Posted on by markusoreallyus · 2 Comments

The Way – part 7: grinding in northern Portugal – Ponte de Lima to Cossourado

I’m drunk. Since arrived at our hotel, I’ve had about a bottle and a half of vinho verde. Yes, I’m a lightweight. I’m old. -ish. Get lost.

Today was a hard day. The guide book said it would be, although it softened it by saying this would be “the most challenging day” of the Caminho. Christ, I hope so!

If you’re at all familiar with Vancouver, you’ll understand when I say it was like plunking half the Grouse Grind into a half marathon route. We gained 405 m – 1330 feet, for those of you who still think in such terms – during our ‘walk’ today. Most of it concentrated in a relatively short distance.

But we made it, somehow, and were even the first to arrive at our hotel. More drinking time for us! Winning!

For quite a while this morning, I wondered if they’d oversold the ‘challenging’ aspect of this stage. The we reached the grind – or what I’m now referring to as the ‘Portuguese Pummel’.

Thankfully we had purchased (and remembered to pack) trekking poles – although one of Adele’s crapped out, so we each used one. (Fair’s fair, right?) These proved invaluable in getting us up the rock-strewn gullies that appeared about 12 km into our 22 km hike.

It wouldn’t have been nearly so bad, though, if not for how hot it was. The temperatures reached the upper 20s C by 11 a.m., and by the time we reached the peak of our climb we’d hit 30 C, maybe more. The view, though, was spectacular.

Even after that zenith, though, today’s walk was a slog. The last time I drank this much water in a day (not counting the wine) was when I quit smoking, a little over 20 years ago.

We eventually arrived at our hotel, the exquisite Casa da Capela, at around 4 p.m., having left Ponte de Lima around 8:15 a.m.

It was a gruelling day, but I feel amply rewarded by the hotel, the food they served us for dinner, and – of course – the wine. (Oh, they also have a pool, not heated, which was great for soaking our feet in.)

Tomorrow, thankfully, will be a shorter walk, and mostly downhill.

Posted on by markusoreallyus

The Way – part 6: Balugães to Ponte de Lima

Walking is a very civilized way to travel. So much of our uncivilized, everyday lives is hurried, rushed, squeezed into ever-shrinking packets of time. So much is mechanized, digitized, quantized down to fractions of seconds; so much is performed at speed, on the go, ad hoc, toute suite. The idea of doing something slowly seems to run counter to everything society tells us we must do, must be, must achieve. Faster is better, even if it means skimming over the surface of things without absorbing much of it.

Walking is different. Walking is all about taking time, absorbing as much as our senses can manage, ignoring clocks and schedules to the greatest degree possible. The human is defiantly not mechanical in any sense that isn’t metaphorical – and even then, the metaphor is limited and imperfect.

Walking eschews skimming in favour of immersion. It happens at a speed that allows us – encourages us – to absorb the world around us.

We rose to the countryside sounds of dogs barking, cocks crowing, and a church tower announcing the arrival of dawn. We dressed and packed our things, ate a light breakfast, and then set out from the peaceful village of Balugães. Cobbled roads and tarmac gave way to dirt lanes between vineyard and cornfield, and beneath arching tree branches. The air was cool and the sky was bright and clear. It would be a longer walk ahead of us, but only by a fifth.

We walked, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. We stopped when we wanted to rest, or to sit and drink limonada in a cafe. We didn’t hurry.

We met others on the Way. There were greetings of bom Caminho and bon dia. We met fellow perigrinos from Canada, South Africa, and Germany. We ate sandwiches at the roadside, and bought bottled water that someone had put out in a cooler for €1. We tried to coax birds and cats to come closer, and generally had the opposite effect.

About five hours after we first set out we arrived at our hotel in Ponte de Lima. It is near the entrance to the city, close to restaurants and bars. There is a market and a fair being set up nearby.

Tomorrow, when it comes, will be the most challenging day of our journey, with an approximately 400 m hill early in the 22 km walk. We may even have to use our trekking poles. I expect we’ll arrive a little later, as a result.

But we’ll deal with that in due course. In the meantime, we have more pressing matters to deal with. Soon we will go in search of dinner, and a bottle of vinho verde.