Today was ominous. All 6 weather apps on my phone, from the woke BBC one which views every day of Non-extreme weather as an insult to the great god of Climate Emergency, to the dour German Wetter app (the name of which is of course just the German for weather but is quite funny) agreed. It was going to rain.
Set off from Agueda in nice weather, stopping at Portugal’s friendliest grocer to buy a couple of bottles of water. The trail headed west and then cut north and uphill through the suburbs. All ok and then through an industrial estate and into a village called Vouga. Clearly a place that had fallen on hard time. There was a succession of very grand houses which were in terrible condition - whatever money had built them had deserted the area some time ago.
A coffee in a depressing cafe - where I met a very taciturn English pilgrim - and then I headed into the weather. The rain quickly became a deluge.
Every photo ever taken on the Camino shows the same basic scene - happy pilgrims striding forth in glorious sunshine. Frankly, drenched pilgrim sheltering in bus shelter, cursing because the refuge of a MacDonalds on google maps was a fiction, is never going to make the top 10 of Camino images. Still, after a particularly superb coffee, bifana and beer at the wonderful, very pilgrim-friendly Cafe Leonel in Serem, it was all guns blazing to Albergaria. The little guest house was very friendly and had a heated towel rail in the bathroom which soon dealt with the soaking clothes. Albergaria was nice enough - found a small cafe and had a cheerful 45 minutes complaining on the phone to the woman from Wix who was trying to help me spend money with Wix. Sadly not possible - the computer said no. Dinner was at the most amazing place - Pouso do Rei. It was the bottom floor of an office block and looked terrible from outside but was great. The waiter spoke excellent English and the house wine was brilliant at 5€. He said he paid less than 2€ per bottle for it. It was a family restaurant again and their pastry chef should be working in a Michelin restaurant. Lime cheesecake, so good I had to take a photo of it...
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