A Guarda

With apologies to The Four Seasons!
We started the day, ready to leave Tatania and Marcus's amazing house, at 0730. We crept down the stairs as quietly as we could - Tatania was quite an ebullient character, and we'd rather not have encountered her at such an early hour! It was a great stay, but one night was enough😂. A short walk took us to the local café for our first breakfast, which was delicious - sort of a turbo charged cinnamon bun 😋. Absolutely gorgeous and it kept us going for hours!
We walked towards the coast (not far) and picked up the route, which took us through some beautiful woodland. It was quite amazing - we had the sound of birds all around us, and the crashing waves of the North Atlantic to our left. A wonderful walk 🤗🤗🤗.
We ambled onwards towards Vila Praia de Ãncora, where we stopped for lunch. This was some 10km on from our starting point, and we'd added a couple of kilometres finding the right path, so we were 12km up by the time we fell into a café. Menu del dia (not sure what it is in Portuguese) was pork shoulder, rice, salad and chips 😋. I'd been craving chips, so I was made up! It was very tasty but I just couldn't finish it 🙄 although I did have a good go at the chocolate mousse for dessert!😄
A stop at Moledo for a very special, personal Pilgrim's passport stamp from Gary (who brought out his whole Beatles Collection to show us, and asked me if I'd ever met Paul McCartney...) took us into Caminha, where we stopped for a cold drink before finding the water taxi from Portugal to A Guarda in Spain. The salesman had his patter down to a T and, as soon as there were 5 of us, led us down to the beach and the boat. Nothing massive, just a thing with an engine, that sped us to the opposite side in about 5 minutes. Marcel was very happy to be making an appearance and readily took control of the crossing 😂😂😂.
As we'd gained an hour in just 5 minutes, we decided to get a taxi to our accommodation. No such luck, despite our efforts, so we had to walk about 4km, up up and up (or so it seemed), through lovely eucalyptus woods, and into A Guarda. We were shattered! We'd ended up walking 26km, often through driving rain and wind, but we were there, albeit 40 minutes too late for check in🙄. A pretty difficult telephone call later, neither of us being able to fully understand the other - where's our Jan when you need her? - and we were in our room. There were other pilgrims in the apartment so we went to explore and meet them.
Time to shower now, then find something to eat, so back to our room we went... the door being as close as we got to our belongings because we couldn't open it!😱🙄😂 What to do??? A call and a few messages to our host (try again, she said, like we hadn't been doing that for 10 minutes!) and she promised she was on her way, but it'd take 30 minutes. 45 minutes later... approximately 60 minutes later she and her husband arrived. By this time, everyone had had a go - the blokes probably wondering what all the fuss was about 😂.
"Sternest Headteacher faces when they arrive, Julie," says I! But, of course, they were lovely and apologetic, all in Spanish, of course, but still they couldn't open our door! Phew! Long story short, they managed to bodge it so our door opened, but there was no way we were ever shutting it, so we slept with it jammed open! But what a night! What a day, actually! It ended with a small snack and a beer, so all's well that ends well!Read more