Scores on the doors - 16.78 Miles - 27km 6.23 hours walking 1 hour of stops.
Despite various reviews from other pilgrims about road noise at the hotel, we both slept fairly well, getting up when the alarm went of ready for a new day. Breakfast wasn’t until 8:30 so we had plenty of time to pack. The breakfast was not massive but adequate, and when we were ready 
we requested an Uber to take us back to near the Pic-Nic restaurant to resume our walk. We began along a long road with numerous restaurants selling Leitão da Bairrada but none from outside looked as good as Pic-Nic, we the left the busy road to walk through a village and it started to spit quite heavily so full waterproofs were donned, it soon stoped so off they came, (this was the story of the first half of the day!!) we then had our one piece of off road forest track for a couple of miles, and then it was mile after mile of tarmac. And also mile after mile of factories and industry, but occasionally small pockets of countryside.
The writer of one of the guidebooks suggested how many pilgrims chose to avoid the leg from Coimbra to Porto, but to us that is not in the spirit of a pilgrimage and you should take the rough with the smooth and today was certainly a rough day!!
However there a few bright points, the bridge over a river decorated with colourful rosettes for a village fiesta.
The old lady washing her clothes in the village stream fed wash house,
and two churches and a chapel, one church had an enormous Portuguese Cockerel on the top of its tower 
the second was covered in tiles 
and amazingly for once chapel was open!!
Eventually we crossed the river 
and entered Águeda and found our accommodation just beating some serious rain. The town is famous for its quirky arts and especially for it “Umbrella Sky Project” https://www.impactplan.pt/en/umbrella-sky-project/ but unfortunately this takes place in July so instead of finding streets roofed with umbrellas we only found one little part. 
We the found a restaurant for a beer and stayed for food, Cod for Lesley and Slow cooked goat for me,
both which were very good, then back to our room to prepare for tomorrow!!
2 comments:
Shame about so much tarmac & its consequences for your feet but you’re showing true pilgrim spirit by flogging on & finding joy in small things. Keep it up!
Just catching up with many days of your blog here on the Isle of Gigha. Very interesting to read and lots of nice photographs. Sorry to hear of occasional rain and blisters. I can't seem to walk much more than a day without getting them these days. You are nearly at the end of this leg, so well done!
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