. When I got there, though, I found that it was closed until February. Still, the 'bus shelter across the road seemed like a good place to have lunch in comparative comfort, so I holed up there and made inroads on my sandwiches. As I was doing so, my friend the fellow pilgrim pitched up, surprised to find that I had passed him en route. (As, indeed, was I. I walk faster than most people, but I would have laid long odds on his leaving me in the dust.) It trainspired that he too was from Portugal, married, but not yet having any children. His English was about as good as my Portuguese, but by pooling our combined linguistic resources we were able to communicate quite well. He needed his alone time, he told me, and his wife was more than willing for him to get it in this form. But he wouldn't be going nearly as far as me: thirty kilometres or so was his daily limit.

After we had swallowed our respective lunches, we headed uphill. Each walking at our natural pace, it turned out that I was indeed the faster of the two. Being on a schedule, I forged ahead, though I was sorry to forgo his company after so much solitude. The trail now weaved back and forth across the N-550, which parallels the Portugues in the same way that the N-120 does the Frances, before finally settling down on the eastern side. There wasn't very much to note about the countryside it passed through, though the fact that the cloud base was down to around 100' AGL would have made admiring the view difficult in any event.

At least I was making good time. At this stage of the game, a lot of one's appendages hurt in one way or another, and one always worries that the ever-present dull ache in calf or tendon will suddenly flare up into something more problematical. Gratifyingly, though, my body was standing up to both the pace and the distance. Over the past couple of days I've felt it hardening as I begin to get into proper shape once again. I now felt pretty confident of making my destination.

I rolled into Padron at the 41 km mark, around half past three, feeling that I'd earned my second coffee of the day. The approach loops around a large factory whose three chimneys belch an enormous plume of some noxious substance into the sky, and then follows a canal whose water resembles minestrone soup. The centre of town is in keeping with what precedes it, and I was a little surprised to see a small tourist office on what looked to be a large traffic island in the middle of the main drag. The official there seemed equally surprised to see me, or indeed anyone, carefully noting my nationality, point of origin and destination for his records. But he generously stamped my credential, and courteously wished me the best of luck in reaching A Picarana, ten kilometres further on.

Happily, given the length of my day thus far, this was quite a fast run. Nearly all of it is along paved roads, just a few hundred metres east of the N-550, with a tall wooded ridge on one's right-hand side and nothing much except traffic to look at on one's left. There was still half an hour's daylight left when I squelched back onto the main road and checked in at my night stop, the Hostel Glorioso. Amusingly, given what brought me here, this is located next door to a large pole-dancing establishment with a gaudy neon sign on top and vivid decorations on the frosted glass doors that leave little about the nature of the business to the imagination.

That aside, the day could hardly have gone better for me. The distance-marker outside the hostel shows 14.4 km to run to the cathedral tomorrow. I am wetter and colder than it's possible for me to describe, and the Arctic conditions of the Glorioso, in which, yet again, I'm the only guest, give little promise of my being able to do much about the second problem, anyway. I have a single set of dry clothes for the morning, though that's forecast to be even rainier than what I encountered today, if such a thing is possible. Still, I'm an extremely cheerful bunny. Starting out this morning, it was odds-against my reaching SdC in time to finish the job. Now, setting my alarm for a 06:00 departure tomorrow, I greatly fancy my chances.

Wonderful read. Good luck tomorrow

 

[Lynda69]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

I am planning on hiking from Porto to santiago starting mid August. Excited and a little nervous about finding places to sleep as it's busier then!
Not sure how much planning I need to do. I am more of a wing it and see what happens traveler. Pros and cons to that I learn every trip.
I'll be following this thread

 

[Russ J]

In the interest of making my destination on time, I mashed together two Brierley-days today: Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes, and Rubaies to Valença. I'm going to have to do that at least once more during the second half of the week if I'm to get to SdC on Sunday.

I was sorry to leave Ponte de Lima after so little time. It looks like a very pleasant country town, with some nice restaurants and shopping streets, not to mention the marvellous old bridge from which it takes its name. I was particularly impressed by the clever way in which the city authorities have insinuated hidden speakers into the lamp standards, so that you can listen to fine recordings of classical music by putting your back against one of them, but if you move even a few feet away, the music fades entirely into the background. Somebody had his or her thinking-cap on when coming up with that one.

For anyone travelling at this time of year, I recommend making a very good breakfast at PdL, and also acquiring there any road food that might be required en route. Though Brierley lists quite a few commercial establishments, I didn't see a single one that was open between PdL and Rubiaes, nor anything that looked as though it had been open in the recent past. I'd hoped to have a cup of something hot at the cafeteria-cum-fish farm a couple of kilometres before Revolta and to talk with the owners about their very interesting-looking set-up. But the only place the entire way whose doors were open was the Chapel of Our Lady of Nieves, small but evocative, and with a statue of St Roque, of whom there seems to be a local cult, in one corner.

There was a little bit of hill-work to be done to get over the Alto da Portela Grande, but nothing about which to write home to mother. Forty-five minutes' genteel huffing and puffing gets you there. The fountain (actually, tap) at the summit produces unusually sweet and clear water; they leave it running permanently, I imagine to prevent it from freezing up in the cold weather. Unusually, the descent from the hill is easier than the way up, and it doesn't take much more than an hour before you're in Rubiaes.

The pickings here are fairly slim, amenities-wise. I'd passed innumerable advertisements promising me the moon with a fence around it, but everything was closed except the municipal albergue itself (a donativo, but from the looks of things quite a modern and well-equipped place) and the Bom Retiro restaurant, about a kilometre away. The hospitalera at the albergue has good French, so we were able to have a conversation. It's the old story: her place was empty also. She asked me whether I'd passed anyone on the way, and I had to confess that I hadn't encountered a single pilgrim since leaving Porto. I've no idea where they all are. Perhaps they're doing the coastal route, where facilities are much more expansive. If so, I ought to start running into them tomorrow at Redondela.

Personally I think I've got the better of the two routes. I enjoyed my day on the coast, but if you've seen one beach, you've seen most of them, and I daresay it could get a bit monotonous. (I've heard this complaint ventilated frequently by those who've done the Norte.) As for me, during the past two days the interior route has turned into what I'd heard, and hoped, it would be. The scenery isn't extravagant in its grandeur, but it rarely fails to please. Enough ridges and valleys to keep the eye interested; well-kept fields, divided about equally between pasture and tillage and separated by intricately-constructed dry stone walls; plenty of wooded areas with narrow roads and rough tracks; and great lungfuls of clean, oxygen-laden air, often smelling of juniper or pine. It would be a fastidious soul indeed who wasn't charmed with what he or she was seeing.

It's also nice to observe the patterns of rural life. Today the fish man and I kept bumping up against each other. The fish man drives a small white Ford van, and, whenever he hits a village, graunches through in second gear, honking his horn continually. If you want fish you emerge from your house or field; flag him down; and make your transaction. All very Dickensian. I couldn't figure out at first what he was doing. He seemed to be stalking the countrywomen as they worked outside, and I expected somebody to call the police on him until I saw him flog somebody a chunk of what looked like skate and realised what was going on.

The only dining option in Rubaies being, as I say, the Bom Retiro, I stopped there for what was my first cooked meal since São Pedro de Rates, a couple of days ago. It looked a little sketchy at first sight -- the only other patrons, a couple of elderly gentlemen who were putting themselves outside a considerable quantity of red wine, were engaging in a full and frank exchange of views at such a volume that I feared it might at any moment escalate into an exchange instead of fisticuffs. Meanwhile the owner ignored them and me, staring fixedly at what, I later saw, turned out to be a list of advertisements of the weekly specials at the local supermarket. It took a long time to distract his attention from these items. The meal he set before me thirty minutes later, however, was absolutely enormous. Although I hadn't been eating much for the previous forty-eight hours and had just completed a reasonably strenuous mountain hike, the chances of my finishing that gargantuan heap of food were zero. I've no idea how he makes a profit on it.

After that it was time for the second, and much the less interesting, leg, on to Valença. Most of it was downhill, and most also was cobbled, which is very hard not only on the feet, but the tendons. Both are registering vigorous protests as I write, my nightly intake of vitamin I notwithstanding. A couple of quite precipitous descents also present themselves, requiring careful negotiation. The second half, from the little village of Paços onward, in familiar fashion snakes along the backs of people's houses and through an industrial estate before eventually ejecting you on the outskirts of Valença. Yellow arrows are plentiful, but hardly required. The twin towns of Valença and Tui are clearly visible from the slopes, a dozen kilometres out. Just keep trudging toward the big splodge of houses at the foot of the mountain range, and you'll get there.

This is my last night in Portugal. I had not previously been here, other than to change aeroplanes in Lisbon or Porto to go somewhere else. I'll take away from it nothing but fond memories. Without exception, I've found the people here kind and considerate to a fault. They don't appear to have become jaded by the pilgrim phenomenon to the degree that has occurred in Spain, nor does their economy seem so dependent on it. Communication has often been challenging, with my eighteen words of pig-Portuguese being used to convey a startling variety of meanings, but never problematical.

The only real flies in the ointment have been first, to mix my biological metaphors, the dogs. Every Portuguese house has a dog (more usually, several); every dog behaves as though it has never previously seen a human being in its life. If I had a euro for every slavering beast that has hurled itself against the fence separating us, baying or yelping hysterically according to size and breed, I'd be flying home in first class. I've triggered off entire villages, one animal taking up the foaming-at-the-mouth routine from another as I pass. My abiding memory will probably be this unmusical canine chorus, following me (or, at night, anticipating me) wherever I went. A British friend of mine, now dead, was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the last war and spent five years in German captivity, during which time he made several unsuccessful escapes. He used to say that the greatest threat he encountered while crossing the countryside was not the guards or the guns or the identity checks, but the dogs, which made it impossible for him to be inconspicuous for five minutes. I now know exactly what he meant.

