4. Barcelos to Casa de Fernanda. 20 kms

 

Unconcerned

Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.

Thou liest, happily, upon the Way.

Upon the Way, but in the way as well,

Whether thou survivest, time will tell.

Ignorance, confidence, optimism or fatalism: there he lay in the middle of the road, oblivious to his peril. Perhaps there was a moral here.

It was a glorious day. I am somewhat rested and relaxed, and I notice as I look at my watch while walking that my pulse rate is 20 or 30 beats a minute less than it was a couple of days ago. To return to that rhetorical question, one of the reasons I keep walking is to get fit. (I am tempted to reflect on what sedentary beings we have become and how we are evolving into easy prey for AI.)

I followed a string of pilgrims out of town along a wide, leafy boulevard. Doves were a-cooing, “doo-doo, doot; doo-doo, doot,” but one with a variation, “doodle-y-doo, doot; doodle-y-doo doot.” Did she just lay an egg? 

As I arrived at a railway line and started walking along, I saw a pilgrim coming towards me along the lane on the other side of the line. I pointed at the arrow in front of me to indicate she was going the wrong way. “No,” she shouted, pointing. “I crossed underneath 500 metres down there.” No train was coming so I hopped over the line.

I headed out towards distant hills through a deep cutting with eucalyptus trees above me on either side. Once again I was walking on a cobbled road. I marvel at their construction. Every individual stone must have been laid by hand. By now, I have walked across billions of these stones and only one have I seen uprooted.

In the distance was a cafe with people sitting outside. A sight for sore pilgrims! I joined Marie the Glaswegian and a German couple whom I had met last night at dinner. Anyone who has walked the Camino will tell you that one of its pleasures is arriving at a cafe and recognizing familiar faces. A couple of Portuguese girls appeared. One said “Hi” several times. “That’s the only word in English,” she knows, said her friend. “Obrigado,” I responded.

I came to a junction and faced a choice: 186 kms to Santiago via the church or 186 kms to Santiago via the wooden cross. I chose the latter, hoping to see an old rugged  cross on a hill far away, but no, it was an unattractive one under a tiled awning in the next village, dated 1926. As I sat on the bench the Portuguese girls arrived. “Hi,” said one of them.

On to the main road, over the crest of a hill, and along a path behind a road barrier, more treacherous than the road itself, so I hopped back on to the pavement. This is not a pedestrian-friendly camino!

And then the highlight of the day, the crossing of a magnificent stone bridge. “Ponto Romano?” I asked a nearby farmer in what I hoped passed for Portuguese. “Si,” he said. But it wasn’t. It was the medieval Ponte das Tábuas, the bridge of boards, a reference to an earlier wooden bridge, according to Brierley. I walked across the massive stone slabs and on to a dirt road, unremarkable but for the rugged stone markers on either side. This was a very old road indeed, and I was not the first to travel there.

At the next town, I resisted the invitation to visit the site of the first Marian apparition in Portugal (1702), and pressed on towards ominous thunder clouds. I thought of the nun on the Chemin de Tours who was horrified when I declined to visit le Christ qui sourit.

About a kilometre before my destination it started to rain. Fortunately, a German couple ahead of me had just rummaged around in their packs and donned their rain gear, so it stopped. I thanked them. I arrived at the Casa de Fernanda.