Walked: 18.0km (101.5km) | 3h48m (21h52m)
Followed: 0km|22km (20m)
As we’ve already mentioned, our hotel in A Guarda was quite special. This picture on the loo door reminded Jane of a picture of her at a similar age. It was a difficult place to leave. On the way out we found a mini museum off one of the corridors. The illuminated hymn books were beautiful.
Once outside the hotel A Guarda was hard to leave as well. We’d only gone a few hundred yards and we found ourselves in a church…
…where a group of five or six local women were sat in the rear pews delivering a lengthy Gregorian Chant. A couple of them are in the bottom right of this picture. Behind them, rather incongruously, was a line of pilgrims, all collecting their ‘stamp’ on their Santiago ‘passport’. We duly stamped ours.
As we left A Guarda, we found the route well signed, skirting the bay and leading around the coast.
The boardwalks which were a feature of the trail on the Portuguese side have given way to forest paths with some rocky patches.
We also had to do some walking alongside a main road, the PO-552.
Services were scarce, and a lot of our fellow walkers were pleased to find a loo and coffee stop, about an hour and a half beyond A Guarda.
Whilst we were mostly close to the beaches, the Camino Ninja App was helpful… not to mention some real-world experience:
Even along the road, the scenery was amazing, and luckily the weather was perfect: not too hot, a slight wind, and occasional low cloud.
As lunchtime called, Jane spotted a newly mown passageway off the road down to the sea. We took our chances…
…and ended up on a completely deserted rocky beach. A perfect picnic spot. Jane had packed some of the very generous hotel breakfast, which included quail eggs and…
…tamarillo, also widely known as the tree tomato apparently. Neither of us had eaten this before.
As we approached Oia we came across this tiny hermit’s chapel, looked over by a Buddha (see extreme left of the picture below) which appealed to us.
It was really quite delightful inside so we lit a candle and wrote a message to our late friend Ben.
He would have approved of this place.
Some of the architecture entering Oia was very unusual.
The Camino took us past the harbour and a huge, partly derelict monastery.
We arrived at The Hotel Glasgow (sic); a bit different to last night’s accommodation but we have a great view of the sea.
Another good day. We’ve now walked 100km – with no blisters, very few aches and pains and a good pace of about 4.5 km per hour. No one’s more surprised than we are!
