The Stone Site

Nine days since we started from Lisbon, feels quite unrealistic; has time really passed so quickly? Looking at the map we have advanced quite a bit into Portugal.

However it’s just 1,5 hours drive with a car. And we have spent over 55 hours walking – but then, of course, we have seen everything very very close and have had time to think about all the things seen. “What happened here?”; is a question that occurs quite often in our discussion, especially seeing all the abandoned places. And there are lots of them. What happened with this bicycle repairman? We don’t know but we sure have all the time talking about it when walking step by step by step by step by step…

Today we reached Tomar and got a place with a kitchen of our own! Finally we could do some serious food shopping and for a suede it’s not that expensive!

21€ for a bottle of wine, a couple of sodas, meatballs, ice cream, crisps and much more. Oops doesn’t sound to healthy .. and the tomatoes were a fully unconscious decision; walking miles and miles along tomato fields we can’t think about anything else but tomatoes!

Well, you only look this happy the first miles … add 35 degrees sunshine … and you are not fully so happy to see endless miles of them and no shadow

After the catastrophical walking last time we agreed upon having a plan and the best plan I could come up with was perhaps to study the map a bit better. And so I did and at four in the morning we got up after doing the packing late evening before. However, there are always some things you have forgotten and time pass by. Delayed we started to move on;

But some cities are not meant for leaving, Santarém is one of them and we took every possible wrong way! Finally getting and on our way we faced another interesting change, water canons!

My knowledge in irrigation is limited, but I assume that most of the water should be sprinkled over the plants! That’s not always the case, instead you can arrange them as a gauntlet for the pilgrims to test their stop-wait-run capabilities along the pathway! Quite fun, especially if you’re not the one that get soaking wet!

Doing long story short, by drinking tons of water and finding and stopping at every open Cafe, we made our 33 km quite fine! And now we are happily safe at Golega. A city well known for their horses. We haven’t seen anyone yet, but there is a fine statue of one in the beginning of the city!

Finally a day of resting. Of course walking is nice but resting a day is also very, very nice. Santarém seems to be one of these lovely Camino cities with a rich soul and beautiful charisma. As all of them, the city is very peaceful, almost at sleep during the day.

There are many beautiful buildings and flowers.

But there are also some few places where you can se that something has gone a bit wrong.

What happened here? What iceberg did this beautiful building run into? What happened with this factory, why did they stop?

All of us are masterpieces of life, a Titanic on land! But sometimes we hit an iceberg and things go wrong! The challenge is not to avoid the events, because you can’t and if you were able to do that, it wouldn’t be an iceberg! The challenge is to cope with them, how hard it may seem to be!

Wouldn’t it be a dream come through if buildings like below could be restored to its former glory? Image putting up Puccini’s Madame Butterfly here or Macbeth? Well it’s just a dream, however walking the Camino is absolutely a dream come through and I’m very grateful that I have been able to do it once and hopefully we will do it once more!

Well, after some days walking we thought we know the drill. Up early morning and in our case about four, going out about 4.45. Of course the last guest at hour hostel just arrived at 3.00 so they put out their heads and wonder if he party is still going on when we are leaving.

Then it’s just to walk as fast as possible to put it mildly. Trying to have some few stop and then, before sun has reached its full capacity, try to be safe at some hostel.

That was also the plan for today! And it went smoothly the first 15 km. We also had the luck to meet a old Portugues that offer some fruit from his garden. Life is good and walking is fun all according to plan!

Then shit hits the fan. Sun peaks, roads are endless and there is no way of sitting down or stopping for some water. Hour after hour and you soo run out of water! At Camino Frances you could assume that there was at least some one trying to earn an couple of extra Euro by selling water or soda. Here it’s none – because there are no pilgrims!!!! So it turned out a bit bad and no plan B either!

Well in the end everything turned out well, but we learned a lesson; do not assume to much. Just because we are idiots going out with to little water doesn’t mean than they will be someone there waiting to do a profit selling it tremendously expensive!

So know we are back and in a very nice room with a wonderful view, thinking about next walking day and where we could assume water or not. This time we are not going to over estimate or walking speed and capacity! But until then, we just enjoy our rom with a view;

(So how far did we get today; about 35 km, 22.000 steps and lost about 2.799 calories – how many litres of water we lost I don’t know, but I have the last hours drunk over 2,5 litres, not to mention the white Portugués white wine I zipped looking out from the room!)

Third day of walking, the familiar feeling from last years Camino of hurting feet and knees are back. Today’s walk was more or less walking on roads with heavy traffic. What is a bull fight compared to eight heavy lorries running towards you in about 100 km/h on a road without pavement? Olé’- you quickly learn how to jump in the bushes!!

The trick is of course to get up early in the morning and so we did today. And as the last three days, without a Camino walker in sight!

Then suddenly at a crossroad we spotted one! Pilgrims are of course not stamped with Camino all over them, but when seeing one you know it. And we where right! How very welcome and I think it was mutual. And so we meet Susana from Murcia in Spain. She spoke a bit French, good Portugués and of course Spanish. My French is more or less a forgotten language and you know since yesterday about my weakness in Portugués, si? However its not a problem when you haven’t seen any pilgrim for days! So this time we all talked for hours understanding about half of what was the topic of the conversation and that was not a problem! But we also walked together, silent after each other meditating about our feet, the heat and direction. Just being together created a nice feeling that strengthened us and it was not that bad walking the hard roads any more.

And as often walking the Camino our ways departed, she went away to Santarem and we stopped at Azambuja. Perhaps we meet again on our common way to Santiago or not, we just have to be patience, continue walking and see!