Day five. Ponte de Lima to Valenca. 22 miles.

I had forgotten what the portions were like in the local restaurants in this part of the world. I ordered grilled pork chop and soup. The soup was delicious and came in a bucket, and the two pork chops covered a huge portion of sautéed potatoes and the whole thing looked like a house. Then I was brought the rice and the bread, plus two bottles of mineral water and they had the temerity to charge me 10 euro. I won't go there again.

I had rented a room for the night and it was great to have a shower to myself, but the bed was about 4 inches too short and I ended up sleep diagonally. But at least I was the only one snoring. When I woke I thought I was experiencing a miracle. For the first time in countless years I could see without my glasses, everything. The time on my watch the writing in a magazine and the room was crystal clear. It truly was miraculous. I imagined that this room would be a new destination for pilgrims to come to and was busy designing the direction arrows when I realised that I had slept in my daily disposable contact lenses.

I had washed out a couple of pairs of socks and pants the night before and as they were still wet tied them onto my rucksack,  I must have looked like Mr Woo's Chinese laundry as I strode out over the bridge and out of the town. 

After a few miles I was once more deep in rural, Portugal and got caught up in a church  triangulation. Three churches several miles apart were chiming out the hour (0700 as it happens), but they were out of sync. It was obvious the respective vergers had not synchronised watches and what I got was a  cacophony of bells trying to compete with each other as to who could get the mos attendees at early Mass.

Deep in some woods I disturbed one the many chained dogs in Portugal who started barking, which set up a chain reaction of barking dogs across the valley. In fact, it could have reached you by now.

In an isolated village I came across a very old lady with her head in one of those big green refuge bins they use in isolated outposts. She fished out an old bottle and for one moment I thought she was going to drink the dregs. But she took the cork out and dropped the bottle back in the bin. Seeing my quizzical look she proceeded to explain exactly what she did with these corks. I have not the faintest idea what she was talking about but I thought it involved her husband at some stage.

I knew today I was to be faced with a climb. And after 8 miles it started. It was only 1250 feet, but it was virtually straight up. On the lower slopes I noticed sap being collected from the pines. Then the path became a dangerous mixture of large boulders and small stones, the type that act like ball bearings if you get them rolling. Every time I thought I was near the top another treacherous pitch presented itself. Half way up I was feeling every one of my 67 years, and the quadriceps in my left leg that I had ripped off my kneecap a year ago was now the size of a small lemon. I normal times it is like walking with an ironing board stuck in the thigh but this was the first time I had put it to this test, and it didn't like it. What would have normally taken me a hour took ninety minutes. But if you keep putting one foot in front of the other you eventually get to where you are going. And I did. 

On the way down I met a 28 year old American from Pheonix. He was a pharmacist who worked for a large company on a freelance basis, six months on and six off. Where were those jobs when I needed one? As we descended he gave me his views on the gun problem in the USA. He was passionately opposed to guns and told me why. I though his views were enlightening but stood no chance of seeing the light of day.  The other good thing about him was that he thought I was 58 years old. As I say, a very nice individual. 

I had set my trek out in stages to get to Santiago in time to do what I had to before flying out. This stage was to be 11 miles to Rubiaes where I arrived at 1100 to discover a very small village. Now I am sure that if I had dug under the surface I could have found some very interesting things to see. But I didn't have a shovel with me and the thought of hanging around there for 15 hours filled me with horror. There was nothing for it but to head for the last town in Portugal, Valenca, another 12 miles away. 

I had a brief lunch and set out, new vigour and a fresh challenge. I knew I had another climb but this was only around 800 feet and was a shallow drift upwards on footpaths. I also knew that rain had been forecast for today but so far there was no sign of it. I was now pounding out the miles in the same rhythm that has enabled me to walk the 480 miles of the Camino Frances three years previous.

At the top I crossed the road and disappeared into a forest of oak and pine. Down through rough track,  across streams, and along medieval country lanes. At 1500 I broke out of the vegetation. Hot, sweaty and a bit pleased with myself. I had gained a day. Now I would not be rushing when I got to Santiago but would have a complete day to do what I had to. I had also managed to get my Pilgrim's passport stamped as you can see below. 

Tomorrow would I cross the bridge over the river Minho into Spainish time and will have to put my watch on one hour for the 19 mile walk to Redondela.  Now, before I get my dinner, I'm going to take out my contact lenses.

