March 14: BONUS POST (At Mealhada)

I’m sitting here, on my bed in the Residençial, eating a fresh sheep’s cheese (on offer from “Pingo Dingo”) with corn crackers and enjoying a white port (in the toothpaste glass from the bathroom). Carey has tuna paté, salad and beer. Our evening is set fair.

The Residençial is the “posh bit” of the Albergue: twin rooms, not dormitories and an ensuite shower, not a communal one. As I said to our host earlier, “We’re too old for the Albergue”. She laughed, but appreciatively… Each window may have boots drying on the windowsill (some with insoles airing separately), but in the Residençial, it’s your own boots in your own window, thank you very much!

We are also warm and clean, courtesy of a hot shower. I even washed my hair, which, (after a year’s worth of growing since I shaved my head in February 2024), seems today to have passed through the “70’s tousled” vibe I have actually quite enjoyed for the last 2 – 3 weeks and has landed firmly on “scruffy”. Fortunately, the sartorial bar is quite low on camino – clean body, clean clothes and properly-aired boots is a higher standard than many pilgrims can claim, (including us on other days).

I am sad to have missed the chance to explore historic Coimbra yesterday. The first 2km today was through/round the town. It was roadworks, railways, flyovers: a living city, but not Romantic, much less Imperial. It’s important to remember that we are walking through a working landscape – even an industrial one, in places.

Of course, we try to take attractive photographs. Also, only certain photographs can be taken: for example, the sun was on our right all day today, so photos can only be taken facing left. There are few photos of rain, because we are head down and trudging on during rain, especially hard showers. There are few photos of us clinging, slipping, falling, because we don’t have a separate pair of hands for snapping while we are inching through a thicket… It is, truly, often a stunning landscape and the sky has been mesmirising. But, there is plenty of litter, ruin and dirt, as you would expect for a place people actually live and work.

That said, this is a prosperous region, more than the area North of Lisbon. Welcoming you to Mealhada is a statue of a man “riding” a wine barrel, cheerily waiving a stein. It’s highly fertile, productive land, being worked hard. We have walked through vineyards, olive and orange groves. These are picturesque to us, and also highly profitable assets. Each homestay offered us their own wine and preserved olives; had goats or chickens (or both) in the yard. Us tourists are only one of several revenue streams. Almost every house is well-pointed and seems to have heavily-laden fruit trees in the yard. Although the villages seem to be middle-aged/old (everywhere, the “young people” go to the city), there is a sense that life is good here, a life of surplus.