The other regrettable shortcoming is the driving, which, as a pedestrian, has turned my hair a couple of shades greyer. I don't know why it is that the Portuguese citizen's unfailing thoughtfulness and courtesy deserts him or her as soon as she or he gets behind the wheel. But it is so. I was hit once, a smart blow on the arm by the wing-mirror of a woman driving a black Toyota Yaris as I crossed the river at Barcelos. I was on the (narrow) footpath on one side; she was on the equally narrow roadway, trying to squeeze past an oncoming vehicle. I'm certain she was perfectly well aware she'd made contact with me: there was a loud bang as the mirror was knocked from its spring-loaded position and then jumped back into place. She did not stop. Frankly, though, with what I've seen, I consider myself to have got off lightly.

Another long leg tomorrow through the rain to Redondela. Half the trip is now behind me. I hope, though I can't promise, that I'll be able to sustain the same pace during the second half.[/QU

Setting out on a pilgrimage, one never knows whether one is going to get to complete it. So many things can go wrong that it sometimes seems miraculous to me that anyone arrives in one piece at the end. On the Frances last year, I saw people much fitter, stronger and younger than I go down like ninepins. Probably the most heartbreaking case was a young Dutch girl, tall and strong, who tore a muscle in her leg with about 60 km to go and more than seven hundred behind her. Her flight home was leaving in three days, but there was no possibility of her being able to hobble anywhere more distant than the bathroom by that stage. It had been a long time since I'd seen anybody weep so bitterly.

So I was aware of the very real chance that I might not make SdC by Sunday, and I made no promises to myself or to anyone else. My plan was simple. I'd get up early; leave the hotel at 05:00, and walk either until I reached A Picarana, or until I could no longer put one foot in front of another. As a scheme it had the merit of simplicity. Either I would get there or I wouldn't.

My genial host at the Boa Vila was taken aback when he learned of my plans. At first he misunderstood me to mean that I intended to walk to SdC non-stop. When I told him that my aim was a little more modest, he still opined that I was loco -- the first time anybody in real life has favoured me with that description, at least in Spanish. I might, he conceded, have an outside chance of making Padron before one or both legs dropped off, but he didn't see me getting any further than that.

I didn't feel in any position to contradict him. It was in a spirit of determination rather than expectation that I set off across the Puente del Burgo and almost immediately plunged into the darkened countryside. Dawn breaks late at this time of year -- close to 09:00 -- so I was going to have to put in the first four hours or so by torchlight. It was both rainy and misty, cutting visibility to a couple of dozen metres and casting an eerie ambience over the proceedings. Fortunately, the trail was a great deal more straight than the one above Redondela through which I had floundered a couple of nights previously. After I passed the starting-point for the Variante Espiritual, moreover, I could hear both the river and the high-speed train to my left, even if I could see neither, confirming that I was where I needed to be.

I knew that there was an albergue with an attached cafe at Barros, a couple of hours past my departure point, but I didn't seriously expect it to be open at this time of year, so I wasn't disappointed when it wasn't. In anticipation of a long day on short commons, I'd raided one of the Pontevedra supermarkets the previous evening and was self-sufficient in sandwiches, fruit and drinks. I fed myself on the march between Barros and Briallos, it being much too cold and wet to make stopping anything other than an exercise in misery. Eventually the sky to the east started to lighten, and I paralleled my old friend the N-550 into Caldas de Reis, arriving about half past nine and feeling that I'd made a good start to the day.

Caldas looks like a place that's struggling economically, as are many of these northern Spanish towns. One of the few establishments that seemed open for business was the Timonel combination bar-and-private-albergue, just before the bridge across the River Umia. Its window advertised its willingness to provide coffee and credencial stamps to passers-by, and being in want of both, I dropped in.

Usually I prefer to obtain my stamps from churche, given the religious nature of the pilgrimage, or from official albergues. It surprises me how few of the former are prepared to provide this facility. On the entire trip, I found only one place, the chapel at Bertola, that had a self-service sello for pilgrims. It seems to me that they're missing an opportunity, not least inasmuch as visitors are positively correlated with donations. On the other hand, every bar and watering hole along the trail has a stamp available and is more than happy to provide it to all comers. I've always felt somewhat inhibited about making use of this facility, not wanting to present to the Pilgrims' Office in SdC a credencial that looks as though I've been on a three-hundred-kilometre-long pub crawl. But in wintertime, one has to take one's stamps wherever one can find them, so the Timonel it was.

Shortly after I arrived, to my surprise and pleasure, a second pilgrim showed up. This was a powerfully-built young man with a military haircut and a backpack almost as big as himself. He stayed only to toss down a cafe con leche and give me a bone-crushing handshake before continuing on his way. After finishing my own coffee, I followed shortly afterwards. On the way out of town I passed the "official" albergue, a sign on whose door announced that it wouldn't be open until 15:00, ratifying my decision to get the Timonel's stamp.

The slanting rain, which had eased off for a bit as I pulled into Caldas, now came down again in earnest, and I regretted my decision to have just a single coffee. Five km out of town a place called the Esperon, at a spot where the trail crossed the main road, looked like a place to rectify that omission. When I got there, though, I found that it was closed until February. Still, the 'bus shelter across the road seemed like a good place to have lunch in comparative comfort, so I holed up there and made inroads on my sandwiches. As I was doing so, my friend the fellow pilgrim pitched up, surprised to find that I had passed him en route. (As, indeed, was I. I walk faster than most people, but I would have laid long odds on his leaving me in the dust.) It trainspired that he too was from Portugal, married, but not yet having any children. His English was about as good as my Portuguese, but by pooling our combined linguistic resources we were able to communicate quite well. He needed his alone time, he told me, and his wife was more than willing for him to get it in this form. But he wouldn't be going nearly as far as me: thirty kilometres or so was his daily limit.

After we had swallowed our respective lunches, we headed uphill. Each walking at our natural pace, it turned out that I was indeed the faster of the two. Being on a schedule, I forged ahead, though I was sorry to forgo his company after so much solitude. The trail now weaved back and forth across the N-550, which parallels the Portugues in the same way that the N-120 does the Frances, before finally settling down on the eastern side. There wasn't very much to note about the countryside it passed through, though the fact that the cloud base was down to around 100' AGL would have made admiring the view difficult in any event.

At least I was making good time. At this stage of the game, a lot of one's appendages hurt in one way or another, and one always worries that the ever-present dull ache in calf or tendon will suddenly flare up into something more problematical. Gratifyingly, though, my body was standing up to both the pace and the distance. Over the past couple of days I've felt it hardening as I begin to get into proper shape once again. I now felt pretty confident of making my destination.

I rolled into Padron at the 41 km mark, around half past three, feeling that I'd earned my second coffee of the day. The approach loops around a large factory whose three chimneys belch an enormous plume of some noxious substance into the sky, and then follows a canal whose water resembles minestrone soup. The centre of town is in keeping with what precedes it, and I was a little surprised to see a small tourist office on what looked to be a large traffic island in the middle of the main drag. The official there seemed equally surprised to see me, or indeed anyone, carefully noting my nationality, point of origin and destination for his records. But he generously stamped my credential, and courteously wished me the best of luck in reaching A Picarana, ten kilometres further on.

Happily, given the length of my day thus far, this was quite a fast run. Nearly all of it is along paved roads, just a few hundred metres east of the N-550, with a tall wooded ridge on one's right-hand side and nothing much except traffic to look at on one's left. There was still half an hour's daylight left when I squelched back onto the main road and checked in at my night stop, the Hostel Glorioso. Amusingly, given what brought me here, this is located next door to a large pole-dancing establishment with a gaudy neon sign on top and vivid decorations on the frosted glass doors that leave little about the nature of the business to the imagination.

That aside, the day could hardly have gone better for me. The distance-marker outside the hostel shows 14.4 km to run to the cathedral tomorrow. I am wetter and colder than it's possible for me to describe, and the Arctic conditions of the Glorioso, in which, yet again, I'm the only guest, give little promise of my being able to do much about the second problem, anyway. I have a single set of dry clothes for the morning, though that's forecast to be even rainier than what I encountered today, if such a thing is possible. Still, I'm an extremely cheerful bunny. Starting out this morning, it was odds-against my reaching SdC in time to finish the job. Now, setting my alarm for a 06:00 departure tomorrow, I greatly fancy my chances.

The whole community is cheering for you. This is a joy to follow!

 

[Rod Murray]

Wonderful read!

 

[Brian F]

A really great read Aurigny thanks and keep it up.

 

[Aurigny]

There's a great deal to be said for leaving yourself with a short day when you conclude a pilgrimage. Last year on the Frances, approaching O Pedrouzo -- 20 km out of SdC -- in mid-afternoon, I considered the possibility of simply keeping on walking until I reached my destination. In the end, fortunately, saner counsels prevailed. God would not be impressed, and nobody else would care, if I completed the journey in one fewer day. No medals are presented to the fastest finishers, nor should any be. So instead of flopping across the finish line at nightfall like a wet dishrag and with nowhere arranged in town to stay, I rested up in Pedrouzo and planned out the following day like any other. It was, I feel sure, the right decision, especially in light of the fact that by the very end one is getting a bit punchy and prone to make ill-judged and impulsive choices.

