On to Sao Joao

Hello, everyone.

Our walk to Sao Joao took us along what was probably the wrong route at one point--we didn't see some of what the guidebook said we'd see. We did, however, see the unusual sight of a grocery store that provides shaded parking for the customers. With giant square umbrella-like covers!

Church of St. Michael (not in Sao Joao but in Oliveira dei Azameis, a good sized city before Sao Joao) 

The next morning, leaving Sao Joao and heading on to Grijo. The sea was in sight!

 We walked along highway and big streets and eventually smallish highways and streets going from Sao Joao to Grijo. There were glimpses of the sea in the distance, off on our left, and many, many houses. On this ridge, it seemed like many of the businesses were on the side of the road without the ocean view. Only a few restaurants were on the view side of the road.

The exit door of the parish albergue in Grijo.

The albergue in Grijo has signs that appear about 3 or 4 kilometers ahead, wooden signs that is, occasionally stuck onto a pole along the winding trail up and down through neighborhoods. Grijo is a separate little village, a bedroom community almost for Porto.

The albergue itself is on a street with moderately fast traffic and no sidewalk. Just keep an eye out after you turn the corner with the "100 meters" (or some such small number) sign. It's on the left, in a yellow-painted house and there is a giant shell on the brown wooden door. That's it! Don't let your oblivious hiking partners tell you it isn't. (Ahem. And if they do, pray you encounter the friendly pilgrim's assistance fellow with his backpack to turn you around and take you back to it.) If you go too far, you come to the corner where the trail turns and you go  between the cemetery and the front entrance of the old monastery. The place is nice--it's a converted house. (One bathroom with shower, and a cold water washtub outside with clothesline apparatus. A neighbor can prepare a meal for a reasonable charge, or the pilgrim can go to the bar next door and eat for about the same amount of money.) The volunteer hospitaleros told us while they were there that the house had been given to the parish--the hospitaleros are parishioners that take time from their day to come over and clean and do the paperwork with the pilgrims--and that the pastor and parishioners had decided to make a shelter for pilgrims of it. It's at a very good location to rest before the push through lots of streets and highways into Porto.

On the picture above, the yellow arrow goes on toward Santiago. The blue arrow goes on toward Fatima. (We did encounter singles and groups of Fatima pilgrims walking. It was so pleasant to encounter other pilgrims!)

Returning to our travel narrative

Hello, everyone.

My last travel post got us to Agueda, where we slept on the far (outgoing) side of the town. The next day we studied the guide book and discovered that the towns were not placed correctly for a regular-length day. We had a short walking day instead, going to Albergaria a Velha (Old Albergaria, I think that means) so after finding an ATM we walked to the far side of this city, too.

Walking on a quiet road. The quiet ones aren't bad. It's the main highways that gave us gray hairs!

Art in the apse of a church. Christ Victorious

We were often crossing the ancient Roman highway that went roughly the same way we were going.
This sign was added to the back of the marker because the carved letters on the front were so worn down.

The No Tell Motel may have a local reputation for being a place couples go to "not sleep" but it had clean sheets and hot water in the shower. (I rigged up a paracord clothesline to dry our clothes after I washed them in the tiny sink. It went right over the pot, but it got the job done.) In our prior post, made with DH's Kindle Fire, the autocorrect got a-hold of the words. (Sorry about that.) The eggs were hard-boiled, not "hard core!" And in Sao Joao, the Residential Solar had a cast-iron beadstead, the framing at the head and foot of the bead, not a "cast iron beadspread."

The city itself (Albergaria a Velha) was pretty and we did pass an albergue in the middle of town. We elected to go on to the far edge and find this "other lodging" place because it would chop off about a mile or a mile and a half from the next day's long walk.

Next post: on to Sao Joao!

Fall updates

Hello, everyone.

My DH has been busy! As y'all know, we have pecan trees around the place. Pecan trees drop branches. He's been saving the branches to use in the grill (gives a lovely smoke flavor to meat) and now he has made a wood rack to put them in.