Day four Barcelos to Ponta de Lima. 21 miles

It sometimes feels as if I have slept in the company of more women than the normal amorous

film star. Take last night for example. Three men in a dormitory with twenty women. But that does have it's benefits. Some men snore for their countries, others suffer from sleep apnea and you are constantly waiting for them to take a breath and when they do the explosion of air sounds like marbles rattling around in a metal pan. Women, on the other hand, have a gentle way of snoring, more of a sigh followed by a mellifluous expelling of wind between their lips. So what I'm trying to say is that I had a jolly good night's sleep, which is just as well because it was an 0600 start to walk the  21 miles to Ponte de Lima, the longest stage on the trek.

At that time of the day the air is fresh and the streets deserted, except, of course for the obligatory street washing. As this was a big town it required a large vehicle with two men holding the hose. There is always one guy it seems above all this. He sits in the cab smoking, making phone calls and scratching his bits while eating a sandwich. I think they call it multi-tasking. 

I was soon out of the suburbs and into the country having bought my lunch of tinned tuna in vegetable oil, a banana and two rolls. See, I know how to live. Not only was this to be the longest stretch it also had two climbs of varying degrees of difficulty. It was a dull day as I came to the top of the first climb and there was a noticeable downwards change in the temperature. But it soon warmed up when I met madam, who was ninety if she was a day. She was in her garden using a hand pump to fill a huge concrete wash tub the size of a small swimming pool. I asked if I could fill my water bottle and she invited me into her garden. I gathered that this was mountain water, the best around, and I could take as much as I wanted for it was free. I asked if I could photograph her and even at her age she was able to offer a coquettish drop of the head before rushing into posing action. I then asked if she would take one of me filling my bottle. I showed her how to hold the iPad and what to press. After the fifth attempt she got it. What a trooper who giggled all the time.

On leaving the village I noticed pictures of elderly people who had recently died. I had previously seen the same thing in bus shelters and on shop walls and even on lamp posts. It was the local obituary column and a good way of telling those that met that person most often in that particular place that they were dead.  After the climb came the descent, and when I was half way down the hill I suddenly realised I had not seen a yellow arrow for some time, and the simple explanation for that was because I had taken the wrong route. I was walking on the 204, not a problem as it would take me where I wanted to go, but it was dangerous. I looked back up the hill and then down it, which way to go? There was only one choice, down. 

As I reached the bottom a shop owner beckoned me in and tried to sell me a bicycle, he knew I had taken the wrong route. It was irritating, I knew the camino was no more than 500 yards away, I just couldn't  get to it. A little further on I came across a butchers shop that also sold cheese. Fortune from misfortune, at least I would get my goats cheese. I went through the usual routine, fingers either side of the head and prancing around like a good un when one of the two butchers caught on. He beckoned my over and produced a side of frozen goat the size of a small village. I pointed at the frozen goat and then at the cheese, finally the euro dropped. 'Ah', they said in unison, at last, I thought, then they both went, 'No!'. So that was that, the search for goats cheese has become the Holy Grail for me on this trip. 

But they did give me directions to the camino and within no time I was striding once more along a country lane, only stopping for a short while to tuck into my gargantuan repast in the grounds of a magnificent country church in warm sunshine.  The afternoon walk was a delight. Wooded country lanes, sleepy hamlets, all surrounded by mountains where red pan tiled houses covered the slopes. The approach to Pont de Lima was thorough a stream of little  villages populated, it would seem, only by  hoopoes, lazy dogs and hungry swallows, and with the air permeated with the sweet smell of decaying silage, which I happen to like.

It was time to fill my water bottle and I approached an elderly man working in his garden. He took my bottle to a trough in which lay a hose wallowing in rancid water. Taking the hose out he turned on a nearby tap filled the bottle and gave it back. I thanked him and when I was out of sight tipped out the water and ditched the bottle. I preferred thirst to simonella.

Ponte de Lima is described as the most beautiful town in Portugal and I see no reason to disagree. Wide sunlight squares and a long and very old bridge though which flows the languid river Lima. I  had taken a room for the night in a local dwelling house in the old town as a treat for the days walk. It had a no wi-fi which is the reason I ended up sitting in chair kindly provided by the lovely ladies of the local tourist office who allowed me to piggy back into their wi-fi

Tomorrow is a short 11 miles, but thunder and lightening are forecast. hum, looking forward to that

Day three Vilarinho to Barcelos. 17 miles

To finish off last night I had a meal in a local cafe. Soup, spaghetti carbonara, grapes the size of ping-pong balls, all washed down with the local beer for £5. On returning to the hostel madam met me with a hugh carafe of port and some of her home made coconut cakes, all taken on a balmy night in the yellow glow of a flickering candle.

I left at 0600 hours the following day. I knew if I tarried the temptation to stay another night would have been too strong. The day was dull and cold but that meant it was good walking weather. I was now passing through rural Portugal, a mixture of tarmac, rough track and the ubiquitous cobbles. This is not a beautiful area. There are a lot of small farms and from what I saw many fields were being tended by extended families. The grapes I had last night did not come from around here as what vines there were snaked haphazardly around field boundaries and would probably only have supported the family. The occasional outcrop of eucalyptus trees added some spice to the air and to be fair the locals were very hospitable waving with the occasional bon camino thrown in for good luck.