This time I contrived an even shorter final approach, just 14 km from A Picarana. That too was the right decision. At this point, after a week of near-maximum effort, I was beginning to run short on oomph, not physically but mentally. Whereas on the Frances I had been most impressed during the final hike by how I was enjoying all the familiar things for the very last time -- my last racion of tortilla, my last sello -- and how different daily life would be in the aftermath, at this current moment, on a cold and damp morning in January 2017, I was ready for it all to be over. A short, intense pilgrimage, performed according to a fixed and inflexible timescale, is in some respects the worst of both worlds. One experiences the hardest of the physical challenges -- the process of re-acclimatising one's body to a set of strenuous and often painful demands -- without having the time and leisure to reorient one's mind and spirit fully with the rhythms of this more basic lifestyle. That doesn't mean that a short pilgrimage isn't worth doing, but in the nature of things it's going to have a very different impact, including on the emotions, from the kind that takes as long as it takes.

It was still dark at 06:00 yesterday morning when I headed back on the trail for the last time, and the rain was more intense and penetrating than ever. The wind blew it in squalls from right to left, and then, just as one's cheek had become numb, a sudden swirl would lash it across the other side of one's face. So much standing water had been deposited overnight that it was impossible to avoid splashing my way through deep puddles, with the result that after a quarter of an hour my feet -- and my last pair of socks -- were sodden again. For all that I was facing, both literally and figuratively, no more than a Sunday's walk, this final day was still going to be a test of resolve.

Out of A Picarana, the route follows the left-hand shoulder of the N-550 for a while, before branching off into a series of detours the aim of which -- a worthy one, to be sure -- seems to be to separate the pilgrim from vehicular traffic rather than facilitating his or her progress toward the destination. Especially after the half-way point, it seemed as though the official route was often doubling back on itself. Visually it offers few concessions to the traveller. As the leaden sky lightened to a degree, a series of motorway overpasses and railway level-crossings manifested themselves, interspersed with what seemed to be an entirely random sojourn through a kilometre of suburban parkland that afforded my mud-stained lower limbs a final squelch-fest. Unlike the Frances, there are no significant and meaningful landmarks like Lavacolla or the Monte de Gozo to mark one's progress. One simply keeps plugging along a series of anonymous back-roads and slip-roads until one reaches a large apartment complex in the Santa Marta suburb of SdC. About the best that can be said of the final few kilometres along the city streets, from that point onward, is that it runs as straight as an arrow until you find yourself at last in the massive plaza in front of the Cathedral, still largely obliterated by scaffolding from the ongoing restoration works.

It's often said that one's arrival at the destination is anti-climactic. This is especially so on an SdC Sunday morning in wintertime. Hardly anyone was to be seen on the streets; the overwhelming majority of businesses, of the kind that would be doing a roaring trade in high summer, were tightly shuttered. I hadn't made particularly good time on this last leg, partly because of the conditions and partly because it's mostly uphill, so it was nearly ten o'clock when I presented myself, dripping water in all directions, at the door of the Pilgrims' Office to acquire my final stamp.

As luck would have it, the register sheet I was asked to fill in, with space for the details of twenty pilgrims, had just a single blank line left for me at the bottom, enabling me quickly to scan the nineteen others for purposes of comparison. It had taken two days for the sheet to become filled. I don't think I'm violating any confidences when I say that I was by a considerable margin the oldest of us (an eighteen-year-old was the youngest). Most of the twenty gave their occupation as "student"; I noted that there was only a single priest. Nearly all were male, travelling on foot, and they had either completed the Portugues, as I had, or had come from various destinations inside Spain. To be sure, I don't suppose that this snapshot is in any way representative of the pilgrim population in general, but it does seem as though the winter peregrino skews in a couple of distinctive directions.

That task completed, I headed back along the empty and rain-swept streets to the Cathedral for the pilgrims' mass at noon. A couple of other recent finishers, young women who were every bit as bedraggled and mud-spattered as I was, were also there. Observing that backpacks were not allowed inside the church -- but with nowhere else available to put them -- the three of us were constrained to skulk around, trying to avoid the scrutiny of the numerous and efficient retinue of private security guards while performing our Sunday duty. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that a clerical establishment that truly considered pilgrimages to be important and necessary things in the life of the Church would conduct its pilgrims' services differently from this.

For all of SdC's seeming indifference to the people who put it, and keep it, on the ecclesiastical and cultural map, though, it seems to me that there are worse ways of concluding one's journey. A wintertime Camino is the introvert's pilgrimage. One enters and departs the town, just as one had walked the trail, observed by nobody and leaving very little trace of ever having been there. But God knows where one has been, and why. It's not a bad metaphor for our pilgrimage through life. It will be given to few of us to have had our time on this earth marked by anyone other than our close relatives, and it won't be long before even that fades into the historical oblivion that has engulfed the great majority of all the people who have ever lived. But God knows where we have been; what we tried to do for Him; and why we did it.

So now it's over. It's Monday, and already I'm back at work. In a day or two, when I've had a chance to reflect, I'll post a final wrap-up of what seem to me to be the distinctive challenges of embarking on this pilgrimage in wintertime, and any other practical matters I can think of that may be useful to others considering doing the same thing.

 

[jsalt]

In a day or two, when I've had a chance to reflect, I'll post a final wrap-up of what seem to me to be the distinctive challenges of embarking on this pilgrimage in wintertime, and any other practical matters I can think of that may be useful to others considering doing the same thing.

Looking forward to your summary.
And WELL DONE!
Jill

 

[Tim Greig]

There's a great deal to be said for leaving yourself with a short day when you finally end a pilgrimage. Last year on the Frances, approaching O Pedrouzo -- 20 km out of SdC -- in mid-afternoon, I considered the possibility of simply keeping on walking until I reached my destination. In the end, fortunately, saner counsels prevailed. God would not be impressed, and nobody else would care, if I completed the journey in one fewer day. No medals are presented to the fastest finishers, nor should any be. So instead of flopping across the finish line at nightfall like a wet dishrag and with nowhere arranged in town to stay, I rested up in Pedrouzo and planned out the following day like any other. It was, I feel sure, the right decision, especially in light of the fact that by the very end one is getting a bit punchy and prone to make ill-judged and impulsive choices.

This time I contrived an even shorter final approach, just 14 km from A Picarana. That too was the right decision. At this point, after a week of near-maximum effort, I was beginning to run short on oomph, not physically but mentally. Whereas on the Frances I had been most impressed during the final hike on how I was doing all the familiar things for the very last time -- my last racion of tortilla, my last sello -- and how different daily life would be in the aftermath, at this current moment, on a cold and damp morning in January 2017, I was ready for it all to be over. A short, intense pilgrimage, performed according to a fixed and inflexible timescale, is in some respects the worst of both worlds. One experiences the hardest of the physical challenges -- the process of re-acclimatising one's body to a set of strenuous and often painful demands -- without having the time and leisure to reorient one's mind and spirit fully with the rhythms of this more basic lifestyle. That doesn't mean that a short pilgrimage isn't worth doing, but in the nature of things it's going to have a very different impact, including on the emotions, from the kind that takes as long as it takes.

It was still dark at 06:00 on Sunday morning when I headed back on the trail for the last time, and the rain was more intense and penetrating than ever. The wind blew it in squalls from right to left, and then, just as one's cheek had become numb, a sudden swirl would lash it across the other side of one's face. So much standing water had been deposited overnight that it was impossible to avoid splashing my way through deep puddles, with the result that after a quarter of an hour my feet -- and my last pair of socks -- were sodden again. For all that I was facing, both literally and figuratively, no more than a Sunday's walk, this final day was still going to be a test of resolve.

Out of A Picarana, the route follows the left-hand shoulder of the N-550 for a while, before branching off into a series of detours the aim of which -- a worthy one, to be sure -- seems to be to separate the pilgrim from vehicular traffic rather than facilitating his or her progress toward the destination. Especially after the half-way point, it seemed as though the official route was often doubling back on itself. Visually it offers few concessions to the traveller. As the leaden sky lightened to a degree, a series of motorway overpasses and railway level-crossings manifested themselves, interspersed with what seemed to be an entirely random sojourn through a kilometre of suburban parkland that afforded my mud-stained lower limbs a final squelch-fest. Unlike the Frances, there are no significant and meaningful landmarks like Lavacolla or the Monte de Gozo to mark one's progress. One simply keeps plugging along a series of anonymous back-roads and slip-roads until one reaches a large apartment complex in the Santa Marta suburb of SdC. About the best that can be said of the final few kilometres along the city streets, from that point onward, is that it runs as straight as an arrow until you find yourself at last in the massive plaza in front of the Cathedral, still largely obliterated by scaffolding.

It's often said that one's arrival at the destination is anti-climactic. This is especially so on an SdC Sunday morning in wintertime. Hardly anyone was to be seen on the streets; the overwhelming majority of businesses, of the kind that would be doing a roaring trade in high summer, were tightly shuttered. I hadn't made particularly good time on this last leg, partly because of the conditions and partly because it's mostly uphill, so it was nearly ten o'clock when I presented myself at the door of the Pilgrims' Office to acquire my final stamp.

As luck would have it, the register sheet I was asked to fill in, with space for the details of twenty pilgrims, had just a single blank line left for me at the bottom, enabling me quickly to scan the nineteen others for purposes of comparison. It had taken two days for the sheet to become filled. I don't think I'm violating any confidences when I say that I was by a considerable margin the oldest of us (an eighteen-year-old was the youngest). Most of the twenty gave their occupation as "student"; I noted that there was only a single priest. Nearly all were male, travelling on foot, and they had either completed the Portugues, as I had, or had come from various destinations inside Spain. To be sure, I don't suppose that this snapshot is in any way representative of the pilgrim population in general, but it does seem as though the winter peregrino skews in a couple of distinctive directions.

That task completed, I headed back along the empty and rain-swept streets to the Cathedral for the pilgrims' mass at noon. A couple of other recent finishers, both female and every bit as bedraggled and mud-spattered as I was, were also there. Observing that backpacks were not allowed inside the church -- but with nowhere else available to put them -- the three of us were constrained to skulk around, trying to avoid the scrutiny of the numerous and efficient retinue of private security guards while performing our Sunday duty. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that a clerical establishment that truly considered pilgrimages to be important and necessary things in the life of the Church would conduct its pilgrims' services differently from this.

