First Day on the Camino

 We started on a hot day to begin our Camino journey. The high was 88 which is unusual for April.  Our walk was 13.5 miles long but had some pretty good inclines as well as some time spent fully exposed on asphalt roads.  We left Tomar around 8:20 and quickly found that the trail was well marked with posts and yellow arrows.  We travelled along the canal and the river to start then headed cross country thru many small villages.  

The countryside was covered by olive trees and eucalyptus trees.  Many of the villages were small and didn’t have any services or people out and about.  We stopped at a cafe early where we had Bundt cake. Cafe and a Coke light/. We only saw one other camino hiker.  

We had lunch along a quiet stretch of road in the shade.  The temperature continued to rise and the sun was beating down.  As we got a few miles from the end we had steep climb that took a lot out of both of us.  We stopped and took a break - pouring water on our heads and surveying how much water we had left.  It wasn’t as much as we would have liked which can be dangerous when you are overheated.  Dianne at a sandwich seemed to help and we decided to move forward.  

We had a long stretch of small villages with no water to be found.  We had a couple drive by us in a Mercedes and then passed us again.  The second time they slowed and we asked if they had any water but they didn’t.  We said we were OK but they motored ahead of us.  Soon they were back with a large bottle of water they had just bought at the cafe.  We thanked them profusely and now had the cold water we needed to help us finish our walk.

At the cafe we finished off the first 1.5 liter bottle and bought another one.  We had  a chocolate croissant as we recovered in the shade.  We were so happy that we were done walking/ 

The next challenge was trying to get a taxi.  The cafe owner called but the taxi would not come to his location.  We finally contacted Caminoways who is our travel service and they contacted our hotel which arranged a pickup for us.  Only 15 minutes later we weee headed to our hotel. 

We had showers and took a break.  Jack went down to the local cafe to get white wine but for takeaway they used an empty coke bottle.  They only had tiny paper cups but that worked fine with us - just drink more small glasses.

Supper was downstairs and very good.  There were several tables of Camino walkers and we exchanged experiences.  The ladies next to us decided that they were skipping ahead to Porto - they wanted more people and more services.  

Overall it was a tough but fun day as we got back into walking the Camino. 


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