Day 11 – Mealhada to Agueda – 18-May-2018
The day began early as usual, and with forecast warm weather and then rain, we determined that leaving early is always the best policy.
We had been warned via the guide book that todays route was going to be predominately along roads and that proved to be accurate, as we only had one small section on the trail of actual bush track – we were a bit disappointed, but that’s the camino.
Once again, we passed through countless towns, villages and hamlets most of which remained anonymous from our perspective; they were just one more town, one more village etc to pass through to get to our destination of Agueda.
The weather forecast turned out to be half right – 27 degrees, but no rain, fortunately for us, as rain always complicates the situation for people walking.
We reached the Albergue de Peregrinos Santo Antonio in Agueda at around 1:00pm, after the 25km journey and settled ourselves in for the afternoon. The Albergue itself a delightful place, with good amenities, brilliant location on top of a hill, comfortable and clean, although it was quite a slog to ascend the 2km up the hill from the centre of town, after having done the 25km in the heat. After much huffing and puffing we eventually got there.
We decided to wing it for lunch so we went to the local supermarket to get some supplies and had an enjoyable but impromptu lunch. We have found food and beverage in Portugal to be really inexpensive – we managed to feed to 3 of us for about $20, and this included some supplies for breakfast. A cup of coffee will set you back around $1 and a good bottle of wine was purchased for about $4.
The afternoon was spent resting, conversing with other pilgrims, checking out the albergue and taking care of washing.
Later in the afternoon we took a taxi from our albergue back to the centre of the Agueda – our hostel is 2km from town and we did not want to walk again. We had a look around Agueda – a quaint and cute little town, with it’s old historic part containing churches, old buildings, cafes restaurants, plazas and novelty shops, much like we’ve seen in previous towns.
We met up with Eloisa and Francesca by coincidence – they were doing the same thing.
After a quick dinner at a local restaurant we made our way back to the hostel, and spent some time in conversation with other camino pilgrims, discussing the possible options for travelling tomorrow.
