Camino Portuguese 2023

What a confusing morning, leaving the hostel as the sun came up and yellow arrows going all over the place. Followed arrows up a hill( against my better hill judgement) and then ended up reversing and walking along the roadway.

Today we are also again given the option of walking through an industrial area or taking the green route. 

Of course we again chose the green route that just seemed to dissolve. Back tracked to the way we came and it wasn’t long before we were adopted by a wonderful local who put us straight again, bless…

We plodded along until we came to the town of Moz and got ourselves caught up in school drop off, little bit hectic.

Survived that in time to come across a cafe, well praise be.😊

Whist we were sitting there our carol realised her wallet was missing, probably left behind at the albergue this morning.

Long story short, found and will be delivered to Carol tonight. The Camino will always provide.😇

Perfect ending…

On we go and now it’s a pretty consistent uphill, not too bad, couple of little breathers.

The downhill tho was another story…

Almost a vertical decent, bit I have to say the views were stunning and probably over and towards Redondela, where we stay tonight.

Happy to be staying at a municipal albergue in town but not happy to have been in a queue for an hour before we were actually inside. 

Municipal albergues cannot be booked so you do need to just arrive but never been in a queue before.

Anyhoo, it’s old and historic and I’m very happy to be staying here.

Usual chores for the afternoon and having to try and book the next few night’s accommodation. 

This goes against everything that I travel a Camino for,but given the amount of people on the track now, we just have no choice.

It makes us feel quite sad that the freedom of just walking, stopping where necessary; be it pain, fatigue, lateness or we just like the look of somewhere,has gone. It is like the loss of innocence. We fear for the Camino; of course it will survive, but only after a collapse into the depths of commercial depravity before a rebirth…We spoke with a young mom, who described the lack of accommodations on the French Camino, not the town, of next or the one after. It was so bad some people caught taxis for 20-30 km…

Trying to remain positive and continue the Camino spirit for the 4 days that we have left before arriving in Santiago.

Tonight we had a fabulous dinner literally next door to the albergue. Seafood restaurant, another place we needed to queue🙄.

But it was great and had sangria on tap!!