Camino Portugues Day 7

Camino Portugues Day 7

Tui to Redondela

Starting km: 136.7

Finishing km: 169.4

Distance walked: 32.7

Today was a large amount of mostly pretty mediocre walking bookended by some lovely stuff.

We left the hostel at Tui just after 07:30, in acknowledgement of the many kilometres ahead of us.  It was bloody cold out, especially on my uncovered toes. Walking through the medieval city, then through the forest on the outskirts as the sun came up was very nice.  We had a morning coffee (along with every other pilgrim, it seemed) around 09:30 at a lovely, bright little trailside cafe.

A bit more nice forest, including a few km along a narrow slice in between the industrial suburbs of O Porriño and the motorway.  And then it was into the city of O Porriño itself.

This may be a bit unfair, as we only walked one path through O Porriño, but the Camino trail does seem to make an effort to take you through the nicest parts of each town, so I suspect it may be true and will thus say it anyway: O Porriño is a bit of a dump compared to the other towns and cities we've been walking through.  All gritty not-quite-modern-anymore housing and industrial facilities. At least it had a Lidl. As you may know, I've become bizarrely obsessed with the Lidl supermarket chain as making the most reliably good and cheap bread at their in store bakeries.

Eventually we left the northern suburbs of O Porriño and climbed up a modest 200m hill.  We were rewarded with a truly lovely view of our destination for the day, Redondela, along with its surrounding hills and the estuary of the Miño River.  It's here that the Portuguese Coastal Camino runs into an obstacle it can't get across and joins up with our more traditional central route.

Final comments of the day are on dogs:

The Portuguese and Spanish love to keep very large, very barky dogs.  We were constantly being startled by them as we walked past houses. In fact on day one of the Camino I was so surprised by one I jumped and sort of kicked a nearby signpost, which stripped the skin off the top of the fourth toe on my left foot.  It's not been infected or anything, but is only just starting to heal. Spending so long on the feet every day has been a bit hard on it.

Anyhow, my other dog comment was about our walking companion.  We first saw the little beagle cross guy in O Porriño. A few km later we saw him again walking beside a Czech lady we'd met earlier.  And finally we saw him again outside the restaurant where she was having lunch. He started following us, sometimes barking at, but generally mostly ignoring the dogs behind fences that we passed.  At one point though we passed a driveway with two feline guardians and he spent several minutes growling fiercely at two stone lions before running along to catch us up. He would not be shaken or dissuaded (we certainly didn't give him food or water) so he ended up accompanying us 10km to Redondela we left him outside the Albergue, but haven't seen him since.  Hopefully he's found his way home if he has one, or at least has come across some more friendly companions.

Today's wine:

Cider!  Three bottles in the park with a picnic dinner.  One of the favourite Maeloc and two Sidras Naturals from Asturias.  These came in 700ml corked bottles with no lips (pirate rum bottles I called them).  These were dried and bottle conditioned with sediment in them. One was a bit sulfurous, but really good once this blew off.  The other was cleaner, unfortunately to the point of maybe being a bit boring. Still lots of fun though!