At around ten I stopped for a drink at the top of another cobbled hill. A mile or so after I felt something was missing. It was, my Tilley hat, I must have dropped it on the ground at my rest stop. Uttering a few well chosen Anglo Saxon phrases I retraced my path and found it on the steps of the church where I has been resting. Apologising for my language I whipped it off the ground and went on my way. Now that might not seem too much of a problem to most and indeed it isn't, but I promise you when you are pounding out the miles having to back is the last thing you want to do.

So, having got that sorted I decided to try work out exactly how many granite cobblestones I would walk over during the course of this trek. They were horrid to walk on. Sunken, or at drunken angles, great dips where cars had gone over them through the years, or worse still missing. Anyway, I was working this out when I got the fright of my life as this huge black thing reared up to my left in the garden of a house I was passing. It had a roar that suggested it was being probed by a red hot poker, a nose like Concord and ears the size of wig-wams. It also had great teeth, I know that because it was showing them to me. It was on a chain that came within an inch of the gate and it's breath smelt as if it had gobbled the goats cheese I couldn't find yesterday.

I was already in the throws of needing to answer the call of nature when this thing almost did the job for me. Turning hastily down a lane I commenced to do the necessary as a snake slithered out of the grass bank and passed within inches of my right foot. I know it was my right foot because it was my right leg that was getting wet. It was brown with green diamond shapes and around three feet long and an inch around. (No, the snake.). It went off into the undergrowth while I went to the local fountain to wash my leg. 

Having survived all that I still has to endure the dance of death with the traffic. I swear drivers in Portugal get extra rewards for shaving the hair off a Pilgrim's legs. 

I found the hostel in the delightful town of Barcelos, which has proper square with large market place and plenty off nooks and crannies to explore. I will eat in the hostel, a dinner of soup, followed  by chicken from the oven. Not bad for £8 all in, including hot showers. 

Tomorrow is the longest day, 21 miles and requires an early start, so there will be no alcohol tonight. 

Day two - Porto to Vilarinho. 16 miles

At 0730 prompt I picked up the first yellow arrow for Santiago de Compostela outside the west door of the cathedral. It was sunny and the top temperature was predicted to be 24C. A ramp descends down from the cathedral which seemed an appropriate way of shovelling one on one's way. Steep steps lead through tall narrow buildings separated by an arm length, and into which the sun never shone. I worked my way around the men blasting yesterday's dog-poo which seemed to only be pebble dashing the skirts of the nearby houses. It was now time to concentrate.

There is no need to take a map on this walk as it, like the Camino Frances, is well signposted by yellow arrows pointing the way, but I knew getting out of Porto was not going to be easy as the arrows were often lost in a confusion of other road signs. Get it wrong and you could find yourself in Madrid.

There was the option to cut out this arduous route march altogether. Many choose to take the bus for 10 miles which gets them out of the city, but I see very little point in that. Unfortunately we can't cut the bad bits out of our life and if I had taken this option I would not have walked from Porto to Santiago. But who would care? Well, I would for one. 

The second arrow I found on a traffic sign at the bottom of the hill and then others started pulling me up through the cobbled lanes. Now I was beginning to feel it and I had only gone a mile. Like all treks, no matter how much training you do at home you never really get into your stride until the third or forth day.

Eventually I reached the old prison and I could see from the faces of those scurrying off to work that they were displaying Monday morning blues as they stuffed their ears with iPhones and their mouths with coffee scalding out of polystyrene cups. It brought back memories long forgotten and so I plodded on. Outside the Carmelite church with its beautiful blue tiles I got my first Bon Camino. On the Camino Frances it is a regular greeting from the locals but not so in Portugal, more followed and I find it difficult to explain how uplifting those two words are given generously by strangers.

Passing quickly through the shopping area I entered the suburbs. Dour, dusty, and somewhat depressing. As I made my way along I thought I would treat myself to some goats cheese for dinner. Always been very partial to that, the stronger the better. The owners of small corner shop did not speak English or French and I don't and probably never will speak Portuguese. So after the owner got his complete cheeses selection out of the fridge I could see no goat's cheese and thought it was time for some positive action. So I put two fingers up beside my ears and threw my head around in a butting action. That worked, thank goodness. 'So have you got it?, I asked. Nodding furiously and apparently so pleased his face suddenly turned to stone. 'No!' He said, replacing several packets of cheeses that were slowly turning green having had been out of the fridge for some time. 