For all of SdC's seeming indifference to the people who put it, and keep it, on the ecclesiastical and cultural map, though, it seems to me that there are worse ways of concluding one's journey. A wintertime Camino is the introvert's pilgrimage. One enters and departs the town, just as one had walked the trail, observed by nobody and leaving very little trace of ever having been there. But God knows where one has been, and why. It's not a bad metaphor for our pilgrimage through life. It will be given to few of us to have had our time on this earth marked by anyone other than our close relatives, and it won't be long before even that fades into the historical oblivion that has engulfed the great majority of all the people who have ever lived. But God knows where we have been; what we tried to do for Him; and why we did it.

So now it's over. It's Monday, and already I'm back at work. In a day or two, when I've had a chance to reflect, I'll post a final wrap-up of what seem to me to be the distinctive challenges of embarking on this pilgrimage in wintertime, and any other practical matters I can think of that may be useful to others considering doing the same thing.

Very well written, presumably on your telephone. Congratulations.

 

[Gunilla Linner]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

 

[Gunilla Linner]

Nice reading, keep on. I will start from Porto on the 9th of april this year

 

[Caminogirl2017]

My congratulations!!! Thank you for writing, it was great to follow you! I'm planning to start my first Camino on May from Porto and I'm really excited!

Best wishes,
Valentina

 

[Russ J]

There's a great deal to be said for leaving yourself with a short day when you conclude a pilgrimage. Last year on the Frances, approaching O Pedrouzo -- 20 km out of SdC -- in mid-afternoon, I considered the possibility of simply keeping on walking until I reached my destination. In the end, fortunately, saner counsels prevailed. God would not be impressed, and nobody else would care, if I completed the journey in one fewer day. No medals are presented to the fastest finishers, nor should any be. So instead of flopping across the finish line at nightfall like a wet dishrag and with nowhere arranged in town to stay, I rested up in Pedrouzo and planned out the following day like any other. It was, I feel sure, the right decision, especially in light of the fact that by the very end one is getting a bit punchy and prone to make ill-judged and impulsive choices.

This time I contrived an even shorter final approach, just 14 km from A Picarana. That too was the right decision. At this point, after a week of near-maximum effort, I was beginning to run short on oomph, not physically but mentally. Whereas on the Frances I had been most impressed during the final hike on how I was doing all the familiar things for the very last time -- my last racion of tortilla, my last sello -- and how different daily life would be in the aftermath, at this current moment, on a cold and damp morning in January 2017, I was ready for it all to be over. A short, intense pilgrimage, performed according to a fixed and inflexible timescale, is in some respects the worst of both worlds. One experiences the hardest of the physical challenges -- the process of re-acclimatising one's body to a set of strenuous and often painful demands -- without having the time and leisure to reorient one's mind and spirit fully with the rhythms of this more basic lifestyle. That doesn't mean that a short pilgrimage isn't worth doing, but in the nature of things it's going to have a very different impact, including on the emotions, from the kind that takes as long as it takes.

It was still dark at 06:00 on Sunday morning when I headed back on the trail for the last time, and the rain was more intense and penetrating than ever. The wind blew it in squalls from right to left, and then, just as one's cheek had become numb, a sudden swirl would lash it across the other side of one's face. So much standing water had been deposited overnight that it was impossible to avoid splashing my way through deep puddles, with the result that after a quarter of an hour my feet -- and my last pair of socks -- were sodden again. For all that I was facing, both literally and figuratively, no more than a Sunday's walk, this final day was still going to be a test of resolve.

Out of A Picarana, the route follows the left-hand shoulder of the N-550 for a while, before branching off into a series of detours the aim of which -- a worthy one, to be sure -- seems to be to separate the pilgrim from vehicular traffic rather than facilitating his or her progress toward the destination. Especially after the half-way point, it seemed as though the official route was often doubling back on itself. Visually it offers few concessions to the traveller. As the leaden sky lightened to a degree, a series of motorway overpasses and railway level-crossings manifested themselves, interspersed with what seemed to be an entirely random sojourn through a kilometre of suburban parkland that afforded my mud-stained lower limbs a final squelch-fest. Unlike the Frances, there are no significant and meaningful landmarks like Lavacolla or the Monte de Gozo to mark one's progress. One simply keeps plugging along a series of anonymous back-roads and slip-roads until one reaches a large apartment complex in the Santa Marta suburb of SdC. About the best that can be said of the final few kilometres along the city streets, from that point onward, is that it runs as straight as an arrow until you find yourself at last in the massive plaza in front of the Cathedral, still largely obliterated by scaffolding from the ongoing restoration works.

It's often said that one's arrival at the destination is anti-climactic. This is especially so on an SdC Sunday morning in wintertime. Hardly anyone was to be seen on the streets; the overwhelming majority of businesses, of the kind that would be doing a roaring trade in high summer, were tightly shuttered. I hadn't made particularly good time on this last leg, partly because of the conditions and partly because it's mostly uphill, so it was nearly ten o'clock when I presented myself at the door of the Pilgrims' Office to acquire my final stamp.

As luck would have it, the register sheet I was asked to fill in, with space for the details of twenty pilgrims, had just a single blank line left for me at the bottom, enabling me quickly to scan the nineteen others for purposes of comparison. It had taken two days for the sheet to become filled. I don't think I'm violating any confidences when I say that I was by a considerable margin the oldest of us (an eighteen-year-old was the youngest). Most of the twenty gave their occupation as "student"; I noted that there was only a single priest. Nearly all were male, travelling on foot, and they had either completed the Portugues, as I had, or had come from various destinations inside Spain. To be sure, I don't suppose that this snapshot is in any way representative of the pilgrim population in general, but it does seem as though the winter peregrino skews in a couple of distinctive directions.

That task completed, I headed back along the empty and rain-swept streets to the Cathedral for the pilgrims' mass at noon. A couple of other recent finishers, young women who were every bit as bedraggled and mud-spattered as I was, were also there. Observing that backpacks were not allowed inside the church -- but with nowhere else available to put them -- the three of us were constrained to skulk around, trying to avoid the scrutiny of the numerous and efficient retinue of private security guards while performing our Sunday duty. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that a clerical establishment that truly considered pilgrimages to be important and necessary things in the life of the Church would conduct its pilgrims' services differently from this.

For all of SdC's seeming indifference to the people who put it, and keep it, on the ecclesiastical and cultural map, though, it seems to me that there are worse ways of concluding one's journey. A wintertime Camino is the introvert's pilgrimage. One enters and departs the town, just as one had walked the trail, observed by nobody and leaving very little trace of ever having been there. But God knows where one has been, and why. It's not a bad metaphor for our pilgrimage through life. It will be given to few of us to have had our time on this earth marked by anyone other than our close relatives, and it won't be long before even that fades into the historical oblivion that has engulfed the great majority of all the people who have ever lived. But God knows where we have been; what we tried to do for Him; and why we did it.

So now it's over. It's Monday, and already I'm back at work. In a day or two, when I've had a chance to reflect, I'll post a final wrap-up of what seem to me to be the distinctive challenges of embarking on this pilgrimage in wintertime, and any other practical matters I can think of that may be useful to others considering doing the same thing.

Congratulations! And thank you!

 

[Sarah Olson]

My congratulations!!! Thank you for writing, it was great to follow you! I'm planning to start my first Camino on May from Porto and I'm really excited!

Best wishes,
Valentina

When are you walking, Valentina? I am starting May 8.

 

[Mike Savage]

Congratulations Aurigny!

 

[Caminogirl2017]

When are you walking, Valentina? I am starting May 8.

Hi, Sarah! I'll be in Porto on the 23th of May...
Buen Camino!

 

[Aurigny]

Some final thoughts, in the light of experience:-

* It may seem ridiculously obvious, but a winter Camino, and especially one on the Portugues, is almost by definition going to be a solitary one. You are likely to be the only guest at albergues. When you go into a cafe or a restaurant, there's a respectable chance that you will be the only patron. The advantage of this is that everywhere you go, people will be pleased to see you. But if my experience is any guide, even a sighting of a fellow peregrino is likely to be a rare occurrence. This is, then, something that's best suited to those who are comfortable with their own company.

* For me it was also a short and strenuous Caminho. I've come across other pilgrims who cover ground even faster than I do, but, including detours and additional distance involved when I lost my way, I was probably putting in a daily average of 40 km. A rest day wasn't possible. What I found was that doing things this way accelerated and deepened the characteristic emotional swings one undergoes out on the trail. At the beginning everything is going swimmingly; you're full of energy and enthusiasm. After several days, this begins to diminish as the inevitable frustrations, aches and pains mount up, and you start asking yourself, "What the heck am I doing out here? What's the point of putting myself through all this discomfort?" If you get over that slump, you find yourself in a greater condition of equillibrium, both physical and emotional. I found this to be so on the Frances last year. I didn't make better time over the second half of the journey, after Sahagun, than the first. In terms of the number of days I put in, both legs were identical. But the second half seemed far easier, and to take much less out of me, than the first did.

On a time-limited pilgrimage, that cycle is foreshortened. My "down" days were much deeper this time around than on the Frances. I'd anticipated the possibility, so I was mentally prepared to stick it out until things began to make sense to me again. But just as I reached that point, the trip ended. It wasn't an ideal situation; there again, nothing in life is ideal. In general, though, I found the ups and downs, but especially the downs, much more pronounced this time round. Something of which to be aware.

