Walking the Camino de Santiago

“I’m walking on sunshine, woooah
And don’t it feel good!”- Katrina & the Waves

August 18- I woke up nice and early, made my lunch, drank a quick hotel room coffee and hit the trail. The sun was still coming up and the sky was overcast. I felt fortunate to get some time on my journey without having to worry about that sun. Given the predicted upcoming heat wave, this may need to be my strategy: get up in the dark and walk as long as I can before it gets too hot. I do have a hand-dandy nerdy headlamp for my forehead. Works great!

The familiar signs on the route as the sun started to rise this morning.

Today would be a relatively straight shot to Azambuja. Primary on a gravel trail by the railroad tracks. However, one thing you always have to be open to is change or the unexpected. You never know what’s around the corner. Today was one of those times. Because the signage in Portugal has been spotty, I’ve been using an app called Wise Pilgrim which was always helpful last year in verifying you were on the correct path, or helping you know about accommodation conditions. Actual pilgrims on the Camino contribute its contents. Below is what that looks like. The green dots are the Camino trail and a blue dot would show exactly your position on that trail (via gps). Of course, I’m not on my phone all the time and I do rely on the arrows as the more “official” confirmation I’m following the correct trail. Occasionally, I’ll crack open the Wise Pilgrim app for confirmation and to see how much further I have to go.

As I reached the town of Carregado today (about halfway to my destination), the arrows took me over the train tracks and into town. Given these towns are literally sitting on the Camino, it makes sense that the trail would lead through them. It creates more commerce and feeds the tourism a bit. But, in reviewing the trail this morning in my hotel room on the Wise Pilgrim app, I remembered it never veered into any of these towns. It was a straight path all the way along the railroad tracks. I shrugged it off and decided to trust the signs and arrows. Halfway through town I opened the app… just to confirm I was truly still on the trail. Afterall, I was seeing the usual directional signs. To my surprise, the app showed me waaaay off trail, and I couldn’t see how I would get back to the trail anytime soon if i kept walking the direction I was headed. So now I’m thinking “hmmm. How many more miles is this going to take me and will I have to turn around at some point and backtrack?” So, before I was several miles in, I turned around attempting to get my blue dot to sit back on the green trail.

Just as I began to walk back to the train station, I was approached by three gentlemen, all pilgrims that must have been walking behind me at some point. I was excited to see them, but they weren’t overly excited to see me as I was walking the opposite direction of them. We got into a conversation about the mismatch of the trail and the signs. I told them I was heading back to find whatever turnoff we all had missed. After a short conversation, I had not convinced them and they chose to continue onward, while I decided to head back and figure out what was going on. Alas, no company for me on the trail unless I followed them.

I opened my friend Mr. Google Maps and mapped getting to Azambuja on foot. 11 hours walking!!! What? No way! I’m not doing that. So off I went to find my mistake on the trail. I must have missed a sign. After much research, I found that a new route was indeed the direction the three gentlemen were traveling. It would take them through two towns and rejoin the original trail 8 miles later. Thereby creating a giant U-turn. If I hung a right at the train station, instead of the left into town where the arrows pointed, I would join the former trail and sync up with the green path on the Wise Pilgrim, avoiding an 8 mile addition to my day. And so, in true Charles fashion, I took the road less traveled, and headed on my way, alone, pleased I was back on the trail that was a straight shot to my destination for the day.

The negative to taking the old trail was there was no facilities at all. But I packed my lunch, had 2.5 liters of water with electrolytes in my pack, and a morning pep in my step, so… let’s go! There wasn’t a lot of change in the view most of the day. The wetlands sat to the right of the trail, so beautiful water fowl kept flying in and out of the area. As the day went on, the sun came out in full force. There was literally zero shade on this trail, so I had to look for that random patch and cool off on numerous occasions. The searing heat certainly made itself known to me today.

About 3/4 of my journey for the day competed, I noticed my painted arrows had turned into signs again. With a little research on the Camino blog, I found that was because the city trail the three gentleman had proceed forward with this morning, was now circling back to join me. They were nowhere to be seen and I had to assume they had many more miles to get there.

Finally I saw a shady patch under a tree in front of me, with no more shade for miles. So I took off my pack and sat for a while eating my lunch for the day. This gave me ample time to cool down. I had hoped my short lunch break would be enough for the other pilgrims to catch up to me, but that did not happen.

While I love to show you all the good on the trail, sometimes you run into “bad”. During my last couple miles, the trail was adjacent to sewage treatment ponds. Each one a little cleaner than the prior one. I’m not sure you can imagine the horrible smells coming from those ponds. So much so that I could taste it. Yuck! So, hot, sweaty, and with horrible smells I trekked on.

Finally the trail made a turn into my destination for the day, Azambuja. The town (pop approx 7,000) is known for two things: its bullfighting arena, and wine made from Periquita grapes. Azambuja was Founded by the Romans and named Oliastrum, Azambuja was later occupied by the Moors, who called it “Azzabuja”, the origin of its present name.

Once into town, I found my hotel for the night, took a much needed cold shower, and headed out to the lavandaria down the street to wash all of my clothes. Ahhhh clean clothes. So nice! I’m about to head out and find me some dinner. Fish sounds good!

My thoughts: I’m glad I trusted my instincts today and stayed on the trail. It did come at a price, being alone and in full sun, but I saved many miles on my feet. I struggled a bit with the heat today but I always listen to my body and drink tons of water fortified with electrolytes and find shade to cool myself off. Feeling very grateful to be here. Every day is a gift. I’m certainly walkin’ on sunshine! Don’t it feel good? 😉