The new wood rack, placed on bricks so the bottom isn't on the ground. (Green turtle in back used to hold the wood.)

 And a progress report on the seeds recently planted:

Seedlings coming up in the garden. Crack in picture is because the soil is somewhat sandy and the recent rains have all soaked down below the surface.

The Fiddlewood shrubs bloomed a little while back and now they're making berries. These will be a pretty black when ripe.

 I saw this little guy wandering around on the ground, looking for bugs, and managed to get a picture of him:

The bird who lives in our night-blooming cereus shrub. Curve-billed thrasher?

Weather that makes life easier for me

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday we got over 2 inches (5 cm, for folks in the metric zone) rain. This happened about 3 days after we planted the first four rows of our fall garden.

First four rows to be planted. (It's too warm still for the Sugar Snaps to be planted.)

The first few arugula seeds are coming up already! And the rain means that I won't have to stand out there sprinkling the rows for a couple of days.

Separately, we have about 8 tiny pots of cauliflower seedling and maybe 6 of parsley. When they get large enough, they'll go in the ground too. Well, the parsley may stay in pots for easy cooking access. ;-)

The Ho Mi Z mustard is a fairly large red mustard, good for using in Brother Victor's radish-greens soup recipe and other mustard greens recipes. I planted a lot of mustard greens and arugula and the escarole (a kind of chicory, like horticultural dandelion) because I hope it will discourage nematodes from bothering next spring's tomato plants.

The Bull's Blood beets are red-leaved, so they will pretty up a salad bowl with their thinnings even before they can be dug for fresh beets.

The kale is a fairly standard blue-green curly-leafed kale, the kind you find on plates as a garnish. I would like to put in a row of either Tuscan kale or Portuguese kale, just because they go so well in the Suppa Toscana recipe. But we'll see how much room there is--DH wants to have at least 2 or 3 rows of green beans!

Crafty stuff

Hello, everyone.

I see that my last post shows what happens when the little electronic hamsters don't keep up with the clicks, and I don't realize that things are still in process so I try to put them in again. Ah, well.

There's a new item in DH's orchid collection:

These guys do really well hung from the branches of the lemon tree by the back door. It's shaded, but not super-dark, and it's easy for me to sprinkle water into the center of the plant. (Plants that naturally grow in trees have very different watering needs from plants that naturally grow on the ground. I sprinkle the center of the plant almost every day, and from time to time DH will feed them.)

The dress for R is coming along:

Dress pieces pinned for cutting out

An embroidered slip to use for an ornament, in progress (beads from stash on hand, yay!)

One foot in front of the other

Hello, everyone.

On June 16 we passed on to Agueda, if memory serves, and met Mr. Simoes while walking through the town. Y'all may remember me mentioning his kindness on a post while we were on the road. He makes aged brandy.

Studying the guidebook before crossing a highway

Lovely tile art on a house

Local tourism council promotion of water wheels or windmills

Wine or Port production facility (out in the country)

Pretty old house on the street

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Path into the next town.

Plums on a tree on the patio--juicy but not tart.

Pilgrim laundry facility. After this, you hang the things on a line and hope it doesn't rain!

This was a private albergue/pensao at the outgoing city limits of Agueda. It has private rooms and also dorm facilities. The patio was lovely.

We walked a quarter mile back along the road to the grocery store and picked up some eggs and bread and such and had boiled eggs and bread and wine (and maybe some olives?) for dinner.

Moving along the trail

Hello, everyone.

I got distracted this week--RL stuff kept me busy.

This was the place with the suckling pig. They have rooms and also a dorm facility full of bunks. Washtub on premises, clothesline as well. Nice people.

There had been a religious processon. (We were still passing through the weeks-long Festas de Sao Joao.)

A set of waymarkers.

Scattered throughout the countryside, the trail passes ruins.

Some of the abandoned, falling-down buildings have tile murals on them, left over from when they were in use.