Leaving the shop I could feel eyes on me and over the road a man was looking at me intently. He was about sixty, heavy build with a solemn long grey face, jet black moustache and slicked back silver hair. His suit was a somber black. The sign on the premises above his head read. Funeral Parlour. He definitely had me in his sights and I could feel myself shivering as if someone had walked over my grave. Perhaps it was him.

As I hurried away he would not take his gaze from me. I began to feel that I might be on his list, a feeling enhanced when I had to pass through a graveyard that contained fifty shades of architecture from baroque through to classical with a bit of modernist thrown in for good luck. Needless to say I'm still here, but for how long?. I'm sure there was a date on the paper he was holding out to me. Of course, he might have been touting for business, we'll if he want's mine he's going to have to wait.

The rest of the journey was hard. Walking into a northerly wind over miles of uneven cobbles before having to negotiate the mad Portuguese drivers who know two speeds, fast and bloody fast.

But, the end if the day was great. I am sitting in the garden of the beautiful Casa Laura. The sun is shining and a caged canary is sing to me. My clothes are drying in June sun and my socks no longer come when I whistle. I have a room with a choice of ten beds, including a double, and if no one else comes here I will use them all. Thick towels and perfumed soap are all provided in an immaculate ablutions room. Orange juice, tea, coffee biscuits and fruit are all free. The best bit is, it only cost 10 euro. So if my funerial friend was trying to tell me something then this will do nicely, thank you. 

The leaving

Porto is buzzing. The waterfront cafés are full and the pleasure craft are plying the river with more boozy would be sailors than you can count. The flight from Gatwick was swift and uneventful so Easy Jet must be doing something right. After some phaphing about I eventually found the hostel opposite the cathedral which I will be leaving from tomorrow. I am the oldest person by far here and most of the people staying look about 12 years old. They look at me as if they think I have been sent by their parents to spy on them. There is something called an Erasmus party taking place here tonight to which I have been invited. Never heard of it before so I assume it is some sort of religious festival. I have not yet met by fellow six bunkees. That should be fun. As I write there is water coming down through the ceiling and someone is placing a bucket between my legs. Thank goodness I discovered where the water was coming from, for a moment I thought it was me.

Checked out my starting place outside the west wall,of the cathedral for tomorrow then explored. Porto is all hills and is typical of many such cities that war has by-passed. Anodyne housing blocks occupy one side of the river which is connected by a bridge built by the inventor of Meccano. The old quarter is just that, old, crumbling and peppered with tall cranes trying to keep it all together, but it is beautiful, vibrant and fun to explore.

I am wearing my St Lukes 'T' shirt and as I was returning from the port was asked to join a Swiss banker and his new love at their table. They were a charming couple, very much in love and pleasure to be in the company of, particularly as the would not let me pay for the beer. Good luck to you Nadine and Andre I could think of worse places in which to plight your troth.

I have the first stamp on my pilgrim's passport. That will give me entry into the next hostel on route.

Getting ready for the trek

 Getting everything ready for the trek out of Porto on 2 June and the road north to Santiago de Compostela 150 miles away. The metal strips in the front are my contact lenses, better when I get hot and sweaty and if the temperature stays at it's current 22 degrees that will be often. The Tilley hat has accompanied me over many hundreds of miles over the tracks of France and Spain and the red eating utensil is another must. It's a spork a combined knife, fork and spoon which I always enjoy having in my hand as it means I'm relaxing with food to eat.

There are two of everything when it comes to clothes and the whole lot, including the rucksack will weigh no more than 7kgs. When I walked the Camino Frances I was amazed what people were carrying and many returned from the first leg over the Pyrenees to post some of their stuff back home. Mind you, I've also been guilty of this. When I walked the Robert Louis Stevenson trail through the French Cevennes last year I had the bright idea that I would camp as he did. Well that lasted one night.  The ground was hard despite a foam mattress, the wall of the tent leaked and everything was damp. Worst of all I only had about one hours sleep. On the second day I dumped the whole lot in bin and stayed in hotels.

The plan this time is to use the hostel system ala  Camino Frances. I have my Pilgrim passport forth stamped each day starting at the first one in Porto which I have booked. I can then stay at the next one en route collecting stamps as I go. Cost is around 10 euros night but you have to be prepared to sleep in mixed sex rooms and put up with the snoring.

My flight to Porto leaves mid-day Sunday and I start walking solo at 6am Monday morning. Fingers crossed the weather holds fair.

I am walking to raise funds for my local hospice details of which you can see at:


www.justgiving.com/stlukespilgrim

Great English Bank Holiday

Sun was shining, kids were making sand castles, ice cream cones abounded and fish and chips in polystyrene boxes was the dish of the day.