Sernacelhe to Beira de Valente (23 km)

Since it was a short day, I slept in a little and had breakfast after seven. Another very nice walk with beautiful sunny weather and cool breezes. High in the low 70s.

Shortly after going through the first village, Vila do Ponte, the Caminho takes you up a steep hill. For some reason, when you are about a five minute walk up to the chapel on the top, the arrows take you off that route. No indication that there is a 15th century chapel and a beautiful view from up top. I had gotten a heads up from a friend, so I was planning to go, and it was definitely worth the five minutes of huffing and puffing to get up to the top.

My surely not very original observation was that in the 15th century they built chapels on high places with privileged views, but today we build cell phone towers.

After the descent from the chapel comes the asphalt stretch. Fortunately soon after the nucleus of A Rua there were detours off the main road. These were great, usually on a dirt path between stone walls. On either side of the walls were vineyards and fruit orchards. There were lots of people out working in the fields, and I got a lot of ”bom caminho”, which surprised me.

I have it on very good authority that under EU regulation, anything growing or hanging in the right of way is fair game for public consumption. So I had a sampling of apples, figs, and little incredibly sweet purple grapes.

The town where I would have stopped is in festas, so absolutely nothing was available. Luckily, about 3 km away, there is a pilgrim albergue. It looks very nice, is in the old school building, and I’m waiting to see if the guy in charge will show up. I told him I would probably arrive around 2 PM, and that’s about what time it is now. So hopefully I won’t have too much of a wait.Read more