Tomar to Alvaiazere

Today was spectacular in just about every way. The weather was perfect.

I seemed to be specializing in getting lost today. I couldn't even get out of Tomar without pleading for mercy at the entrance to the military complex when the yellow arrows marking the way decided to disappear. The third man who tried to help spoke English and pointed me in the correct general direction. I finally found a yellow arrow and was back on track.

So much of today's route was on mountain trails, which was wonderful except where logging operations had obliterated the Camino markings. At one point I followed the obvious dirt road with the only other option being a deep muddy tractor track leading to some downed trees. But after 10 minutes without seeing any arrows I compared that road to the contours on my map and knew it was wrong. I ran back, once again planning to take the paved road. But I ran into the loggers at that muddy cat track and they told me that mess was the trail. And a mess it was. Not the lovely forest trail described in my guidebook, but rather a denuded forest trail with deep muddy ruts and piles of branches to trip over. But a couple of times I actually did spot a yellow arrow painted on the rocks. A family from Australia that I passed a little later told me how they had made the same mistake but stayed on the wrong road the whole way, adding an extra hour of walking. I got lucky finding those loggers.

I made a couple more wrong turns on the next dirt trail but quickly found my way back.

The biggest problem was entering Alvaiazere when the last arrow I saw pointed to a dead end and I ended up climbing down an embankment to an obviously brand new road. I stumbled around there for a while, found one arrow but then they disappeared forever. I finally asked someone where the town center was. I knew the albergue I sought was near the town center next to the church. I finally found the church and Albergaria Pengeiro. It is a wonderful place to stay. I was the first pilgrim to arrive there tonight. Everyone else of course, was also lost. But I think there were only four others anyway.

I had dinner at a tiny cafe around the corner, took a quick shower, then went to mass at the church next door. As one can see from the picture, the interior of the church is magnificent. They prayed the rosary before mass, which really sounded interesting in Portuguese. I seem to have a very hard time grasping that language. It sounds so different from Spanish or Italian in spite of being quite similar in many ways.

My legs seem to be adjusting to all the walking. They are not nearly so sore tonight.