* Weather is a definite factor. I had four reasonably good days -- clear and cold in the mornings and at night (temperatures around freezing or even a little below); highs in the mid-teens (around 14C/57F). I found it quite comfortable as long as I was moving; if I stopped for even five minutes, I was shivering by their close. The final three days were extremely wet and a good deal colder; sometimes also misty or foggy in the early mornings and late at night. If you've got good weatherproof clothing and a reliable backpack cover, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The main difficulty -- a problem I was never able satisfactorily to resolve -- was keeping my feet dry. But you need to be absolutely sure that you've got good all-weather equipment. At this time of year, you're going to need it.

* For me, a still greater problem was darkness. If the "bed race" isn't any kind of issue on the winter Portugues, the daylight race definitely is. Days at this time of year are short. In Portugal, which has its own time zone, it didn't get light until nearly 08:00, and by 18:00 it was once again too dark to see arrows unaided by artificial means. (Add one hour in each case when you're in Spain.) If you've a substantial distance to cover, that doesn't leave many hours of natural light for reaching your destination: ten at most. There was only a single day -- my short leg to Pontevedra -- when I wasn't walking in darkness, whether after sunset, before dawn, or both. To be sure, one can avoid doing so, but that in turn imposes definite constraints on how far one can travel in a single day. Much more flexibility exists later in the year.

* For the religiously inclined, it can be a little disheartening to keep running up against closed church after closed church. You will find some that open their doors during weekdays, but it seems to be the exception. I'm not sure if it's also like this on the Portugues in the summertime, but I'd hope not.

* Facilities are few at this time of year. The Brierley guide is useful only for basic navigational information, because so many of the places listed in it are shuttered until the spring. It follows from this that whenever you see somewhere open that offers what you're looking for, or a reasonable approximation thereof, pounce on it. It may very well be another 20 km before you see anything like it again. On a winter pilgrimage, you take whatever you can get whenever you can get it.

* Safety is something else to consider, especially if you're walking on your own. Except for two brief occasions, as noted upthread, I never saw a single pilgrim other than myself out on the trail. If something happens that immobilises you -- a broken or even a severely sprained ankle, let's say -- it could be a couple of days, and nights, before anyone else passes that way. Perhaps even more; I couldn't honestly say. All I know is that I was seeing three- and four-day gaps in the visitors' books at the albergues at which I stayed, which implies to me that similar gaps in traffic might well be found along some of the remoter parts of the trail, e.g. the Alto da Portela Grande. Hence it's necessary to think about (i) the quantity of water one carries, even in winter; (ii) how hypothermia is to be warded off if in fact one is forced to spend an extended period of time outdoors; and (iii) from what quarters help might be available. Mobile 'phone coverage being spotty in the rural districts, I sent my wife daily updates of my whereabouts and planned night-stops. That meant that, if I went alarmingly silent on e-mail for a while, she'd know where to have people start looking for me.

* The other side of the coin is that if nobody is out there, one's chances of running into baddies and ne'er-do-wells are also extremely low.

* The countryside in Portugal is much more attractive than what you'll encounter in Spain. My apologies, Hispanophiles. It just is.

All the above being said, a winter pilgrimage is, in my estimation, very well worth doing. But it's a radically different animal from its summer counterpart. In a nutshell, it's somethng for which you have to make your own meaning. You won't be carried along in a sense of common purpose by fellow pilgrims as you are during peak periods. At this time, few of the people you pass will even recognise you as a pilgrim: I heard "Bom Caminho," or its Spanish equivalent, four times during my entire passage, and three of those were from hospitaleros saying goodbye as I departed in the mornings. Lacking any sort of external reinforcement from others, you'll have to decide for yourself each day why it's still worth doing.

 

[mspath]

Aurigny,

Thank you very much for sharing the "ups and downs" of your journey here on the Forum. You have provided a great deal of practical info as well as personal memories in your posts. All will be most useful for future pilgrims contemplating/planning walking the Portugese camino, especially in winter....Now it is time for you to rest, relax and dream of another journey.

 

[Levi]

Aurigny

Many thanks for a great account of your Camino. Excellent!

 

[jsalt]

This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I thoroughly enjoyed every post. Brilliant. Well done. I walked from Sagres to Lisbon and Fatima to Santiago in Feb/Mar last year, so I can relate (a little!) to your winter journey.
Jill

 

[Aurigny]

This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I know, J. Famous last words, right?. Though to be honest, I do believe it would have been, physically at any rate, a fairly easy journey if I'd had a few more days to spend on it. Being obliged to complete the entire thing in a week really painted me into a corner.

At least from Porto northwards, it's not all that challenging a route. There are no descents like the one off the Alto del Perdon; no ascents like the one outside O Cebreiro; no places you're likely to run into truly wild weather like crossing the pass before Roncesvalles. Out on the Frances, there were times it seemed as though Spain was composed entirely of hills, all cunningly engineered so as only to go up. By comparison, it's hard to break any kind of serious sweat on the Portugues.

And yet I think that if I were asked by a first-time pilgrim about which route to begin with, I'd recommend the Frances rather than this one. In many respects the former is like driving an up-market car -- a Mercedes or a Cadillac, say, with all manner of bells and whistles at a finger's touch. The Portugues is more like a motorbike. You're closer to the road and you can zip along at great speed. But it's a good deal more rudimentary, and requires more input on your part. Each has its strengths. I believe that one will appreciate those of the Portugues, though, if one has something with which to compare it.

 

[Jakke]

There's a great deal to be said for leaving yourself with a short day when you conclude a pilgrimage. Last year on the Frances, approaching O Pedrouzo -- 20 km out of SdC -- in mid-afternoon, I considered the possibility of simply keeping on walking until I reached my destination. In the end, fortunately, saner counsels prevailed. God would not be impressed, and nobody else would care, if I completed the journey in one fewer day. No medals are presented to the fastest finishers, nor should any be. So instead of flopping across the finish line at nightfall like a wet dishrag and with nowhere arranged in town to stay, I rested up in Pedrouzo and planned out the following day like any other. It was, I feel sure, the right decision, especially in light of the fact that by the very end one is getting a bit punchy and prone to make ill-judged and impulsive choices.

This time I contrived an even shorter final approach, just 14 km from A Picarana. That too was the right decision. At this point, after a week of near-maximum effort, I was beginning to run short on oomph, not physically but mentally. Whereas on the Frances I had been most impressed during the final hike on how I was doing all the familiar things for the very last time -- my last racion of tortilla, my last sello -- and how different daily life would be in the aftermath, at this current moment, on a cold and damp morning in January 2017, I was ready for it all to be over. A short, intense pilgrimage, performed according to a fixed and inflexible timescale, is in some respects the worst of both worlds. One experiences the hardest of the physical challenges -- the process of re-acclimatising one's body to a set of strenuous and often painful demands -- without having the time and leisure to reorient one's mind and spirit fully with the rhythms of this more basic lifestyle. That doesn't mean that a short pilgrimage isn't worth doing, but in the nature of things it's going to have a very different impact, including on the emotions, from the kind that takes as long as it takes.

It was still dark at 06:00 on Sunday morning when I headed back on the trail for the last time, and the rain was more intense and penetrating than ever. The wind blew it in squalls from right to left, and then, just as one's cheek had become numb, a sudden swirl would lash it across the other side of one's face. So much standing water had been deposited overnight that it was impossible to avoid splashing my way through deep puddles, with the result that after a quarter of an hour my feet -- and my last pair of socks -- were sodden again. For all that I was facing, both literally and figuratively, no more than a Sunday's walk, this final day was still going to be a test of resolve.

Out of A Picarana, the route follows the left-hand shoulder of the N-550 for a while, before branching off into a series of detours the aim of which -- a worthy one, to be sure -- seems to be to separate the pilgrim from vehicular traffic rather than facilitating his or her progress toward the destination. Especially after the half-way point, it seemed as though the official route was often doubling back on itself. Visually it offers few concessions to the traveller. As the leaden sky lightened to a degree, a series of motorway overpasses and railway level-crossings manifested themselves, interspersed with what seemed to be an entirely random sojourn through a kilometre of suburban parkland that afforded my mud-stained lower limbs a final squelch-fest. Unlike the Frances, there are no significant and meaningful landmarks like Lavacolla or the Monte de Gozo to mark one's progress. One simply keeps plugging along a series of anonymous back-roads and slip-roads until one reaches a large apartment complex in the Santa Marta suburb of SdC. About the best that can be said of the final few kilometres along the city streets, from that point onward, is that it runs as straight as an arrow until you find yourself at last in the massive plaza in front of the Cathedral, still largely obliterated by scaffolding from the ongoing restoration works.

It's often said that one's arrival at the destination is anti-climactic. This is especially so on an SdC Sunday morning in wintertime. Hardly anyone was to be seen on the streets; the overwhelming majority of businesses, of the kind that would be doing a roaring trade in high summer, were tightly shuttered. I hadn't made particularly good time on this last leg, partly because of the conditions and partly because it's mostly uphill, so it was nearly ten o'clock when I presented myself at the door of the Pilgrims' Office to acquire my final stamp.

As luck would have it, the register sheet I was asked to fill in, with space for the details of twenty pilgrims, had just a single blank line left for me at the bottom, enabling me quickly to scan the nineteen others for purposes of comparison. It had taken two days for the sheet to become filled. I don't think I'm violating any confidences when I say that I was by a considerable margin the oldest of us (an eighteen-year-old was the youngest). Most of the twenty gave their occupation as "student"; I noted that there was only a single priest. Nearly all were male, travelling on foot, and they had either completed the Portugues, as I had, or had come from various destinations inside Spain. To be sure, I don't suppose that this snapshot is in any way representative of the pilgrim population in general, but it does seem as though the winter peregrino skews in a couple of distinctive directions.

