It’s that time of year… I’ve seen the first Christmas trees. The advertisements have been playing on radio and TV for the last few months and people have started to get in to that frame of mind.
Christmas!
Of course, my mind is a million miles away and I’d rather be following arrows than making shops that little bit richer. Careful now, someone might accuse me of not being in the Christmas spirit. Au contraire! Give me a few weeks until we are in December and I should have sufficient time to prepare.
So what have I have been doing since I last posted nearly one month ago?
Well, the Camino spirit has not left me entirely since I returned from Portugal. Since I last wrote, plans are ongoing to walk from Porto to Santiago in September. The one unanswered question is whether I walk the coastal route or the classic internal route. By walking along the coast, I am adding 2 days to my trip however the coast gives you the added bonus of the breeze until you move inland. This question will remain unanswered until I arrive in Porto, I guess, and I will let my feet do the talking.
I have been on two walks – one long, and one short. The first was on the Boyne Valley Camino which starts at St. Peters Church in Drogheda. I was actually meant to write a bit about this walk but time got in the way however below are some of my favourite photos from the day. My friend Oihana and I took the commuter train to Drogheda from Dublin and walked the 25 km looped walk. It is a good mixture of forest, road walking, walking along the River Boyne, with the added historical element too. This walk is part of the Celtic Camino series and you can pick up a nice certificate from Camino Society Ireland if you collect stamps during your walk. More information here: Boyne Valley Camino.
Thanks to Oihana (Facebook page) for providing some of her photos. We had a fun day. It’s always great to try out newer walks, especially ones that are closer to home. I would definitely recommend the walk and if you get the chance, do walk the full loop. It can be a bit challenging during the winter months but during the Summer it would be perfect, I would imagine. The Batttle of the Boyne site, Mellifont Abbey and Oldbridge house are interesting. We did manage to get lost however, due to some signage going missing. We were back on track before long.
The following week (the 16th November), I walked a short walk with Camino Society Ireland. Out to Howth Head we would go. It would be a morning of firsts. I am so used to the purple loop or bog of frogs but due to ongoing works, this path was closed so we opted for the Black Linn Loop, following the red arrows. I brought along my DSLR, Canon 750d and took a few photos. You can check them out on the Camino Society Ireland Facebook page. I am very much a beginner at photography so any tips are useful. I guess the number one tip is practice, practice, practice.
Well that’s all the news here. I hope you are all well. 310 days before I touch down in Portugal..ha! I will post soon!
With two weeks planned for a Camino in September / October 2020, the question remains what I will do for the rest of the year. I certainly won’t stay at home and I can’t see myself jetting off on another Camino (unfortunately). With many waymarked trails and pilgrim paths on my doorstep, I have a great opportunity now to walk some of these trails.
Many of these trails are a few days long and can be reached by bus or train. Accommodation is a little different here than in Spain. There are no “albergues” and it is advisable to pre-book in a bed & breakfast or a hostel. As a result, costs can be a little more expensive. This is if you want to walk by yourself. Another option is walking as part of an organised group.
The Kerry Camino (or the Dingle Way) is a 3 day walk (57km) from Tralee to Dingle in the South of Ireland. Each year, over the May bank holiday weekend, large crowds descend on Tralee to walk this pilgrimage to Dingle. I want to walk this trail but while the organised group option is great, it is not for me.
I have already looked into the Kerry Camino for the middle of May and will cost me about the same as the price of a flight! You can watch a good video on this way below.
St Kevin’s Way (30km) follows in the footsteps of St Kevin through the hills of Wicklow to the monastic ruins in Glendalough. The main start for the route is Hollywood. The route is well marked and takes you through a wide variety of landscapes as it climbs towards the Wicklow Gap. From here the descent brings you to Glendalough and monastic ruins. I have walked half of this walk on two occasions and I love it. It can be a bit tricky when it is raining but when the sun is out, there is nothing better.
St. Kevin’s Way – VisitWicklow.ie
St. Declan’s Way is a modern walking route linking the ancient centres of Ardmore in County Waterford and Cashel in County Tipperary. The route most commonly associated with St. Declan’s Way is 56 miles (96 kilometres) long and crosses the Knockmealdown Mountains at Bearna Cloch an Buideal (Bottleneck Pass), an elevation of 537m. St Declan’s Way Walk utilises the route of a number of ancient and medieval pilgrimage and trading routes such as the Rian Bo Phadraig (Track of St. Patrick’s Cow), Bothar na Naomh (Road of the Saints), Casan na Naomh (Path of the Saints) and St. Declan’s Road.
