Camino Portugues Day 5

Camino Portugues Day 5

Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes

Starting km: 99.1

Finishing km: 116.7

Distance walked: 17.6

Today was the first day that you could properly call “tramping”.  We'd very clearly left even the exurbs of Porto behind. Everything was truly rural now.

Most of the walking was actually in forest, with several unavoidable puddles to get your feet wet.  And there was a hill! Admittedly, neither very high nor steep (350m vertical at around a 5% grade). But it was probably the biggest one on the Camino Portugues north of Porto, so it looks as though I'll probably be able to manage the whole thing in jandals.

Despite leaving the Albergue at 08:56 and being slightly hungover from the previous nights dinner party, we were somehow the fifth and sixth arrivals at the next one in Rubiaes.  This one was a lovely old building just outside of a small village and above a small Roman bridge.

We're getting to know our walking companions fairly well now.  There are heaps of young German women. After Germans, Portuguese are probably the number two nationality, but I reckon walking the Camino Portugues must feel, for them, like doing one of the Great Walks does to a Kiwi.

Memorable fellow walkers include:

Karina, a white-blonde German who has huge blisters and am injured knee, but is carrying on doing the Camino by public transport one stage at a time so that she can continue the journey with the new friends she made over the first few days.

Anastasia and her other (quiter, less comfortable in English) Russian friend.  They're from St. Petersburg. Anastasia has crazy steampunk looking lilac hair and gave me some tea brewed with foraged herbs and some Russian chocolate to say thanks for the previous night's dinner.

The bedroom has about twenty bunk beds in it, which kind of makes it feel like you're in a whole little other world while up there.  As every night there were a few snorers in the room, but after about fifteen minutes of reading I couldn't keep my eyes open and had a nice, long sleep.

Wine of the day:

Wasn't super in the mood for wine when I went shopping to be honest, but felt like I should get a bottle to keep the streak alive.  Ended up sharing with the Albergue host (first one we've met who didn't really speak any language other than Portuguese).

Adagas Murça Tinto

Nice simple young red.  Not sure if it even had any oak in it, but it went very well with the pasta and sauce I made (lots of garlic and onion, tomato puree, a little hot smoked paprika, salt, red wine and a ton of fennel I picked from along the Camino and chopped up).