That task completed, I headed back along the empty and rain-swept streets to the Cathedral for the pilgrims' mass at noon. A couple of other recent finishers, young women who were every bit as bedraggled and mud-spattered as I was, were also there. Observing that backpacks were not allowed inside the church -- but with nowhere else available to put them -- the three of us were constrained to skulk around, trying to avoid the scrutiny of the numerous and efficient retinue of private security guards while performing our Sunday duty. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that a clerical establishment that truly considered pilgrimages to be important and necessary things in the life of the Church would conduct its pilgrims' services differently from this.

For all of SdC's seeming indifference to the people who put it, and keep it, on the ecclesiastical and cultural map, though, it seems to me that there are worse ways of concluding one's journey. A wintertime Camino is the introvert's pilgrimage. One enters and departs the town, just as one had walked the trail, observed by nobody and leaving very little trace of ever having been there. But God knows where one has been, and why. It's not a bad metaphor for our pilgrimage through life. It will be given to few of us to have had our time on this earth marked by anyone other than our close relatives, and it won't be long before even that fades into the historical oblivion that has engulfed the great majority of all the people who have ever lived. But God knows where we have been; what we tried to do for Him; and why we did it.

So now it's over. It's Monday, and already I'm back at work. In a day or two, when I've had a chance to reflect, I'll post a final wrap-up of what seem to me to be the distinctive challenges of embarking on this pilgrimage in wintertime, and any other practical matters I can think of that may be useful to others considering doing the same thing.

Congratulations! E Ultreia - also (and maybe especially) when you are at work.

 

[Jakke]

Some final thoughts, in the light of experience:-

* It may seem ridiculously obvious, but a winter Camino, and especially one on the Portugues, is almost by definition going to be a solitary one. You are likely to be the only guest at albergues. When you go into a cafe or a restaurant, there's a respectable chance that you will be the only patron. The advantage of this is that everywhere you go, people will be pleased to see you. But if my experience is any guide, even a sighting of a fellow peregrino is likely to be a rare occurrence. This is, then, something that's best suited to those who are comfortable with their own company.

* For me it was also a short and strenuous Caminho. I've come across other pilgrims who cover ground even faster than I do, but, including detours and additional distance involved when I lost my way, I was probably putting in a daily average of 40 km. A rest day wasn't possible. What I found was that doing things this way accelerated and deepened the characteristic emotional swings one undergoes out on the trail. At the beginning everything is going swimmingly; you're full of energy and enthusiasm. After several days, this begins to diminish as the inevitable frustrations, aches and pains mount up, and you start asking yourself, "What the heck am I doing out here? What's the point of putting myself through all this discomfort?" If you get over that slump, you find yourself in a greater condition of equillibrium, both physical and emotional. I found this to be so on the Frances last year. I didn't make better time over the second half of the journey, after Sahagun, than the first. In terms of the number of days I put in, both legs were identical. But the second half seemed far easier, and to take much less out of me, than the first did.

On a time-limited pilgrimage, that cycle is foreshortened. My "down" days were much deeper this time around than on the Frances. I'd anticipated the possibility, so I was mentally prepared to stick it out until things began to make sense to me again. But just as I reached that point, the trip ended. It wasn't an ideal situation; there again, nothing in life is ideal. In general, though, I found the ups and downs, but especially the downs, much more pronounced this time round. Something of which to be aware.

* Weather is a definite factor. I had four reasonably good days -- clear and cold in the mornings and at night (temperatures around freezing or even a little below); highs in the mid-teens (around 14C/57F). I found it quite comfortable as long as I was moving; if I stopped for even five minutes, I was shivering by their close. The final three days were extremely wet and a good deal colder; sometimes also misty or foggy in the early mornings and late at night. If you've got good weatherproof clothing and a reliable backpack cover, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The main difficulty -- a problem I was never able satisfactorily to resolve -- was keeping my feet dry. But you need to be absolutely sure that you've got good all-weather equipment. At this time of year, you're going to need it.

* For me, a still greater problem was darkness. If the "bed race" isn't any kind of issue on the winter Portugues, the daylight race definitely is. Days at this time of year are short. In Portugal, which has its own time zone, it didn't get light until nearly 08:00, and by 18:00 it was once again too dark to see arrows unaided by artificial means. (Add one hour in each case when you're in Spain.) If you've a substantial distance to cover, that doesn't leave many hours of natural light for reaching your destination: ten at most. There was only a single day -- my short leg to Pontevedra -- when I wasn't walking in darkness, whether after sunset, before dawn, or both. To be sure, one can avoid doing so, but that in turn imposes definite constraints on how far one can travel in a single day. Much more flexibility exists later in the year.

* For the religiously inclined, it can be a little disheartening to keep running up against closed church after closed church. You will find some that open their doors during weekdays, but it seems to be the exception. I'm not sure if it's also like this on the Portugues in the summertime, but I'd hope not.

* Facilities are few at this time of year. The Brierley guide is useful only for basic navigational information, because so many of the places listed in it are shuttered until the spring. It follows from this that whenever you see somewhere open that offers what you're looking for, or a reasonable approximation thereof, pounce on it. It may very well be another 20 km before you see anything like it again. On a winter pilgrimage, you take whatever you can get whenever you can get it.

* Safety is something else to consider, especially if you're walking on your own. Except for two brief occasions, as noted upthread, I never saw a single pilgrim other than myself out on the trail. If something happens that immobilises you -- a broken or even a severely sprained ankle, let's say -- it could be a couple of days, and nights, before anyone else passes that way. Perhaps even more; I couldn't honestly say. All I know is that I was seeing three- and four-day gaps in the visitors' books at the albergues at which I stayed, which implies to me that similar gaps in traffic might well be found along some of the remoter parts of the trail, e.g. the Alto da Portela Grande. Hence it's necessary to think about (i) the quantity of water one carries, even in winter; (ii) how hypothermia is to be warded off if in fact one is forced to spend an extended period of time outdoors; and (iii) from what quarters help might be available. Mobile 'phone coverage being spotty in the rural districts, I sent my wife daily updates of my whereabouts and planned night-stops. That meant that, if I went alarmingly silent on e-mail for a while, she'd know where to have people start looking for me.

* The other side of the coin is that if nobody is out there, one's chances of running into baddies and ne'er-do-wells are also extremely low.

* The countryside in Portugal is much more attractive than what you'll encounter in Spain. My apologies, Hispanophiles. It just is.

All the above being said, a winter pilgrimage is, in my estimation, very well worth doing. But it's a radically different animal from its summer counterpart. In a nutshell, it's somethng for which you have to make your own meaning. You won't be carried along in a sense of common purpose by fellow pilgrims as you are during peak periods. At this time, few of the people you pass will even recognise you as a pilgrim: I heard "Bom Caminho," or its Spanish equivalent, four times during my entire passage, and three of those were from hospitaleros saying goodbye as I departed in the mornings. Lacking any sort of external reinforcement from others, you'll have to decide for yourself each day why it's still worth doing.

Some final thoughts, in the light of experience:-

* It may seem ridiculously obvious, but a winter Camino, and especially one on the Portugues, is almost by definition going to be a solitary one. You are likely to be the only guest at albergues. When you go into a cafe or a restaurant, there's a respectable chance that you will be the only patron. The advantage of this is that everywhere you go, people will be pleased to see you. But if my experience is any guide, even a sighting of a fellow peregrino is likely to be a rare occurrence. This is, then, something that's best suited to those who are comfortable with their own company.

* For me it was also a short and strenuous Caminho. I've come across other pilgrims who cover ground even faster than I do, but, including detours and additional distance involved when I lost my way, I was probably putting in a daily average of 40 km. A rest day wasn't possible. What I found was that doing things this way accelerated and deepened the characteristic emotional swings one undergoes out on the trail. At the beginning everything is going swimmingly; you're full of energy and enthusiasm. After several days, this begins to diminish as the inevitable frustrations, aches and pains mount up, and you start asking yourself, "What the heck am I doing out here? What's the point of putting myself through all this discomfort?" If you get over that slump, you find yourself in a greater condition of equillibrium, both physical and emotional. I found this to be so on the Frances last year. I didn't make better time over the second half of the journey, after Sahagun, than the first. In terms of the number of days I put in, both legs were identical. But the second half seemed far easier, and to take much less out of me, than the first did.

On a time-limited pilgrimage, that cycle is foreshortened. My "down" days were much deeper this time around than on the Frances. I'd anticipated the possibility, so I was mentally prepared to stick it out until things began to make sense to me again. But just as I reached that point, the trip ended. It wasn't an ideal situation; there again, nothing in life is ideal. In general, though, I found the ups and downs, but especially the downs, much more pronounced this time round. Something of which to be aware.

* Weather is a definite factor. I had four reasonably good days -- clear and cold in the mornings and at night (temperatures around freezing or even a little below); highs in the mid-teens (around 14C/57F). I found it quite comfortable as long as I was moving; if I stopped for even five minutes, I was shivering by their close. The final three days were extremely wet and a good deal colder; sometimes also misty or foggy in the early mornings and late at night. If you've got good weatherproof clothing and a reliable backpack cover, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The main difficulty -- a problem I was never able satisfactorily to resolve -- was keeping my feet dry. But you need to be absolutely sure that you've got good all-weather equipment. At this time of year, you're going to need it.

* For me, a still greater problem was darkness. If the "bed race" isn't any kind of issue on the winter Portugues, the daylight race definitely is. Days at this time of year are short. In Portugal, which has its own time zone, it didn't get light until nearly 08:00, and by 18:00 it was once again too dark to see arrows unaided by artificial means. (Add one hour in each case when you're in Spain.) If you've a substantial distance to cover, that doesn't leave many hours of natural light for reaching your destination: ten at most. There was only a single day -- my short leg to Pontevedra -- when I wasn't walking in darkness, whether after sunset, before dawn, or both. To be sure, one can avoid doing so, but that in turn imposes definite constraints on how far one can travel in a single day. Much more flexibility exists later in the year.

