From Porto to Santiago de Compostela

Dear All, Yesterday (Sunday), we completed the last part of the walk in Portugal from Sao Roque to Valença before crossing over the Rio Minho (Port) or Mino (Sp) into Spain from Valença to Tui

The walk had some initial climbing before dropping down to river level for most of the walk. We were forced to use the ponchos today as we experienced the rain falling on the plains in Portugal. The picture was taken outside the Taverna of the Church.                                                                                               As we entered Valença on the Portuguese side of the river, we passed the waymarker that confirmed we had walked more than halfway already. Halfway was 125kms but we had only 117.624kms to walk – note the accuracy of the measure to three decimal places of a km!                                 Valença sits on the opposite side of the river from Tui. Photograph is of my feet – one in Portugal and one in Spain.                                                                 Walking through Tui, we caught first sight of its impressive cathedral on top of the hillside in front of us. We had hoped to attend mass in the cathedral but evening mass was being held in the church of San Francisco so went there instead.                        Needless to say, we enjoyed our first Spanish beer of the trip in Tui.                        Today we moved on from Tui to Porriño, a more leisurely walk of 18kms. The walk was disappointing as we had to walk some 5kms through an industrial estate. They are trying to promote an alternative loop to this along the river bank.                               And today, we passed the distance marker that showed we had less than 100kms to walk – still a lot to do but so much better than the 250kms facing us last Monday. We met some local Spanish people who support Liverpool – who could imagine that. One of the locals even gave us his treasured Atlético de Madrid pennant- such is the power of the Camino pilgrimage on pilgrims and those we meet!                                              Eddie (and John, Peter and Paul)