Camino Day 7: Halfway?

São Roque to Valença on the Camino Portugués Central Route

Distance walked: 12.0 mi (19.3 km)

Total walked so far: 91.4 mi (147.1km)

Route taken: São Roque to Valença

Today marks the seventh day of my Camino. If I stick to my plan, I will reach Santiago in seven more days. In addition, it’s also true that as of this afternoon, I have now walked a little more than half of the ~170 miles that make up my route. So in that respect I’m halfway there as well! Kinda hard to believe…

Today was an early start with no breakfast until an hour or so into my walk given the location of my housing. Last night’s pilgrim meal was tasty, I went to bed soon after returning, and I slept well. The forecast showed 0% chance of rain but I was skeptical.

Turns out I had good reason to be! Rain started within the first 30 min but thankfully didn’t last. However, the path was frequently very muddy and occasionally flooded. My hopes of dry shoes were quashed within the first hour so it goes…

The cafe where I took breakfast had good coffee but lame baked goods I knew I’d have the chance to rectify that gap later. I was dragging all morning. I just felt slow, my mind wandered a lot, and told myself that this was ok. Besides, I couldn’t check in at the hostel until 3PM why not take a slower day and focus on mindfulness? So I did

My sciatica (that’s the diagnosis of my readers) was acting up this morning. I suspect all the ascent/descent work yesterday took its toll. Thankfully this improved a lot in the afternoon. I suspect it was the nice vegetable soup and cake I had for lunch :) taking my time, eventually everyone from my Casa Fernanda team (except the Spaniards, who I didn’t see today) showed up and passed me. I enjoyed walking alone today but it was good to see all at some point.

The walled city

While the city around it seemed a bit typical and a shocking change of scenery from the countryside, the walled city of Valença was super cool. I took time to walk around it before dinner with three of the Germans. The four of us grabbed a nice pilgrim meal at an area hotel restaurant. Once again, I opted for the grilled fish. This time, rice pudding was the dessert I selected. Tasty!

Our hostel inside the city walls is great, and a few from our group including a mother and daughter team are staying here too. We were grateful for the chance to get some laundry done, given how nasty some of our clothes got in the mud today!

I’m pretty excited to walk across the bridge to Tui, Spain tomorrow. It definitely feels like an entirely different chapter in my journey. It seems momentous! In addition, I will finally get the chance to try out some of the Spanish language I’ve been learning!