We have been planning the route we will follow from Porto: Here it is!!

Preperation has begun for the Camino Portuguese Central route. On 30th April I will fly to Porto where i will meet my Mum (Tina) and we will set out towards Santiago. Over 12 days we will cover 247km. Leaving Porto we will follow the Senda Litoral along the river to the coast with 2 days along the coast before moving to the central route for 5 or 6 days then the Variante Espiritual taking us to Santiago. If we have life left in our legs we will then walk the 87km Camino Finis

We knew it was going to be a long day. We got up early. No breakfast. Get a few km under the belt first. There is a cafe in around 5km so lets aim for that for breakfast. Over the bridge, tarmac. Keep going. Oh. Its uphill. Now a minor side road. Keep going. Weaving into the woods on a gravel road. Stomach is growling. Keep going. Finally the cafe. Menu is simple. One side says Menu Especial. It consists of bacon, eggs and sausage with coffee. Someone with a crystal ball kne

Last 3 days. Medium today and long tomorrow. So we need to conserve energy and take it steady! We started in pontevedra and went to a cafe called dulche de leche, they had a great poster with all different kinds of coffee. Why not mix up the espressos and have a caramel macchiato. Nope. The poster is for decoration. We do coffee. Or coffee with milk. At least the croissants were good! After breakfast we walked out through the city and crossed over the river, walking through p

After a nice birthday and relaxing spa day, we woke and had a great breakfast including fresh home made baked cheesecake at the hotel in Moana. It was a good way to start the day. We had a taxi booked for 10 which took us around the big estuary near to redondella to resume our Camino. Vigo is the 100km point, whilst redondella is the point where the portuguese coastal path (which we were on) joined the more populer portuguese central camino. And this we could tell. All of sud

Happy Birthday to Me. We woke up this morning, both tired and sore. Andreas blisters are still bad. We had a short day planned so we could taxi to the hotel and spa this afternoon to relax and celebrate my 40th. But after a nice breakfast we decided we have both earned a rest day and so will go straight to Moana where we are staying, have some nice food, a relax in the spa and chill and recover ready for the last 100km. So enjoy some food, chill and we will resume broadcastin

After another good, included breakfast we set out in our shiny new ponchos. The path today offers two routes. A coastal path or a more central path. As we will shortly move away from the coast and inland towards santiago, we took the coastal route today. Which was longer. Sensible move. Ponchos are good at keeping the rain off. But not great at keeping you dry. Walking under a thick sheet of plastic in 25 degree weather gets you almost as wet with sweat as if you just get rai

The morning started with a lovely fresh breakfast in our accomodation. Casa puertas is a lovely little place run by a few cheerful ladies that make it very welcoming. The omeltte and the toast was great. A lady from new zealand was so busy chatting she set her toast on fire. Then when she put some more in she was chatting again and got shouted at by everyone in the room. A little chuckle through the clouds of smoke. Last night we had a great evening with a fantatsic monkfish

information first: andrea is writing this blog because gary is trying to get by without a cell phone for three days. After the unexpected 30km yesterday we had dinner in the room. There was tortilla, some fruit and cider from the supermarket. Without Gary I probably wouldn't have eaten yesterday. I was so tired. The day started early with breakfast at 07:30. Today it should only be around 20km, but as we have already experienced several times, you cannot rely on the well-know

The most important thing you can learn is no matter how many km you walk on the camino it is always more than the guides. For reference they are bollocks! On the Camino Frances they were often out by 2km. On the portuguese it is between 3 and 5! Todays walk was meant to be around 25-26 but we just hit the magical 30 mark as we arrived at the accommodation. The day started with a steep climb that looked like it was taking us up the mountain to the monastery overlooking the tow

After arriving last night and doing the laundry (every 3 days!!) we went for a nice meal and watched a beautiful sunset before a good night sleep looking forward to an amazing breakfast at Peppermint Brunch - just 2km into our walk today. After checking out we wandered along the now familiar seafront promenades, dodging pedestrians, runners and cyclists. Our 2km warm up led to severe disappointment when peppermint brunch was closed! All the dreaming of eggs benedict dashed, w

We were a bit worried heading to the accommodation yesterday. Bunk beds. Shared bathroom. It was destined to be a bad night. Fortunately the shared bathroom was only between two rooms so a total of 5 people. If it wasnt for the super squeeky door handle it would have been fine. Oh and the elephant they kept in the room above us. At lunch yesterday I had a hotspot on my foot so applied some moleskin,"to be safe". Andrea, adamant it was just a holiday walk thought her hotspots

Today is the longest walk of our trip so we rose early and had breakfast in the hotel with croissants and fillings sourced from Lidl last night. We had a fantastic meal of prawns, sardines, salmon (and a cheeky belly pork dish) before walking to the nearest beach for sunset. It was NOT the picturesque portuguese sunset we had hoped for! Anyway.... we headed out of matosinhos after finding a cafe for the caffiene fix (as there was none in the hotel) and crossed a big swing bri

Today was mostly a travel day with an early start, Andrea and I meeting in Porto Airport around 10 am and then the Metro into Porto. We...

Strap your feet up, ankle bandages and compeeds on. Pack the rucksacks up. It's the last day of walking to Santiago. Today we arrive at...

The penultimate day. 30 days of walking leading to tomorrow and out arrival in Santiago. It's been an emotional journey but when we finish today we will know we will be in sight of that end goal and come what may we will hit it. The weather is meant to be up and down today and it's around the 24km mark so we want to take it steady. No major rush today so we got up and packed back on our usual schedule leaving around 7.30. We walked along steadily and chatted at length about N

These guidebooks and apps are crap! Excuse my French. But these guidebooks and apps are so far off the mark! Every single day we look at...

Well I think I will be looking at puppies when I get home. I miss having a dog in the house and the last few days have really brought...

We have a couple longer days coming up now as we begin to return to the guidebook type distances leading us into Santiago. Portomarin, as...

It's going to get busy folks. Today we pass through the town of Sarria, this is the biggest town on the Camino and marks the start point...