15km. Gorgeous day, blue sky with no clouds this morning, and just a few high, wispy clouds by the time we finished walking at 3pm. We spent the day walking on quiet country roads and along cobbled paths through old abandoned farmland. A lot of the time there were stone walls on either side of the path, indicating that in the past someone had gone to a lot of trouble to enclose the fields, but now they lie abandoned and overgrown.
We walked through small, long villages perched on the sides of hills. Only one cafe along the way, at Laranjeiras, a few kms after we started walking. And a working water tap at Vendas a km or so further on. Most of the villages we walked through had no shops at all, but we saw a mobile fishmonger selling her wares from the back of a refrigerated truck a couple of time as we walked this afternoon.
Our camino route now has blue arrows in addition to the yellow arrows we are following to Santiago. The blue arrows point in the opposite direction and are for pilgrims walking to Fatima. The first Residencial (hotel) we tried this afternoon (Residencial Adega Tipica) was full of Fatima pilgrims who had just arrived, so we wandered around the corner to the next hotel (Residencial Nova Estrela on Av. Dr. Victor Faviero) on the list and met the owner outside. He speaks Portuguese and French but doesn’t speak English, so we managed to understand each other with a mix of Portuguese, French and the occasional Spanish word.
Windfarm above Alvaiazere (click for larger version)
one of the many roadside shrines
Having morning tea by the roadside
Walking down the hill towards Venda (click for larger version)
Where we are in Portugal (pink arrow)