The Stone Site

If the acronym OMG should be used, it’s perhaps today is the right day. Yesterday we passed all limitations regarding walking, I started even to consider cold water at the last coffee shop instead of a soda. But OMG; my wife and all-time supporter of cafes refused stopping; she had reached the nirvana level of walking – perhaps too much of endorphin or whatever the body provides before you drop dead! Hopefully this will be as much as we never ever have to walk again!

Going out Sunday morning in the big city of Coimbra for breakfast was not easy! There are at least five or six Open cafes on a Sunday morning. But Coimbra seems to be the place where all tourist busses stop at the same time for breakfast, letting out three or four hundreds of hungry travellers. I have heard about bar fighting, but OMG; I have never experienced breakfast bar fighting!! No places to sit, no waitress available to help, people not getting their orders etc. We had all the time in the world just being happy to feel our feet for the first time, so we just relaxed and enjoyed “the show”. And it’s worth waiting for – the pastry is delicious.

At lunch time we visited the local monastery/church; to get a stamp to the pilgrim passport and to be a bit civilised (not just walking, eating…if you know what I mean). And without any intention to be rude, impolite, offend anyone or being blasphemyical(?); but OMG – what kind of relics we saw … and I leave it out for you to interpret it in your own way.

Well, what to say about cities vs countryside? I need them both, but when walking the Camino I do like the small scale, to just have one thing to choose, to know that the guy doing the coffee is the waiter, the chef and probably the owner too! But OMG if I should be placed there for ever; I need the mix of silence and loudness, suffering and enjoyment, water and Sumol Naranja! And so I do hope life will continue to be!

Today is Saturday the 6th – Lessons learned from previous days is that we underestimated the distance: so we require some planning. Today’s estimated distance is 30 km and therefore it’s natural to dived in to three phases or should I say acts? Buy how does it work?

Act 1 – The first 10 km

Getting up early is absolutely necessary, so waking up at 4.00 we are on our way about 4.45 or 4.50 then its dark as this(

The challenge is that it’s completely dark and almost hopeless to find the yellow arrows! The god part is that you don’t see the challenges, it’s just to walk. HOWEVER after about two ours we normally face three new issues; Coffee, Hunger and a desperate need to shit (to be honest and open). As far as we have experienced, it’s a huge difference between Camino Portugués and Frances. In Portugal they haven’t commercialised the Camino, which is fine, but the problem is to find an open Cafe. In today’s desperate need we took and extra detour of 1,6 km to find a morning cafe; but despite google claiming that it should be open, it was closed. You can probably imagine what words we used when finding this out. Every KM is an extra 15 min, so we wasted some of the good morning walk tine here.

Act 2 – The next 10 km

The sun is now up and it’s getting hot. Now it’s super important to drink enough. And the principle is simple; If you have to or feel a need to pee all the time, you drink to much. But if you don’t do it all, you drink to little. What can you drink? Whatever!

A Sumol contains 99 kcal – and finalising 20 km, you have lost about 2.000 kcal. So that’s about 20 of nice Sumol Naranja!! Of course you don’t do that, but not compensating for lost calories and you soon start to faint!!

Act 3 – The last 10 km

First of all, the last 10 km is never the last ones, it’s the last 13 or 15! Now it’s will power! And you start to notice things like; why do you always have go down to go up? For example this crossing, couldn’t they have put it as high up as possible so you didn’t have to walk down?

Cars have flat and fine roads. When you walk, the road is never flat, it’s like a rollercoaster! Car roads go through mountains or hills, walking roads never do that!

There are millions of unfair things, when added to the feelings of having spikes or bob wire in your shoes you are a bit grumpy! Can you avoid it? Don’t think so – perhaps it’s just to be aware of it.Hmm, feels like we are not fully enjoying this walking? Well, we do – especially when arrived and mission accomplished! But until then, don’t ask; just walk and walk.. And as for today, for about 11 hours incl time for some breaks

It’s Friday the 5th of July today and we have been walking 31 km between Pussos and Alvorge. My estimation about 25,5 km was a bit optimistic but shows how hard it is to estimate the Camino Portugues, there are so many alternatives all the time.

So, what to say about the walk of today and especially if should be a bit serious (if possible)? Well, it’s been quite a good example of the different kinds of walking.

In the morning we had open countryside walking a bit up and a bit down. Doing this kind of walk in the morning you can be quite fast, in our case about 5 km/hour. But then comes the wood-walking and the sun starts to burn already at 9:00

This is an example of steep down walking, putting your toes outside you shoe trying not to fell down, and then immediately a steep upgrade walking. When walking upwards you curse whatever you have put in your rug sack. If it was a bit heavy before it’s now super heavy! And there are quite a few of them in this distance.

Here is this nice flat but high-grass walking. After some kilometres of this and you have tons of interesting things in your shoes. I’m wearing boots – but that doesn’t help!

What you see below is what we believe is some kind of old roman roads or at least quite a “stonish” walking. Watch your walking sticks, they get easily stuck and if pushed too much they surely break.

And then finally we have the road walking

The idea is that you walk on the road and that the drivers make some space for you! And they mostly do and if not, then you have to jump or your Camino walk will continue to paradise!

That – that’s about it! There are some combos but adding maximum sun to a walk makes it a bit special! We don’t walk so much slower per km but the breaks are longer and more frequent when you are grilled and that takes time!

Another thing is of course what you think about during the different walking and you absolutely think differently depending on what kind of walk it is!

Leaving Tomar was not an easy task. Would have been so nice to participate in the final party. But that’s Camino life, so back to the woods and hills. Uphill walking is a bit of a challenge and going up just to realise that you have to get down and up again is a bit frustrating sometimes. However we finally ended up in a super rural area and in a very, very fine place to stay.

The place we are staying at is run by two younger persons renovating the house and surroundings from scratch. And their two fine dogs are there as support, of course!

This is the place where time stands still and the only thing you can do and must do; is just “being”. We got our laundry washed and a very fine homemade dinner. And a very good and long conversation about everything and nothing,

We have been seeing so many of these houses before and now we got the chance to meet and talk to the people having a dream, a vision and capability of turning the tide. You get such a positive energy and you get so full of inspiration from these kind of people!

For us, going the Camino is a big adventure as such, however we should perhaps have a bolder plan. But what? The Camino gives us time to think things through perhaps we will find something out. Until then I’m just happy having a talk with the hens…

Little did we know two days ago when we left Golegã about what was going to happen In Tomar. But both me and me wife have fallen in love with his beautiful city. And it’s not strange. Every four year a special festival, fiesta is arranged – and by coincidence we are here.

Just being very lucky we have come to the town when all preparations are finalised. There are happy people everywhere working to make the town even more pretty than before.

There are people all over the place and we are just floating along(?).

I’m very impressed to see how joyful and collaborative all people seems to be making the city beautiful. In quality theory and especially regarding Lean there is concept called the Lean Temple. Of course you can see it as a way of structuring strategies & principles – but it’s also a way of seeing your company, family or perhaps even yourself. Companies need to do profits, people need to survive – but there is another dimension; how we do it, how proudly we are doing it and how we can make our company (or body) shine! Again looking at the proud and happy engagement here in Tomar I hope to remember this in autumn to improve and make the company where I work shine and most of all my family!