Portuguese Pamino 2023

Not Liverpool versus Everton, although I have to say if it was red vs blue, Everton would win every time! 😉 If only...
Just 3 of us walking today. Very sensibly, OurJan decided to have a rest day for her toes, so she stayed in Antas for the morning and took a taxi to our accommodation in Carreço at lunchtime.
We decided to walk the 25km to Carreço and set off at 0730 with a bit of oomph (only a bit...)😆. It was a fab walk through old small towns and villages following the blue route until we came to a decision point. Red (which would take us closer to the coast, which we were missing) or continue inland on blue? A joint decision to follow the red route meant it wasn't my fault 🤭😜😅. The red line on Google maps led us along some wonderful, ancient tracks and into small villages with no shops or cafés, so when we fell across a small café we fell into it for our first breakfast! Just one croissant and one 'thing' was left for us to eat, so we cut each into 3 and shared them. It was pretty much pure sugar, but we needed it! I have a brilliant 'builder's bum' photo if you'd like to see it! We continued, meeting an Irish couple walking the other way and stopping for a chat, and thank goodness I checked our route because we were well off track 🙄😅. Where's Julie when you (desperately) need her? So backtrack number 1 of the day...
We finally reached the beaches and stopped for a very early lunch (or second breakfast) of cheese and ham omelettes (ordered), which arrived as cheese and ham toasties 🤭. But they were delicious and much appreciated!
We walked on and actually found a boardwalk 👏👏👏 so we could walk next to the ocean. Fabulous! But said boardwalk ended abruptly and the route (had we followed it) went for kilometres over the dunes!!! No way!!! So, backtrack number 2... Unfortunately, this meant we had to walk the rest of the way to Viana do Castela on the road, which was very tiring and sometimes quite hairy! But we arrived in Viana after about 22kms and sat down for a much needed beer.
It didn't take us long to agree to a taxi which took us to OurJan in Carreço. We're staying at a lovely casa, although the rules are a little strange 🤪. We had to be out of the kitchen by 7.00pm (no problem) but at 6.58pm the lady of the house yelled "no more cooking!" 😆. This suited us as we'd eaten and I'd just burned a bag of popcorn in the microwave 🤣🤣🤣. We retreated to our rooms, house stinking of burned popcorn, and are now preparing ourselves for Eurovision (popcorn-less, despite having 2 more bags in my backpack, but I'm not risking the wrath of her ladyship 😲🤭🤣).
Moral of today's story? Everton. Every time! 🤣Read more