We’ve arrived at an absolutely delightful albergue in San Roque – Alberque Constantino which is directly on the Camino route. Dorothy and I have a lovely double bedded room with light flooding in through door and window. We have access to a shared bathroom which includes a bath – the first on this Camino and the first for some time. Baths on the Camino are fairly rare and should be taken full advantage of when the occasion arises.

We set out this morning around 7:30 as usual,

foregoing the breakfast included in our room fee in order to have more time at the end of the day and to ensure that the 350m climb towards the end didn’t stress Tom out too much.

As it turned out we need not have worried. The first 6km took us quickly to Ponte de Lima, whose bridge was the subject of last night’s photograph. Ponte de Lima turned out to be a lovely small town. We approached along the banks of the river to find the town in a festive mood.

In this next image you can just see the old bridge in the background.

Perhaps it was because it was simply Saturday but people were milling around enjoying the sunshine. A large temporary flower market had set up shop outside a restaurant and a small number of street traders were setting up shop.

As we found in Spain, the Portuguese really like erecting statues at every opportunity. These are rarely of pompous chaps on horseback, celebrated for wiping out some poor foreign tribe or other. Far more often they’re of something or someone much more interesting. It’s a delightful custom and one we would do well to emulate.

I particularly like the next group.

The Camino led us across the river and past this impressive chunk of rock.

It’s comforting to have such a pleasant looking chap wishing us buen Camino.

We left Ponte de Lima quickly along the old bridge

Too quickly perhaps. It would have been nice to have spent more time there. Breakfast had been good; bacon and scrambled egg in a large bread roll with two cups of milky coffee. (Q. Who eats a bread roll with knife and fork? A. Tom).

Immediately after crossing the bridge

we started a gentle climb through attractive farmland seemingly dedicated to vinaculture and brassicas. We brought home seeds of these brassicas last time we walked in Spain. We’ll plant them as soon as we get back. There must be something really special about these plants to see them so ubiquitous in this part of the Iberian peninsula.

As the path rose above the fields the river went through a series of impressive waterfalls.

The initial climb was relatively gentle and we had plenty of time to stop and enjoy some agua con gas at a small cafe en route.

We saw our first Siani Flewog (caterpillar) of the year.

and these interesting constructions. I’ve no idea what purpose they serve.

Shortly after I took this image, the path started to climb more steeply, entered a forest of eucalyptus trees and headed towards the mountain peak (not really a mountain, more a fairly steep hill).

Here’s the first selfie of the Camino.

Tom and Juanita had gone on ahead at this point so we thought, ‘what the hell, let’s tackle this selfie stuff, we’ve seen other people do it and get away with it, let’s see if we can too’. So we did and you can see the result.

Now a couple of pictures to try to give some idea of the relative gradient of the path.

and some (what I think are) attractive photographs of the ascent. (The main purpose of this blog after all is to provide us with memories of an enjoyable Camino experience in the depths of a Brexit winter).

We came across a couple of crosses, with somewhat tacky additions. What’s wrong with a simple plain cross.

In Porto, Tom had persuaded us (bought tickets for us) to take a look inside the church of St Francis which I personally found to be utterly and hideously obscene. The entire interior of the church was in the baroque style (nothing wrong with that), but covered from top to bottom in gold leaf. Photographs were forbidden so here’s one I smuggled out.

How might St. Francis, the exemplar of poverty (and persecuted by the church for having such views) have reacted had he seen this testament to his teaching. The classic cry of compassion, ‘suffer little children to come unto me’ is heartfelt and an example of the deeply moving depth of feeling exhibited by Christ in his teaching. Which suggests that having carnal relations with them rather cuts against the grain but then the Catholic Church is full of such little inconsequential ironies.

Rant over.

Once over the peak we descended gently towards yet another bar and more agua con gas, this time with added crisps and selection of nuts, desiccated coconut and raisins.

The final km took us into more open country,

across a small bridge above a crystal clear stream,

up a broad path,

and towards our albergue for the night.

The final image is the panorama from our room, nice n’ c’est pas?

We’re off to dinner shortly., There’s nothing in this small village but the owner of the albergue also owns a restaurant in the next village, so he’ll drive us across there at 6:30, (i.e. in 18 minutes – and we are very much looking forward to some decent food), presumably wait for us and then return us hopefully satiated with both food and wine, safely to the albergue.

Buen Camino