None of the five girl pilgrims to stay were out particularly early. The two German women headed off first at about 9am to catch a bus! Apparently they only had a week and were jumping on a lot of buses which rather begs the question of why walk this route at all. There are prettier day hikes to do around Portugal if you just want a day trip or two. Anna decided to take a bus out to see Braga before returning to continue walking from here this afternoon as we were just an hour away and Braga is a town with lots to see (their Bom Jesus is the most visited tourist spot in all of Portugal!) I was

next, out for about 9:45am but straight to a local cafe in town for coffee and a large and extremely boring cake. The bakery bar looked like the kind of place that had been around for generations and so I was curious how this terrible, dry and vast lump of a biscuit thing could be on the menu? No one would buy one twice…. Either it was a new range or it was sold to only passing tourists who all spent the first half hour of their Camino from Barcelos moaning between dry mouthfuls. Lucille of Montpelier trotted past as I was leaving the bar and I managed to palm some of the cake off on her, determined not to waste

it (I am trying to be an eco-friendly pilgrim.) I headed over the bridge and out of town, passing

several large cocks and an enormous but friendly looking brown bear en route. The cocks are a reminder of the legend of the resurrecting cock (those that have walked Camino Frances may have met some of it’s magical ancestors in the cathedral at Santa Domingo de Calzada.

The walk was mainly along roads, under a tunnel to pass under the railway line, and out through the suburbs of Barcelos. Not very inspiring to be honest.

The scenery around became greener and we passed small holdings, plenty of sheep and a few goats. It was quite pretty but a little monotonous, with afew of villages but no many bars or cafes for at least the last 10km… take snacks for this stretch, if only for entertainment. I was starting to tire as the huge, dull calories from this mornings mammoth biscuit were wearing off. A small highlight was to meet some talking turkeys…

Anna showed up behind us. She had waited an hour for the bus to Braga but it had never arrived and so she had given up. The 3 of us didn’t walk together but would catch up on a rest break occasionally and joined forces for the last few kilometres which seemed to take an age…. The path was mainly tarmac all day except for the odd track though a forest, but even then it was always skirting some suburb or village or whatever.

Eventually we came to Casa Fernanda’s, – the albergue mentioned in the Brierley book and the only place to stop unless you fancied another 15km trek! It was apparently a well known place along the way as Fernanda had been the first woman on the

Camino Portuguese to open her doors to pilgrims and she repeated this story to us as soon as we arrived. She was extremely proud of her place in Camino history. Fernanda had expanded over the years and now rather than invite pilgrims in to her home she had built a large wooden structure in her gardens with about ten comfy single beds with ‘real’ mattresses! And a couple of simple but sweet bathrooms with good, hot showers. The gardens were pretty and there were cute cats and mini dogs everywhere.

Fernanda runs the place as a donitiva and provides a hearty 2 course meal with home-grown produce and wine. We had cabbage soup to start and then bolinhos de bacalhau with more cabbage and oven potatoes, followed by the offer of a glass of Port and some chocolate. Delicious, though the bacalhau was rather chewy… I don’t know if this is how they are meant to be or they just cooked a bit long? I should try some more of this local speciality before I leave Portugal to compare them and find out! One more pilgrim had arrived, another woman, Serena, a young nurse from Switzerland.

Although we had only walked about 20km we were all shattered by 8pm and headed to our cute little beds to read and chill. There was no internet or heating at Fernanda’s but I was too tired to write my blog anyway and helped myself to some extra blankets from the empty beds to warm up….