According to the booklet:
Distance 13.1 km | 8.1 miles
Elevation: +400 m | -405 m
Altitude: 584 m to 788 m
Climb: 1,315 ft

Breakfast at Quinta Manhãs D’Ouro wasn’t available until 8:30. It appears breakfasts might be later on this trip. Since we have no luggage transfer today we didn’t have to rush to get things packed, and we could sit around for a bit. (I’ve managed to play my Wordle game every day so my streak continues. The other games aren’t always getting played, but I do like keeping the streak going. News you can use … or maybe not.)

I realized (too late!) that I forgot to take a room photo when we arrived. Honestly, it’s nothing worth seeing, but I still like to do these so when I go back through our trips I can remember the places. This Quinta is nothing fancy, the room is small, and quite basic. (And the tile floor in the bathroom is mighty slippery after a shower!) But it’s a very quiet location, and those running it are friendly.

But oh the view!

Breakfast, dinner, and, if we opt for them, drinks, are on the main floor.

So after breakfast we got ourselves ready, including our rain coats because, surprise, surprise, it was raining. I opted to leave my rain pants at the Quinta though, since my weather app said the rain would subside and it wasn’t going to reappear until much later.

Our app with instructions for the walk said it was to start back in the village just below us, so off we went.

We tried to find the start point (where the pillory is … hmmm … not finding it!). We went one way. We went another. Pillory? What pillory?!

We finally just opted to start walking since the app will show us where we are in comparison to where we should be. But, well, um, wouldn’t you know we ended up right back by where we are staying!? We could have started from there, and would have if only we’d started the app sooner. Ah well. Reaching “our” place, though, the rain had increased enough that I decided to go back to our room (up a steep hill, mind you) to get my rain pants.

In case you don’t know, this is the rule: if you don’t bring it, you will need it, and if you do bring it, you won’t. Better to choose the latter, I believe. (And no, I never did use them!)

Getting back down the hill the rain had diminished so much we just walked on without wearing the rain pants. Initially we were on the same route we took when we passed the Quinta yesterday, but the we went up a dirt road. There was a good uphill. Not killer, but definitely uphill. We still had some rain at times, and also heard thunder.

We had some lovely views, and there was a flower I don’t think I’ve seen before (anyone? Maybe an allium of some sort?).

More views. A cemetery. A town (Vilarinho de São Romão). The rain had stopped when we neared that town.

Until we decided to stop for lunch! Go figure. This is one of our lunch bags, provided by Green Walks. We hand the bags to someone at wherever we are staying, and they hand them back full of our lunch. Handy, right? So we ate our sandwiches in the rain, and saved the rest for later because we didn’t want to continue to sit there with the rain coming down.

After lunch was another uphill walk, but then a huge downhill. I’m never jazzed about downhills. I know that means an uphill is in my future! We got to the village of Fermentões, and took some time to eat what look like pancakes at this spot with water and a bucket … perhaps a laundry spot? In any case, the pancakes were sweet and a nice thing to enjoy before another big climb.

On the climb we saw sheep, flowers, great views (eventually), and the ever-present broom (bright yellow flowers) that in our neck of the woods is considered an evil invasive species. It is ALL over the mountainsides here and I wonder what people here think of it. It’s really quite lovely, but it does seem to take over everything. Other flowers I’ve seen are lavender, some other yellow plant that I suspect is related to a pea plant (?), lupine (so far all yellow), your typical yellow daisy like flowers, and either heath or heather (I’ve never figured out the difference between those two). We’ve seen pine trees, eucalyptus trees, fruit trees, what we suspect might be nut trees (I was pretty sure I saw chestnut). There are berry plants of some sort (no blossoms or berries at this point), and obviously a ton of grapevines.

But I ramble … here have some photos!

We didn’t follow the app completely — it would have taken us back to the village below where we are staying and having seen it twice now we figured we could skip it, so back to our lodging we went. As we were getting quite close a car drove by and a man said, “Camino!” to us. Yes, there are signs that designate a Camino walks here. We’ve barely seen any walkers at all, though. Our Swiss friends from yesterday were nowhere to be seen. I’m guessing they are just too fast for us.

Getting back to our Quinta we came upstairs to get things taken care of, but eventually went downstairs to enjoy the remainder of a bottle of tinto vinho we bought yesterday. It was lovely to just relax and enjoy the view out the windows — one side showed puffy white clouds and sun and the other very dark clouds. We are learning that weather here is pretty crazy!

Next up was dinner, and it was very good. And relaxing. And I didn’t take a single photo so just trust me: we had a duck rice main after a dinner roll, sausage, olive appetizer. There was also salad, and a chocolate crepe for dessert, along with a decaf espresso. All very fine.

And I am all very tired!

Tomorrow we have our breakfast at 8:30 but our driver arrives at 9:00 to transport us to our starting spot so we will have to eat quickly, I suppose. I’m not sure if he is also the one who transports our luggage as that wasn’t mentioned in our booklet. So we will learn about that in the morning. I think tomorrow’s walk is an easier one, but it’s a long one. But again, we’ll know when we know.

Goodnight for now!