The long walk went well today. No pain in my shin. Feet and toes are a-okay. And the walk was really nice. Plenty of nice views along the way. Plus it was cloudy in the AM, so much of the walk was pleasantly cool. 17.2 miles. 1800 feet of climbing.

Planning food on the Camino

On most days, restaurants and stores are plentiful on the Camino, but there are some rural areas where there may be no places to get food (especially on Sunday and Monday, as I mentioned before). That’s true of my stop tonight. They serve breakfast, but not dinner, so at lunch I ordered extra and carried it with me for dinner.

I try to identify all these places in advance. Over my 34 days, I think I marked 5 as “challenging food days.”

While the food options at tonight’s lodging are not great, the place turned out to be really nice, although there are very few people staying here.

“What’s on your Camino playlist?”

I don’t listen to anything most of the day. On the really long days like today, I listen to some podcasts over the last few miles. The Camino, college football and history are my usual listens. I highly recommend the podcast “The Rest is History.”

As far as music, I often listen to the music of the area. Haven’t done that in Portugal yet, but in Spain, I listened to a lot of Spanish guitar songs. Several made it into my “like” list on Spotify.

Where are all the pilgrims?

That’s a good question. There are far fewer pilgrims on the road so far than on any previous Camino. Two reasons for this, I believe… August in Portugal can be so hot it scares some people away, and most pilgrims start in Porto. So I expect the trail to be a lot busier in about 10 days.

Today, I did meet several people. One from London. Two from Brisbane, Australia. Two from Los Angeles. So there are people out here, but they’re few and far between.