May 25, 2018

Today was another day of surprises. We left our albergue at around 6:20am with the objective of walking 30kms. Due to the longish distance and the fact that Jose’s foot was not great, we had decided to have our back packs carried on ahead, to our next stop, which was Barcelos. We had rang up the previous night and booked our beds at the Albergue San Pedro Fins in Barcelos.
We started out as a group of 5 this morning – the lady we had met last night at dinner had expressed a wish to walk with us, rather than being alone.
All was proceeding according to plan. We were making good time and covering good distance. Close to lunchtime, the lady walking with us had a fall, after slipping on a rock and got pretty well shaken up, as well as injuring her left hand; at the time it looked like she may have broken her thumb, which didn’t turn out to be the case, but we we’re not to know. We dusted her off and accompanied her to the next village, where we decided to call a taxi for her to go to hospital, to have her hand checked out. About the same time it also started to rain cats and dogs, so we decided to stay put in the cafe bar until it eased. It was also at this time that we started investigating how to get to our accom in Barcelos, as we were not altogether sure where it was and didn’t want to go floundering about in the rain. To our surprise the albergue that we had reserved was actually about 10kms further on from Barcelos, which would mean we would be walking about 40kms instead of the 30kms we had planned. Clearly this was not going to work in the current weather conditions. Pragmatism won the day yet again, so we decided to accompany the lady to hospital in the taxi, and then catch another taxi to our destination.
Now, on the way to the Barcelos hospital, Michael was sitting facing in reverse. In a very short space of time he began to feel ill from travel sickness. Fortunately, we reached the hospital just in time for him to get out and get some fresh air.
We left our injured patient in casualty and  headed towards our accom, some 10kms further up the road. By the time we got there Michael was quite sick again.

The earlier part of the afternoon was spent with the usual activities. Later on in the afternoon, Jose and I travelled the 10kms back to Barcelos, whilst Michael was convalescing and Eloisa was exploring the local neighbourhood. Jose and I wanted to get a closer look at Barcelos, as it looked like quite an interesting place when we came through initially.  This turned out to be the case – there was a large produce market which even offered live animals for sale, a number of great churches,  a fantastic mediaeval bridge and some typically old European city squares.

We ended up contacting the lady who had had a fall earlier – she had seen a doctor who suggested there was no structural damage to her hand, but likely just ligament strains. Nonetheless, she was still feeling a bit sad and sorry for herself as she would not be walking tomorrow and may not be able to complete her Camino plans. Sometimes, that’s what happens???