Wynchar Camino 2025

I like to see playgrounds to see how they are different from ones I usually see in the US. This one had a nautical theme.

• Camino walked: Anha to Carreço 10.1 miles in 6:35 hours. This included, as usual, stops for breakfast and lunch.
• Altitudes: 217 feet up and 374 feet down, this was all at the beginning before we got to the ocean. Wynette’s Fitbit says we climbed the equivalent of 21 flights of stairs. (It only counts going up, not going down.)
• Total walking per Wynette’s watch: 11 miles. We did have a gps anomaly today where my Wikiloc distance was a mile more than my watch distance. These computers, what are you gonna do?
• Today was hot, 81 and humid, but there was a nice breeze by the ocean which helped a lot. When we got to the lunch place we downed a 1.5 liter of water before lunch. Our host tonight said this hot weather, three hot days in a row, was unusual. But tomorrow it will be cloudy with some rain. We are looking forward to that.
• Delivery persons spotted in red satin skirt: 1 (see separate post)
• English breakfasts eaten: 1 each. Well, it was a variation, no beans or blood sausage. But there were little sausages and bacon and ham and cheese and eggs and fresh-squeezed orange juice and toast and coffee. 8 euros each. It was more than we wanted, but it’s what they had for breakfast. Nice bar in Viana do Castelo. Fun waitress.

After our huge apartment last night, tonight we are in a very small garret room with sloping ceilings on the third floor. Two flights of spiral staircases to get there and the shared bathroom is down one flight. Luckily only one other person to share it with.

The owner, Horatio is such a charming man, we won’t be able to do anything but leave him a terrific review. He really is quite wonderful.

The place has a washer and dryer (dryers in people’s homes are very rare in Spain, I’m not sure about Portugal) so that’s worth a lot.

And Horacio just gave us some cookies with quince jam (he calls it marmalade) that he said he made yesterday. Delicious. He told us he gives marmalade to all his pilgrims.

After two days of walking inland, we were glad to be back on the ocean today. It was still a hot and sunny day with no shade, but there was some breeze off the water which really helped. It was low tide while we were walking. We saw a few people here and there down in the tide pools. We assume they were digging for clams. The beaches today were very rocky. I hate to admit it, but we have yet to put our feet in the ocean.

This morning we had a very long bridge crossing over the Limia River. Going into Viana do Castelo. If you look really hard you might be able to see the castle on the hill.

It amazes me how many huge rivers there are in this part of the world that we never heard of. Of course, we are very near the mouth of the river, probably its widest point.

We haven’t mentioned food as much as usual in our blog this year. We’ve had some good meals but only a few extraordinary ones. But this salad in today’s lunch was amazing. I’m not sure if the photo above makes it look good. It had greens, lentils, onions, mango, walnuts, avocado, and mashed sweet potato.

We also had a pea and chorizo soup (photo below) and it was delicious as well. Lighter than we expected.

• Camino walking: Marinhos to Anha, 10.1 miles in 6:11 hours
• Elevation: up 604 feet, down 435 feet, from 1 to 391 feet, we were inland today and there were a lot of hills, it was also quite hot so we were tired and sweaty when we got to the hotel.
• Flight of stairs climbed (equivalent per Wynette’s Fitbit): 72
• Total walking: 11.05 miles
• Percent on boardwalks: 0%, we missed them.
• Pilgrims seen: we didn’t count but probably over 100, this is a popular Camino and April is getting into the season.
• Pilgrims walked with: 4, two pairs, one couple from Ohio, USA, and one couple from Cornwall, England.
• Breakfasts on the trail: 1, we have been having breakfasts at our hotels where they were included but we prefer to walk 2-3 hours and then have fried eggs and toast with coffee. We ate at a pastry shop but she was happy to make us eggs.
• Pilgrim trails walked backwards: 1, this would be the pilgrimage to Fatima. The Fatima walk is popular in Portugal and goes along the same paths as the Camino, sometimes in the same direction (farther south) but here the Camino is going north and Fatima is going south. It is funny to see the Camino (yellow) and Fatima (blue) arrows pointing in opposite directions.
• Rugged forest trails walked: 1, there was a long section along a river. The trail had lots of rocks and roots and parts where we had to be very careful scrambling down. We almost fell once or twice. Wynette was using her hiking poles.
• Pilgrim memorials passed: 1, you see these along all the caminos.