Day 10 – Coimbra to Sernadelo

Sept 20

I did end up having a room to myself last night and had a luxurious night of sleep thanks to my eye mask and earplugs, which blocked out the festivities going on outside my window.

I woke up about 6 AM feeling refreshed and very slowly started getting ready for the day.  I realized I had less than 130 km to get to Porto. The next major city along the route. Most of the travel guides had that broken into five segments averaging roughly 25 km a day I thought about trying to do it in four days (33 kilometers a day), but the locations of accommodations didn’t align.  So today I started off for Sernadelo. 

I have to admit I was very tired yesterday on my Uber ride into town and wasn’t paying great attention. In the morning, I looked at the map and it looked as if I needed to cross the river to head out of town. I started down the hill in a foggy mist and started off across the bridge. About mid span a guy with hiking poles and a white ball cap was heading the other way. It was Meelis!  He said “do you know you’re going the wrong way?“

Sure enough in my foggy state the day before I hadn’t realized that I’d already crossed the river and needed to be heading in the opposite direction. The Camino does provide and in this case it was a friendly face to point me in the right direction before I had gone too far out of my way.

We walked along the river walk for a cup of kilometers and the city quickly gave way to cornfields.  Harvest was beginning and lots of people were pulling over to the side of the road with big bushel baskets to pick the corn.

We caught up with Dan who stayed at the monastery with Melis the night before.

The hike today was uneventful. Lots of small villages to pass through interspersed with service roads through agricultural land and forests.

Tonight’s accommodation is the pilgrim-only alberge Residencial Hilario. I’m staying in the 12-bed dormitory.

The dormitory is beginning to fill up with guests from France, Australia, Estonia, UK, Slovenia and me as the only Yank so far.

Not a photo heavy day today…