St Declan’s Way
There are others but I’ll be realistic as I don’t have too many holidays 🙂 I can decide on others later on.
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Standouts for me were the albergues in Tomar, Alvaiázere and Rabacal. Most were small, offered meals or had a restaurant nearby. They catered to the pilgrim, very much like any of the albergues on the Camino Frances.
The accommodation in Lisbon and Porto were booked before I made the trip. I stayed in every other place on a whim. And this was a joy for me!
The plan on returning from Porto was to write a daily account until my final stage in Agueda. Well, as the inactivity on this blog can show, that clearly didn’t happen. I had one post written and my mind went on strike! It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the Camino. It was quite the opposite. I made the mistake of not writing a journal at the end of each day. But I can squeeze all of this in one post for your reading pleasure.
So I guess I will start with some of the reasons why I chose the Portugués Camino from Lisbon in the first place?
1. It is quiet…but, a little too quiet
If you have walked some of the more popular Caminos, I’m looking at you Camino Frances and Camino Portugues from Porto, you will notice quite a few pilgrims, especially in the summer months. In September, it is epically busy with queues outside the Pilgrims Office in Santiago and many private albergues booked up in advance. From Lisbon, there is none of this as you will be lucky to meet other pilgrims walking. That said, you will meet plenty of pilgrims in the albergues or hostels in the evenings. Some of you may be quite happy to walk alone for hours on end but for other pilgrims, the social side is a big part of the Camino. I was delighted to walk with Carsten, my German buddy, until I made my way home.
2. The History behind the towns add to the Camino
It really tells you something about the Camino when you have been walking for hours and then stumble upon a town that calls itself the Gothic capital. I mean, you don’t see that on the French Way? However, there are enough examples of Gothic buildings in the town to warrant that name. And then there is Golegã that considers itself to be the capital of the horse. Everywhere we went and every person we talked to talked with dedication about the horse, especially the National Horse Fair held every November. Tomar has a Knights Templar Castle sitting on a hill and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983.
Convento do Cristo
Just south of Coimbra is Condeixa-a-Nova, we witnessed a superb sunrise here one morning. Leaving the town, I learned that there used to be a Roman settlement not far from this place in Conimbriga. We walked along a dried-up river on this day. That’s quite a difference.
Roman settlement in Conimbriga
And we can’t forget Porto. I didn’t stay long here as I needed to fly out the next day. But I did take a walk to the old town to get a stamp. The city was heaving with pilgrims and tourists. Something I had not been familiar with over the last two weeks.
3. The People
I can’t talk enough of the people we met along the Camino in Portugal. I had limited time in Lisbon but it is a tourist town. There is no pilgrim feel to the place and I was eager to get moving as soon as I arrived. The cathedral in Lisbon started the engine and the arrow pointed me in the right direction. Generally speaking, people in Portugal were very friendly and once they knew you were a pilgrim, they were kind of taken back that I had walked so far. Most young people had a good understanding of English and I made sure I knew enough phrases in Portuguese before I left. Bom Dia, esta bem?, obrigado / obrigada. Some words translate well from Spanish but others do not.
Walking into a packed pasteleria (bakery) in Mala was a highlight. The shop was full of locals drinking coffee and we had walked miles from Coimbra. All of the sugar was in front of us. We were tired. But the locals were helpful and kind. Another example was walking from Tomar to Alvaiázere. It was particularly hot and we were low on water. It was myself, my German friend and Kyo from Japan. A lady popped her head out of her house and asked “agua?” Without negotiation, we said, yes and she opened her gate. After 5 minutes of awkward conversation with her husband, she brought out tea and chocolate biscuits! I couldn’t say Obrigado enough!
The owners of the albergues and hostels work tirelessly day in and out for pilgrims. I will talk about the places I stayed elsewhere but I just want to talk about a highlight. That would be in Alvaiázere – Albergue Pinheiro. It is run by Carlos. Here there is no bed race, there are just 14 beds, actual beds. His sellos are by far the most decorative I have received in all the Caminos I have walked. He gives 3, not 1. Another piece of information is John Brierley stays there when he walks from Lisbon.
And finally, where else does the mayor meet and shake each and every pilgrim’s hand that enters his town? On reaching Golega, I was greeted by Mayor Manual Duarte who welcomed me and told me how special the horse is to Golega. Well, I’m just a pilgrim!
