Walking the Camino de Santiago

August 25- Leg Day 😣

“Today is gonna be a good day
Don’t care what anybody else say
Oh-oh-oh, I don’t need a fortune cookie to tell me the way I’m feelin’
Gonna be a good day, a good day” – DNCE

I bid Tomar “adeus” and hit the trail around 6am this morning. My hotel was so kind to leave me a boxed breakfast to take on the road with me. The morning clerk stopped me on my way out and handed it to me. I’ll eat that later when I stop for coffee. ☕️

Today is “leg day”. No more flat paths, todays journey will take me up a 1,340 meter ascent by the time I finish the day. All up and down dirt trails… all day. I’m grateful I’ve been on the trail for over a week now and can handle it easier.

As I left Tomar and was headed onward, I saw another pilgrim not too far in front of me. Eventually I caught up to her. Her name is Solange from Belgium and is 62. She just started the trail today from Tomar. She had knee surgery earlier this year, so she has to take it slow. We chatted for a while and then she needed to go slow, so we wished each other a Bom Camino and I kept on hiking. I could tell she would have liked to have been able to walk with me, but we didn’t pace each other and I would have had to walk too slow. Nice to finally see another pilgrim though and she urged me onward.

The heat wave is gone, and today the temp only reached mid 80’s. So I didn’t have that to deal with today. This made todays journey a lot more pleasant. The hiking was very reminiscent of the Camino Frances from last year, with its dirt trails and forested areas… as well as it’s challenging climbs. I enjoyed it.

At one point today, my Camino app and the marked path did not align. My app wanted me to climb a different dirt trail than what was marked, so after some contemplation on what to do, I trusted the app (since it knows how to find me) and followed it. Boy was I wrong! It was clear that this path had not been hiked in a year or more as it was very overgrown. You could still see the trail, but I had to engage Harry and Larry to wack some shrubs to get through it. About 3/4 up this trail, I contemplated turning around. But I was invested by this point and just chugged along until the trail spilled out onto a backroad. There I saw my familiar Camino signs again and so, I dusted myself off with not too much worse for the wear, and moved onward. I won’t do that again though. It was a little alarming thinking no one would ever find me on this trail if something happened to me.

Eventually, I did find myself walking through a small hamlet that had a cafe and I stopped in and got my morning coffee, sat down for a short rest and opened my breakfast box the hotel left me. It was perfect timing as I needed nourishment to keep me fueled to finish my trail. While I was finishing my break, another pilgrim showed up! I was just about to rejoin the path, so we walked together for a very short time. This gentleman is from Milan, Italy and had also started in Lisbon and was heading to Santiago. He was pacing way faster than me and it didn’t take long for us to part ways as he shot off like his pants were on fire, yelling “Bom Camino”, leaving me in the dust. 😉

As I approached my destination today, Cortiça, my Fitness app told me I had walked 40,789 steps, 16.5 miles, and climbed 55 flights of stairs Big leg day for me. I’m sure my legs will need stretching tomorrow morning.

My thoughts: I forgot how one rest day makes it harder to get yourself moving the next day back on the trail. For a while, my feet felt like lead. Took them a while to wake up and get back to moving as usual. As always. I’m blessed to be here and so appreciative. The beauty of Portugal is really shining through. Music was a big motivator today when I needed some extra push up some of these hillsides. By the way, around 7pm this evening, who should walk in to my accommodations but Solange! She finally made it! We chatted for a few minutes and then she went off to get herself cleaned up. Time for me to get ready for bed….