Day 3 of walking

 FAO TO VIANA DO CASTILO

Today was a challenging day to say the least. The  day was supposed to be a short one to a town on a lake that was shown in the guide book I bought in Porto. This guide book is as useless as tits on a bull, the lake and town don’t even exist., this forced us into a 20 Mile day and nine hours of walking.

Today we started out after Kyle because it rained last night and our clothes were still wet. What to do but hang them on the back of our packs and walk them dry. We did not look very tidy, more like a moving garage sale, but it worked. The town of Fao was our start point, but soon arrived in Esposende which seemed deserted because it was a national holiday, something we got to share in later down the road.

 




We had breakfast in Esposende and then the trail took us into the mountains. We had not done any elevation work yet, but we’re not worried as we were going to stop at the lake for the night, we’ll now we know that doesn’t exist, but still,,,,,,,,,.





Working our way up through the valley, and crossing the river was a challenge but someone was having fun, just not me today








After what seemed like hours, (maybe one) we crested part of the climb and found ourselves at a beautiful church. Great place to stop and get water, as I walked in, out came Kyle, can’t get rid of this guy even if we try. Hey buddy!!!!!!!!!! Was the warm welcome, I wanted to say hi back, but I still couldn’t breath from the climb, so I gave him a big hug. I like this guy, we have some juju connection.




We hung around and filled our water bottle, then headed out for the long downhill, which turned out to be uphill


No no, I’m filling my water bottle, I’m not peeing in the fountain, those days are long gone
We walked with a bunch of people later in the day, seems we all found each other on the walk, including English Steve from Manchester, who should  learn that you don’t need walking sticks on asphalt, and if you do, put friggin rubber caps on them,,,,,,,,,,,,,noisy a- hole

Today got great, we three ominous of MB, Kyle and myself had separated ourselves from the rest at lunch stop, and were walking past this farm house in the middle of nowhere, all of a sudden, all hell broke lose, a family of locals poured over the wall and started feeding us bread, grilled sardines,and white wine. We had a ball with them and what a gift, they were celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi 








So, the lake and town live in someone else’s dream, we had to walk through the dream and onto the town of Viana do Castelo. We found a place to stay which had a pool, oh yeh.


Great dinner along the water front,. This was a challenge, but tomorrow will be a short haul and we will be along the coast again. I have to admit though, when we ended the day and took my boots off, man , my dogs were barking


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