4. The Terrain
Before arriving in Lisbon, I wanted to know if this Camino would cause me any kind of difficulty but I didn’t do any kind of research until a week before leaving. This is probably the wrong thing to do, for many reasons. If you are to walk from Lisbon, this is a big undertaking and not something to take lightly. I guess the best way to describe it is walking the meseta for 2 weeks during the hottest part of Summer. Now, it is not all flat like the meseta on the Camino Frances. The first 3 days to Santarem start off flat. And it gets hilly from Santarem onward. That said, for anyone who has walked over the Pyrenees, you shouldn’t find walking from Lisbon an issue.
And we go up…..after GolegaSunflowers..before Santarem
The Camino sticks to the River Tejo for the first week or so, so this is good company. Another companion is the rail line which connects Lisbon and Golega. The design of the train station is something else. I spent a few moments checking it out in Vila Franca de Xira. It is possible to walk a few kilometres from Lisbon, and catch a train back so you can see more of the city. Then the next day, it is possible to catch a train to where you stopped walking. Oh, and I need to mention that there is a good deal of road walking.
Vilafranca de Xira Train Station
5. Peregrinos
Like with all Caminos, it was so easy to meet other pilgrims. Day 1, we met no one. Day 2, we met an American couple and an Italian couple. And this is what I love about the world being small. The Italian couple lived and worked in Dublin. At the end of the day in Azambuja, we met pilgrims from Russia, Ivar, and Alexander, They had zero English but we managed to communicate. There was Alex from Hungary – the youngest of the lot of us and always writing in his journal. A wise thing to do! We met a pilgrim from New Zealand who had both her hips replaced and was walking to Santiago. An amazing achievement. Then there was Noel from Spain who offered me great tips on how to practice my Spanish. He was unable to understand English.
As the days went on, more pilgrims we met. Another pilgrim from Hungary, another Irish man at Coimbra, a New Zealand pilgrim who liked to sleep outdoors in his tent. There were Canadians, South African and French. All walking in the direction of Santiago. We also met some pilgrims walking to Lisbon and Fatima but these were few and far between.
Walking from Lisbon was a joy but it was not the Camino Frances. If you do have any plans on walking this, keep the following in mind:
1. Length of Stages
I walked from Lisbon to Agueda in 10 days – 345 km. According to Brierley’s guidebook, the stages can be long and it wasn’t until Day 8 until the stages shortened a bit. We walked each day at an easy-going pace and had most of the day free to go about pilgrimy things. Now you could argue that I didn’t have to walk those large distances and you may well be right. However, there is intermediate accommodation that you could stay at if you feel you can’t walk that far. If I was to walk from Lisbon again, I would reconsider the distances as some days were too long.
2. The Heat.
I quickly learned how hot it can be in Lisbon when I arrived. I had a t-shirt and walked from the hostel beside the Castelo to the Cathedral. I was covered in sweat. It was close to 30c. That first day I had 2 showers. But on the Camino, you have to adapt. On the first day, we started walking at 7.30 am. On the second day, we decided to leave earlier as it was much too warm for walking. By doing this we would have a good amount of walking done before the sun comes up and then we can relax going forward. It’s funny though, I didn’t feel these long days and I was at the albergue before I knew it. Maybe it was the company? Maybe it was the thought of meeting up with other peregrinos? Maybe it was easy walking? Who knows?
3. Lack of Services
There are many days where there are huge distances between towns. I can think of one instance on the Camino Frances – after Carrion de los Condes, 17 km and here there is somewhere to buy drinks. On the Camino Portuguese from Lisbon, it is not unusual to have distances from towns of 10 km. In this case, you will need to carry as much water as you can, especially when it is warm.
4. Signage leaving Lisbon
There is an arrow on the Cathedral in Lisbon, another beside it and after that, you are on your own. You need to really search for pale yellow painted arrows on walls, on lamp posts or on signs. If you walk in the morning, as we did, you will have great difficulty. We found our first real arrow about 2 km out. I suppose GPS helps. Once you leave the outskirts, signage is much better.
Overall
I’m glad I have had this two weeks to reflect. Overall this Camino has been good to me but I need to rethink a few things. Is the Camino all about walking 30 km every day? If so, it will have an effect on your health.
If you are prepared for the heat and you can handle long distances, then I give this Camino the thumbs up. Let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear from you!
Hello, my name is David. I am a peregrino living in Dublin, Ireland. I have visited Spain and Portugal and walked its many roads to Santiago since 2011. On this site, you will find my stories, photos, and observations from my Caminos and my planning for future Caminos. Feel free to get in touchwith me here
Hello, my name is David. I am a peregrino living in Dublin, Ireland. I have visited Spain and Portugal and walked its many roads to Santiago since 2011. On this site, you will find my stories, photos, and observations from my Caminos and my planning for future Caminos. Feel free to get in touch