* For the religiously inclined, it can be a little disheartening to keep running up against closed church after closed church. You will find some that open their doors during weekdays, but it seems to be the exception. I'm not sure if it's also like this on the Portugues in the summertime, but I'd hope not.

* Facilities are few at this time of year. The Brierley guide is useful only for basic navigational information, because so many of the places listed in it are shuttered until the spring. It follows from this that whenever you see somewhere open that offers what you're looking for, or a reasonable approximation thereof, pounce on it. It may very well be another 20 km before you see anything like it again. On a winter pilgrimage, you take whatever you can get whenever you can get it.

* Safety is something else to consider, especially if you're walking on your own. Except for two brief occasions, as noted upthread, I never saw a single pilgrim other than myself out on the trail. If something happens that immobilises you -- a broken or even a severely sprained ankle, let's say -- it could be a couple of days, and nights, before anyone else passes that way. Perhaps even more; I couldn't honestly say. All I know is that I was seeing three- and four-day gaps in the visitors' books at the albergues at which I stayed, which implies to me that similar gaps in traffic might well be found along some of the remoter parts of the trail, e.g. the Alto da Portela Grande. Hence it's necessary to think about (i) the quantity of water one carries, even in winter; (ii) how hypothermia is to be warded off if in fact one is forced to spend an extended period of time outdoors; and (iii) from what quarters help might be available. Mobile 'phone coverage being spotty in the rural districts, I sent my wife daily updates of my whereabouts and planned night-stops. That meant that, if I went alarmingly silent on e-mail for a while, she'd know where to have people start looking for me.

* The other side of the coin is that if nobody is out there, one's chances of running into baddies and ne'er-do-wells are also extremely low.

* The countryside in Portugal is much more attractive than what you'll encounter in Spain. My apologies, Hispanophiles. It just is.

All the above being said, a winter pilgrimage is, in my estimation, very well worth doing. But it's a radically different animal from its summer counterpart. In a nutshell, it's somethng for which you have to make your own meaning. You won't be carried along in a sense of common purpose by fellow pilgrims as you are during peak periods. At this time, few of the people you pass will even recognise you as a pilgrim: I heard "Bom Caminho," or its Spanish equivalent, four times during my entire passage, and three of those were from hospitaleros saying goodbye as I departed in the mornings. Lacking any sort of external reinforcement from others, you'll have to decide for yourself each day why it's still worth doing.

Aurigny, obrigado again. It was a major disappointment for me that much the same situation with the closed churches existed during my September/October camino. I was forewarned, but had not expected the situation to be so sad in that respect. In other respects, it was a great experience and it is the pilgrim him/herself who makes the hike into a real pilgrimage after all. Others can only offer impulses and suitable settings. Hiking with soaked socks ... man, how did you keep your spirits up. I admire you. God bless!

 

[Jakke]

I know, J. Famous last words, right?. Though to be honest, I do believe it would have been, physically at any rate, a fairly easy journey if I'd had a few more days to spend on it. Being obliged to complete the entire thing in a week really painted me into a corner.

At least from Porto northwards, it's not all that challenging a route. There are no descents like the one off the Alto del Perdon; no ascents like the one outside O Cebreiro; no places you're likely to run into truly wild weather like crossing the pass before Roncesvalles. Out on the Frances, there were times it seemed as though Spain was composed entirely of hills, all cunningly engineered so as only to go up. By comparison, it's hard to break any kind of serious sweat on the Portugues.

And yet I think that if I were asked by a first-time pilgrim about which route to begin with, I'd recommend the Frances rather than this one. In many respects the former is like driving an up-market car -- a Mercedes or a Cadillac, say, with all manner of bells and whistles at a finger's touch. The Portugues is more like a motorbike. You're closer to the road and you can zip along at great speed. But it's a good deal more rudimentary, and requires more input on your part. Each has its strengths. I believe that one will appreciate those of the Portugues, though, if one has something with which to compare it.

Hmm ... Having done only one camino, I cannot compare. However, you sound like I probably made the right choice for myself when I picked the Portugues. In a few weeks' time I'll know -- after the Via de la Plata. Bom caminho de la vida!

 

[Linda V]

Setting out on a pilgrimage, one never knows whether one is going to get to complete it. So many things can go wrong that it sometimes seems miraculous to me that anyone arrives in one piece at the end. On the Frances last year, I saw people much fitter, stronger and younger than I go down like ninepins. Probably the most heartbreaking case was a young Dutch girl, tall and strong, who tore a muscle in her leg with about 60 km to go and more than seven hundred behind her. Her flight home was leaving in three days, but there was no possibility of her being able to hobble anywhere more distant than the bathroom by that stage. It had been a long time since I'd seen anybody weep so bitterly.

So I was aware of the very real chance that I might not make SdC by Sunday, and I made no promises to myself or to anyone else. My plan was simple. I'd get up early; leave the hotel at 05:00, and walk either until I reached A Picarana, or until I could no longer put one foot in front of another. As a scheme it had the merit of simplicity. Either I would get there or I wouldn't.

My genial host at the Boa Vila was taken aback when he learned of my plans. At first he misunderstood me to mean that I intended to walk to SdC non-stop. When I told him that my aim was a little more modest, he still opined that I was loco -- the first time anybody in real life has favoured me with that description, at least in Spanish. I might, he conceded, have an outside chance of making Padron before one or both legs dropped off, but he didn't see me getting any further than that.

I didn't feel in any position to contradict him. It was in a spirit of determination rather than expectation that I set off across the Puente del Burgo and almost immediately plunged into the darkened countryside. Dawn breaks late at this time of year -- close to 09:00 -- so I was going to have to put in the first four hours or so by torchlight. It was both rainy and misty, cutting visibility to a couple of dozen metres and casting an eerie ambience over the proceedings. Fortunately, the trail was a great deal more straight than the one above Redondela through which I had floundered a couple of nights previously. After I passed the starting-point for the Variante Espiritual, moreover, I could hear both the river and the high-speed train to my left, even if I could see neither, confirming that I was where I needed to be.

I knew that there was an albergue with an attached cafe at Barros, a couple of hours past my departure point, but I didn't seriously expect it to be open at this time of year, so I wasn't disappointed when it wasn't. In anticipation of a long day on short commons, I'd raided one of the Pontevedra supermarkets the previous evening and was self-sufficient in sandwiches, fruit and drinks. I fed myself on the march between Barros and Briallos, it being much too cold and wet to make stopping anything other than an exercise in misery. Eventually the sky to the east started to lighten, and I paralleled my old friend the N-550 into Caldas de Reis, arriving about half past nine and feeling that I'd made a good start to the day.

Caldas looks like a place that's struggling economically, as are many of these northern Spanish towns. One of the few establishments that seemed open for business was the Timonel combination bar-and-private-albergue, just before the bridge across the River Umia. Its window advertised its willingness to provide coffee and credencial stamps to passers-by, and being in want of both, I dropped in.

Usually I prefer to obtain my stamps from churche, given the religious nature of the pilgrimage, or from official albergues. It surprises me how few of the former are prepared to provide this facility. On the entire trip, I found only one place, the chapel at Bertola, that had a self-service sello for pilgrims. It seems to me that they're missing an opportunity, not least inasmuch as visitors are positively correlated with donations. On the other hand, every bar and watering hole along the trail has a stamp available and is more than happy to provide it to all comers. I've always felt somewhat inhibited about making use of this facility, not wanting to present to the Pilgrims' Office in SdC a credencial that looks as though I've been on a three-hundred-kilometre-long pub crawl. But in wintertime, one has to take one's stamps wherever one can find them, so the Timonel it was.

Shortly after I arrived, to my surprise and pleasure, a second pilgrim showed up. This was a powerfully-built young man with a military haircut and a backpack almost as big as himself. He stayed only to toss down a cafe con leche and give me a bone-crushing handshake before continuing on his way. After finishing my own coffee, I followed shortly afterwards. On the way out of town I passed the "official" albergue, a sign on whose door announced that it wouldn't be open until 15:00, ratifying my decision to get the Timonel's stamp.

The slanting rain, which had eased off for a bit as I pulled into Caldas, now came down again in earnest, and I regretted my decision to have just a single coffee. Five km out of town a place called the Esperon, at a spot where the trail crossed the main road, looked like a place to rectify that omission. When I got there, though, I found that it was closed until February. Still, the 'bus shelter across the road seemed like a good place to have lunch in comparative comfort, so I holed up there and made inroads on my sandwiches. As I was doing so, my friend the fellow pilgrim pitched up, surprised to find that I had passed him en route. (As, indeed, was I. I walk faster than most people, but I would have laid long odds on his leaving me in the dust.) It trainspired that he too was from Portugal, married, but not yet having any children. His English was about as good as my Portuguese, but by pooling our combined linguistic resources we were able to communicate quite well. He needed his alone time, he told me, and his wife was more than willing for him to get it in this form. But he wouldn't be going nearly as far as me: thirty kilometres or so was his daily limit.

After we had swallowed our respective lunches, we headed uphill. Each walking at our natural pace, it turned out that I was indeed the faster of the two. Being on a schedule, I forged ahead, though I was sorry to forgo his company after so much solitude. The trail now weaved back and forth across the N-550, which parallels the Portugues in the same way that the N-120 does the Frances, before finally settling down on the eastern side. There wasn't very much to note about the countryside it passed through, though the fact that the cloud base was down to around 100' AGL would have made admiring the view difficult in any event.

At least I was making good time. At this stage of the game, a lot of one's appendages hurt in one way or another, and one always worries that the ever-present dull ache in calf or tendon will suddenly flare up into something more problematical. Gratifyingly, though, my body was standing up to both the pace and the distance. Over the past couple of days I've felt it hardening as I begin to get into proper shape once again. I now felt pretty confident of making my destination.

