Chapter 5
Hola amigos,
Welcome to ‘tales from the trail’ as Camino Steve and I attempt a 600 mile walk from Cape St Vincent on the SW tip of Portugal 🇵🇹 to Santiago de Compostella at the top of NW Spain. 🇪🇸
As I type, I’m sitting on the edge of this swimming pool, which is our exclusive use tonight as no one else is staying at our accommodation.
We are staying at Monte do Zeca, a hostel in the middle of nowhere!
This hostel is about 42 km south of Sines and 130 km south of Lisbon, where we will officially start the Camino Portuguese.
We have walked over 70 miles and 150,000 steps in 4 days.
Enough of today though.
That will be reported tomorrow as my blogs come out a day after the actual walk.
The big question linked to today though!
To skinny dip or not too skinny dip?😜
And……
Is Steve going to do the same?🤣
I’ll let you know tomorrow.
We had around 35 walking days to reach Santiago at the start of this jaunt.
Neither of us think about that final destination very much.
We don’t want to.
This trek is all about the journey not the destination.
To often in our day to day lives we can get pulled into a total focus on the ‘end game’, whatever that end game might be.
Camino Steve and I are NOT playing that game.
Yes, we talk about the next couple of days walking; yes, we target a particular hostel or town for our next accommodation and yes, at the moment we are booking ahead – albeit as little as we possibly can.
Neither of us want to book ahead.
It might suit others, but for us it often makes things to prescriptive.
We like spontaneity and living the moment.
However, on this first section of our walk, all the way to Lisbon, we do have to be pragmatic and tactical.
Accommodation is sparse in these parts. Really limited.
The hotels are exorbitant, often charging over £150 a night. (We don’t want to stay in hotels anyway).
Hostels are few and far between; so we have to plan ahead by a day or 2.
So far it has worked.
Our strategy has been good and we have been rewarded with great stopovers, albeit, pretty long walks!
The hostels, when we can stay in them, give us a chance for interaction with other walkers.
We’ve had only limited opportunities to do this so far.
This is mostly because everyone we meet is travelling the other way and they have often buddied up with fellow walkers and already bonded on their shared journey. They often agree to stay in the same accommodation night after night.
Yesterday I managed a brief but lovely chat with Pia from Austria who had just finished her 7 day walk from Lisbon to Odoceixe where we were both staying.
But these sort of interactions have been limited so far.
Luckily Steve and I can both chat!
So it has not been a problem
Once we reach Lisbon and the start of the Camino Portuguese, we will have opportunities for lots of interesting interaction with pilgrims from all over the world.
The dynamic will change and we will embrace it.
For now?
For now, it’s just me and Camino Steve.
5 days in we are still getting on fine.
I don’t think he wants to kill me yet!
And I don’t want to throttle him!
Yesterday’s walk was a long one.
Our second 21+ miler on the bounce and it caused a few feet problems.
Camino Steve has sore and tender feet: specifically the ‘cushions’ under his toes.
As he observed ruefully, walking up to 8 miles across a reasonably flat London in preparation for this walk, is not the same as walking 20 miles, up and down steep elevations in 25+ degrees carrying a pack: day after day!
My left foot is fine.
Perhaps I could hop my way along the trail.
My right foot is sore.
I have a swollen little toe that threatened to blister around 1pm yesterday. I stopped when I felt the ’hotspot’ and wrapped it in sheep’s wool.
It didn’t blister but I also had a painful ball of my left foot. Thankfully un-blistered too.
I have censored most details in the photo.
Bizarrely, to me at least, I have discovered that a number of people can get very upset at seeing pictures of feet!
My toe is little and red.
It’s current levels of discomfort far exceed its apparent value to my life.
I guess Steve and I are both experiencing impact issues with our feet. Hence the Annie Lennox reference in the title of this post.
Our feet do feel like we’ve walked on broken glass, especially for the first hour after we stop!
After all we have walked well over 100,000 steps in 3 days!
We didn’t particularly want to walk 21 miles yesterday.
