Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Back home to Ponters


Well, of course I didn't do the Ponte de Lima-Barcelos stretch. It would've killed me, even if I could have sent my heavy rucksack on and just carried my laptop.

I spent much of the morning trying to find a way from Ponte de Lima to Valença, across the Miño from Tui and my car. PdL may well be very pretty but it's not well connected. So I took a bus from there to Viana do Castelo, on the coast, and another one to the border. Not the one on the schedule and not at the right time but what the hell.

Walking across the narrow bridge to Tui, it wasn't long before I got my first experience of the difference between the Portuguese/British approach to personal space - start making allowances for the oncoming person 5 metres in advance - and the Spanish approach - leave it until the very last moment and deftly slide past at an angle. Luckily, I'm at home with both. Honest.

And now I'm home, where I've found that more than 40km of walking has added half a kilo to my weight. I put it down to the delightfully refreshing bottle of vinho verde I had with last night's T-bone steak. I wasn't going to but it was only €5. The wine, I mean. I was going to push the boat out at €8 but they didn't have it.

Normal service will be resumed in the morning. My apologies for all this travel-doc self indulgence,

For those who haven't seen it, I posted a bit about yesterday's walk earlier today. Just scroll down for it.

No comments: