Day 17 Porto to Vila do Conde

So when leaving Porto, you have a choice to take the central route which follows roads, towns, forests, roman roads, etc like we have been doing, or to take the coastal route along or near the Portuguese coastline and the Atlantic ocean. We have always planned on taking the coastal trail even though it is a little bit longer and less popular. About a third of the pilgrims take the coastal trail.

Today we started and immediately felt blessed. How thankful we are to be able to do this together, the air was cool with a slight breeze, the sun bright, the view amazing. The first 10 miles went by quickly. The ocean was beautiful with rocks, surfers, breaking waves, nice beach towns, and we even passed through a working fishing village. All beautiful in its own way. And then, after lunch .... the wind started. For most of the next 10 miles we had headwinds of 17 - 23 miles an hour! It made walking a lot harder. There was a stretch of about 3 miles near the end that was barren, nothing around except sand dunes on either side of the boardwalk. The wind was at 23 mph then and we were getting sandblasted! It was like walking across the desert.

We thought we were going to walk 18 miles today but somehow did 21! I don't know how we miscalculated so badly. Even so, we are not feeling too bad. We must be getting stronger. Though this trail is less popular, there are many more pilgrims now than in the first half of the trip. We didn't spend much time with any of them yet but today we met two people from Italy, and some from Germany, and Poland.Read more