In Barcelos

We’re in ‘In Barcelos’ (hostel) in Barcelos (town). We stayed here in 2019 with Tom and Juanita. It was and is relatively inexpensive and very nice, well worth a second visit. We’ve showered and trying to decide whether it’s worth walking a further 400m to the Thai restaurant which gets 5* on tripadvisor or settling for Babette’s, 14m away which gets a mere 4.5*. Both open at 18:30, it’s 18:01 now and we’re hungry 😞.

In the meantime to come back to today’s little jaunt. Stats first : 41,373 steps, a little under 33km walked, lots of stops for agua con gas and beer, lunch provided at the kerbside by last night’s visit to Auchun, conveniently situated next door to our hotel.

It was a long stretch bridging the gap between the coastal and central routes but it started out well enough.

In fact this particular aquaduct turned out to have been commissioned by a bunch of nuns in the 17th century who needed a reliable water supply. It runs for at least 5km. Goodness knows where they got the money from but it got built, fell into disrepair, got fixed and was in use for many years, at least until they invented the Portuguese equivalent of Thames water.

There was a decent path alongside the aquaduct until we arrived at a large green metal gate manned by a fearsome German lady who told us to bog off around the block instead. We complied fairly sheepishly as she opened the gate and disappeared behind it. The aquaduct continued into the far distance but for some time we had to negotiate small busy lanes until eventually it reappeared alongside us but in a much reduced form.

Thankfully, after a couple more km of cobblestones

we finally made it onto a typical forest track

But

At 11 o’clock and roughly 11.5km from the start we finally made it back to the Camino Portuguese central

Not quite half way but still, we were making good progress.

There are some lovely markers en route to ensure that we stay on the path.

We stopped once more at the bar where we had a meal that Dorothy pointedly refused to eat in 2019. Apparently it was really bad but with no sense of smell and somewhat unsophisticated taste buds I enjoyed it. This time round Dorothy was prepared to sanction only a beer and a packet of crisps.

The remaining km passed slowly and a little painfully as our feet and in Dorothy’s case, her back, complained at the punishment they were receiving but we soldiered on and stopping only to take some pictures got here around half past four.

Those pictures …