I rolled into Padron at the 41 km mark, around half past three, feeling that I'd earned my second coffee of the day. The approach loops around a large factory whose three chimneys belch an enormous plume of some noxious substance into the sky, and then follows a canal whose water resembles minestrone soup. The centre of town is in keeping with what precedes it, and I was a little surprised to see a small tourist office on what looked to be a large traffic island in the middle of the main drag. The official there seemed equally surprised to see me, or indeed anyone, carefully noting my nationality, point of origin and destination for his records. But he generously stamped my credential, and courteously wished me the best of luck in reaching A Picarana, ten kilometres further on.

Happily, given the length of my day thus far, this was quite a fast run. Nearly all of it is along paved roads, just a few hundred metres east of the N-550, with a tall wooded ridge on one's right-hand side and nothing much except traffic to look at on one's left. There was still half an hour's daylight left when I squelched back onto the main road and checked in at my night stop, the Hostel Glorioso. Amusingly, given what brought me here, this is located next door to a large pole-dancing establishment with a gaudy neon sign on top and vivid decorations on the frosted glass doors that leave little about the nature of the business to the imagination.

That aside, the day could hardly have gone better for me. The distance-marker outside the hostel shows 14.4 km to run to the cathedral tomorrow. I am wetter and colder than it's possible for me to describe, and the Arctic conditions of the Glorioso, in which, yet again, I'm the only guest, give little promise of my being able to do much about the second problem, anyway. I have a single set of dry clothes for the morning, though that's forecast to be even rainier than what I encountered today, if such a thing is possible. Still, I'm an extremely cheerful bunny. Starting out this morning, it was odds-against my reaching SdC in time to finish the job. Now, setting my alarm for a 06:00 departure tomorrow, I greatly fancy my chances.

Love to read the story of your way. I will follow in your footsteps May this year.

 

[Sha-Ron]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.

I was, to be sure, a little worried about the weather. In summertime you basically have a choice between hot and very hot. Right now, the main problem is the diurnal variation. When I arrived in Porto last night, it was very cold indeed, for these parts at any rate: around -5C. I have good waterproofs, but for reasons of weight, convenience and budget don't have much in the way of cold-weather gear beyond a good-quality merino base layer and long underwear. For the rest I'm relying on the miracle of layering.

For the most part this is working well, as long as I keep moving. The difficulty arises when I stop. Last night, my flight arriving very late, I stopped at the AirPorto Hostel in Maia, which I chose mainly on the ground of proximity. It's only about a mile (1.6 km) from the airport -- fifteen minutes' walk if you know where you're doing. I didn't, so I managed to double that while blundering around in the dark. It's a small but nice place, charging EUR 13 a night for a bunk in a six-bed room, a frugal breakfast included. The management is pleasant and helpful, and the establishment pretty clean throughout.

The main problem was the temperature. It was, as I say, cold for these parts, as it has been across the whole of western Europe of late. The conditions easily overwhelmed the tiny electric heater in the room, and the polyester blanket provided did little to make up the deficiency. Long story short, I froze half to death, despite wearing practically the entire contents of my backpack. Still, it was nice to be back in shell-and-yellow-arrow land, even if the penitential component of the pilgrimage started a few hours early.

I was out on the road this morning at 0745, and took the tram to the Cathedral so that I could acquire a credential. As it turned out, that was too early. Even on Sundays the Cathedral doesn't open until 0900. However, the gentleman who sells the tickets for the museum kindly fixed me up with the necessary document for a couple of euro. Mass (curiously for a church of that importance, the only one celebrated on Sundays) is at eleven, and I was on my way immediately after it was over.

Hearing that the main route out of town in the Brierley guidebook drags through some grimly industrial suburbs, I elected to take the scenic (green-route) alternative, which heads westward down to the Douro river estuary and then turns north up the coast to Vila do Conde. It's a few kilometres longer, but I think it's worth it. Until Matasinhos, about 12 km from the Cathedral, there are no arrows or other signs that I could see. However, they're hardly needed: the navigation couldn't be simpler. Just keep the Douro on your left hip until you hit the Atlantic, then turn right and put the coastline in the same place. Impossible to go wrong. Heading this way also gives you the opportunity to stop in at the tourist information office at the beach in Matasinhos, where the gracious staff will stamp your credential and tell you which albergues are still open at this time of year. Fortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of them.

Amenities-wise, the route could hardly be better supplied. Even on a Sunday, there are every bit as many cafes, restaurants and shops as you'll find on a typical well-trafficked stretch of the Frances. Things do thin out north of Vila Cha: from then on you'll have to wait until you reach Vila do Conde, 34 km from the starting point.

Visually it's a mixed bag. You're walking along a typical European seafront, and at this time of year you're sharing the space with half of Porto, it seems, out jogging or walking their dogs. For most of the day, then, I found myself weaving my way through dense knots of people, past blocks of up-market flats and the occasional oil refinery. Once north of Matasinhos town, the great majority of the route is boardwalk, winding its way in and out of the sand dunes. This has quite a lot of charm, as does the working fishing village of Angeiras, populated by more cats than I've ever seen in one place, Largo Argentina in Rome alone excepted. There must be close to 15 km of boardwalk between Leixões seaport and Vila do Conde. Some timber merchant had to have made an absolute fortune.

On arrival, the Santa Clara albergue in the middle of town is easy to find. Currently I'm the only pilgrim, so they were very pleased to see me and couldn't have been kinder to me. Effectively I have my own ten-bed room for the standard fee of EUR 7.50. It's a good set-up, with washing machines, cooking facilities and several bathrooms. Once again, it's scrupulously clean. They have an arrangement with the nearby Saura restaurant, where even at this time of year one can get the familiar menu peregrino (more carbohydrates than you can shake a stick at, your choice of protein -- the chicken escalope wasn't bad -- and a bit of salad) at an extremely cheap rate.

All in all it's a good time to be walking, even if the experience couldn't be more different from the Frances. The temperature situation is manageable: for the next week, it's forecast to feature daily lows of about the freezing point and highs, as today, of somewhere near 12C (54F). What you don't get is company. I didn't see a single person today who could plausibly have been mistaken for a fellow pilgrim. And, as I say, I'm on my ownsome tonight. For those who like to join Camino "families," this will be a disappointing experience. But for the more introverted cohort, among whom I number myself, the opportunity for solitude and reflection -- once one has passed well out of the city limits -- is valuable in itself.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

Hi
Very interested thanks! We're planning to walk the route in July. I know it'l be very hot then but it's the only time we have available. Would you recommend boots or shoes?

 

[Aurigny]

At that time of year, S, I think you'd be pretty safe with a decent pair of hiking shoes. It was wet and muddy, but not bottomless, even in the depths of winter. Unless you see most unusual weather patterns in July, the whole thing should be perfectly navigable in solid shoes.

Unless you're much more heat-and-sun-tolerant than I am, though, you might want to look into getting some good lightweight torches. When I walked the Frances in July, the only thing that enabled me to survive it was rising before dawn and breaking the back of the day's march before the sun had an opportunity to do some real damage. There were a couple of occasions when I had to plough on through the heat of the day until evening-time. If I'd had to make a habit of that, though, I imagine I would have become worn down quite quickly. In general, I was aiming to be off the road by 13:00 each day, and if I were to have covered a decent amount of ground by then (a couple of cafe-con-leche-and-tortilla stops included), that meant an 05:00 start for me and the first eight or ten kilometres accomplished in the blessed pre-dawn coolness.

 

[Daniel CHIA]

Aurigny,

Many thanks for your excellent travelogue of your camino!

I will walk the Portuguese beginning 30th March (or thereabouts), so your "report" is most useful.

Cheers!

 

[ouroboros]

I started the Portugues last night. Having only a week, I elected to do the traditional, if now abbreviated, route from Porto Cathedral to SdC, 260 km or so in total, rather than the new-fangled start-in-Lisbon version. It'll mean a daily average of a bit over 35 km, which was what I was averaging on the Frances last year. This one will be easier, I think, being flatter and accomplished in more temperate conditions.



Tomorrow I'll be leaving the coast and hacking my way over onto the main Brierley-trail, probably overnighting in Barcelos. I'll provide an update then, if anyone's interested.

Reading avidly! Thanks for all the detail. Going to Porto beginning of May and hoping it will be a tad warmer!

 

[Forestgirl]

Yes please! I'm following your steps in 13 days walking from Lisbon. I am so happy to know to bring a warmer jacket and maybe some warm gloves. This is information is very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. I look forward to your next report.

 

[Aurigny]

You're very welcome, FG. Alas, the next one won't be this year: I've already used up all the spare time I'm going to get in 2017. But perhaps next year. At the moment, I'm thinking about a very long pilgrimage indeed. Maybe the Via Gebennensis, starting where I am now (Geneva), which would be about 1,100 km in total. Or maybe make up an entirely new route -- perhaps a Camino Irlandés, starting at St James' Church in Dublin and joining one of the established northern French trails, via ferry, at Cherbourg, which would let me take in Mont-St-Michel—an important pilgrimage destination in its own right—on the way. Or maybe the Via de la Plata, if I don't want to plan anything and just let St JB do the navigation for me. Possibilities, possibilities...

 

[Former member 49149]

Aurigny, what an absolute pleasure, reading your posts. I was trying to find the final one from your Portuguese interior route when I came across this one. I walked the Francés in 2006, and Porto to SdC four years ago, first day along the coast and then your route -'but taking 12 days! Your gift is clearly to observe and comment so humorously. Did you comment also on your Camino Francés? I must hunt for that if you did, and also for the final comment for your Live from the Camino, interior route. You referred to being very short of free time... I am curious, but as I already asked, is your day job writing?!!! Thank you for sharing your angle on your experience.