Wynchar Camino 2025

It was a windy and off-and-on rainy day and thus a bit chilly. Today, we’ve walked nearly 11.5 miles counting going to a restaurant and grocery store after checking into our pension for the night. It was a pretty hike on the main Portuguese Coastal so it was well marked. Was great not having to get out our phones to navigate in the wind and rain.

The wind was intense at times. A few times I wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to topple me over.

I kept telling myself “I’d rather be cold and wet than hot and sweaty the way we were a few days ago.” And that is true.

Here is a link to a video Charlie took. Gives you an idea of the wind: https://photos.app.goo.gl/s5sKi4dVP4zdieMz5

The great thing about the Camino is that you just get up and walk, no matter the weather. It’s nice not to have to think too much about it. Just do it.

A mile or two of the hike was a steep climb and then descent through a forest, most of it on a (possibly) Roman road with very very large stones. We saw lots of wheel grooves. This is what Gronze.com says about it: We follow a very old road—perhaps Roman—with stone slabs, used for centuries both for grazing livestock and by merchants in carts (as we see some grooves in the stones to guide the wheels).

It was pretty and interesting but the rocks were hard to walk on, especially because it was steep and wet. We made slow progress through that section. I regret I didn’t take a photo of the stones.

It was a relief to get to our cozy pension for the night.

This is for our neighbor Brian. Brian said he was looking forward to photos of storks and cranes. We have yet to see any of those (not even a nest) but think we will soon. Yesterday, walking along the huge Minho River that we were about to cross from Portugal to Spain, we spotted this Spoonbill. I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, had to look it up. If I’m wrong in the identification, I hope my bird-savvy friends will set me straight.

He/she was very busy hunting in the water for food. So, Brian, I thought of you when I saw this. Hope it will hold you over till we spot a stork.

• Camino walking: A Garda to Viladesuso, 10.8 miles in 5:34 hours, 4:04 moving
• Elevation: up 509 feet, down 587 feet, fairly hilly. Wynette’s watch says 46 flights of stairs climbed.
• Total walking: 11.42 miles
• Boardwalks: none
• Bags transported via Correos (Spanish mail): 1. We decided to try their backpack transport service. It worked very well. I was carrying about 10 pounds and Wynette didn’t have a pack at all.
• Buddha statues passed: 1
• It was Palm Sunday and we were worried about getting breakfast on the trail. But we found a place and got our usual eggs and toast.

Bread delivery to private homes is a thing in Spain.

We have seen this many times before but what we saw before was a baguette in a plastic bag hanging on a door knob or a fence. This is the first time we have seen a tube specifically for bread delivery.

Notice the inside of the coffee cup has the brand of coffee the bar uses. Sometimes the branding is on the outside or on the saucer. We see this all the time. I assume the coffee wholesaler gives them discounts on the cups and saucers.

Wynette likes her coffee milky and not too hot so she usually goes up and asks them to add some leche fria. Today they gave her a little pitcher of milk and it had branding on it.

We buy milk frequently for our in-hotel dinners and often get the Pascual milk.

We are still on the Portuguese Camino but yesterday we moved to the Spanish part of it. The two countries maintain the Camino in different ways. In Spain you see these posts a lot.

They always have the distance to Santiago on them. Here it is 151,560 kilometers. The Europeans use a decimal comma where we would use a period but more to the point: three places of accuracy? 151,561 would be one meter farther. Is that to the front door of the cathedral, or the alter, or the highest point on the roof? It just seems nutty to have this much accuracy. I wonder how the decision was made?

Also notice the little stones on top of the post (and a flower). We talked about the stones in an earlier post.