TheVinsman

Today I transferred from the Camino Portuguese Coastal to the Camino Portuguese Central route. This was a planned move since I wanted to walk up the coast on the first day to avoid the long walk through the industrial part of Porto and of course I really was looking forward to meeting my friend Fernando, who I met last year walking the Camino Primitivo.

Today’s walk was very interesting. It starts off following a line of 990 pillars of an aqueduct that was constructed by a monistary to bring water. I spent the first few hours walking along the aqueduct before turning east to travel towards the central route. If I had not had my app from Wise Pilgrim with its GPS I would have been lost. The markings on this part of the route are almost nonexistent.

The transition took about 3.5 hours of walking an was about 10 miles. It was mostly road walking, which is not really that bad except here you are walking along a road with large stone walls on either side. Fortunately there was very little traffic as these are country roads.

The second part of my day was to walk up the central route to Barcelos. I did a bad job of calculating just how far I was going to walk today. In fact I walked 22 miles. Another crazy day. I have talked with so many people that have walked the Camino Portuguese. Most all if them commented on the cobblestone roads and how they hurt their feet. I did not really understand, but now I do. The cobbles are uneven and like walking on large gravel. It does not hurt but it works your feet over pretty good.

The entire day was mostly road walking with a very few paths through the eucalyptus forests. I am hoping that the next few days are more path walking and less road walking. We will see.

Tomorrow is a short day. Only 18km’s which is less than 12 miles. It should only take me about 4 hours.

Today I traveled to Porto Portugal to begin the Camino Portuguese. There are three different route options for the Portuguese. The Central is the most popular currently, the Costal route is gaining in popularity as many want to walk along the coast as far as possible and finally there is the Braga route which is inland and from what I know not very popular at this time.

I will be walking a combination of the Coastal route and the Central route. On my first day of walking which is Tuesday, September 5th I will walk what is called the Senda Litoral from Porto along the Duro river and then up the coast to Vila do Conde. From there I will move over to the central route for the balance of my walk. One other change is that I am going to walk what is called the Spiritual variant, which goes out to the coast and then you take a boat back in to continue the walk.

Today is Sunday, September 3rd. I will stay in Porto tonight and tomorrow night to hopefully adjust to the time change and to do a little sight seeing as well. I cannot post pictures here any more for some reason so I am using findingpenguins.com/vinsman to post pictures and my story.

Today was my final walk.  I guess everyone was a bit restless since there were 4 people up in my albergue at 3 45 this morning and out the door by 4.  I guess I  am a bit of a light sleeper because they woke me up and I tossed and turned until 5 when I got up and got ready to hit the road.  I was walking by 5 30 this morning which is way too early.  

I have made this walk many times and knew what to expect.  I got off to a good start by going the wrong way.  Thank goodness for my trusty GPS app that put me back on the right path in no time.  I walked without breakfast or most importantly coffee until about 8 when I found my first coffee bar open and promptly downed to caffe con leche grandes and a piece of delicious lemon cake.  

I arrived in Santiago about 10 took some quick photos and headed to the pilgrims office to get my Compostela.  They are very efficient these days. You complete the online form and it issues you a QR code which gets you into the office and enables you to get a number.  I and number 124, when I walked in they were working on numbers in the 80´s. It only took about 20 minutes to get through and I was off with my Compostela.

I checked into my room, if you could call it that, actually it is more like a closet with a bathroom but it works for me. 

After a hot shower is was off to the pilgrims Mass.  It was packed in the Cathedral.  I finally found a chair almost at the back of the room and sat down.  I said high to the guy next to me and we struck up an conversation.  Turns out he just graduated with a civil engineering degree from Davis.  He did his undergrad and BYU so we had a fun conversation.  The mass was amazing as always.  Very touching.  

After the Mass I met up with my Camino friends Hyun Soon and Fernando for lunch and then we just spent some final time together.  

Tonight I had dinner with Dawn from the Iowa chapter and Jackie who is on the board to the American pilgrims it was a fun night.  

Tomorrow I take my covid test and then head to Madrid on the train.  Tomorrow night in Madrid and then Thursday home.  

All in all it was a great Camino.  I enjoyed the difficulty of the route but also appreciate that it was only 12 days.