We had hoped for 18.
My mistake!
I’ll hold my hand up.
I missed a river on the map: not a significant river, but a big enough one to need a bridge.
I should have zoomed in on my phone to check the route detail on the app on my phone.
I didn’t!
This schoolboy error added around 4 miles to our trip.
In my desire to see the magnificent coastline, I took us too far west and this meant that we had to trek a couple of extra miles east, to find the bridge at Aljezur.
My Google Maps image below isn’t totally true torture, as GM always defaults to roads rather than walking trails, but you can see how. ‘A river runs through it’ and how that added 4 miles to our walk!
No self respecting Peregrino wants to walk ‘extras’!
I sounded very ‘Gandalfian’ (the wizard in ‘Lord of the Rings’) at the point where I realised my error and shouted to Camino Steve:
“We must head for the Bridge of Aljezur”.
It could have come straight from the film and book!
Every cloud has a silver lining.
I’ll tell you about Josephine in a moment. she was our silver lining!
But first our walk.
After leaving the hostel at 06.45, we decided to head straight for the coast.
It was a spectacular morning: fresh, clean, vibrant with a heavy dew.
The vegetation was lush and wet.
The day was waking up.
A heavily canopied tree blocked the rising morning sun, creating a visual spectacular.
I messaged various groups with that image and a caption reading: “Morning has broken!’
It was mesmerising.
Within 20 minutes of leaving we were on the coast.
The views were stunning.
A sea stack glistened in the weak morning sun as the Atlantic threw her payload at its base.
Another 20 minutes and we had descended to a beautiful rocky beach where the 4 foot rollers crashed their rhythms as we sat and took it all in.
A better breakfast spot I cannot remember.
I swapped messages with Nicky and sent the photo of our picnic spot to my family.
Our ‘pack up’ breakfast from the night before was great: cheese on sourdough, a carton of delicious lemon tea and apple or banana.
The walking got better and better: until I realised my mistake.
When we reached our first village on the corrected route, we saw a ‘sinking ship house’. Weird!
I like wacky, but that house gave me a sinking feeling!🤣
A little further, on eagle eyed Steve saw a surf shack selling all the surfer gear.
He had discovered that his water bottle had a crack half way up. No one wants a leaky bottle on the Camino.
So he went to peruse.
He took ages: probably 15 minutes.
So eventually I decided to investigate.
I found the shop owner, Josephine, carrying out a repair on his bottle.
All that cockney charm paid off!
We all ended up chatting for 10 more minutes and swapped photos of our loved ones.
Steve’s daughter Josephine is married to Anton.
This Josephine is married to Anton!
Weird!
She was lovely and so kind.
She got not a penny from us, but spread a priceless amount of joy.
We aren’t even on the Camino yet, but in Josephine, we saw the spirit of the Camino at work! Such a lovely exchange!
So if you ever come down to this area, please check out Josephine’s surf shack! It is called ‘Aljezur Surf Spot’.
Despite our long day and sore feet, we had a brilliant day.
We passed cork trees, where they harvest…… cork.!
We passed a roving knife sharpener whose bike is his shop.
And we finished in Odeceixe, walking past a historic windmill
After a lovely meal in the town, we hit the sack at 8.45pm totally bushed.
What a day!
Our Camino is already providing!
Thanks for the read.
Buen Camino
Martin x
Answer to yesterday’s question
A T rue pilgrim can travel on foot, by bike or by horse.
Steve met this pilgrim on horseback back in 2023.
Question 5:
What is a Camino Credential?
Don’t forget, if you want to support Hannah’s charity you can do so through the link below.
Thanks ever so much, if you do.
Martin Moorman is a 61 year old retired Headteacher who lives with his wife Nicky, daughter and her family in North Yorkshire, UK.
Happily married for 36 years, Martin and Nicky have 3 grown up children, all happily married too. In his spare time Martin loves walking, photography, football, renovating cooking and talking rubbish to anyone who will listen!
Martin Moorman 