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Published: September 22nd 2016
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Day 25 – September 17, 2016 - Viana do Castelo, Portugal to Vila Praia de Ancora, Portugal – 16.24 Miles
We left the hotel walking alongside the river passing by some beautiful flowers on one side and a boat on the other. As we continued on we walked by the walls of a fort, the Viana do Castelo church, a statue of half a horse/half a rider and then a rooster vane with pink hearts.
We leave the river and start our way out of the city walking alongside the railroad tracks before making a turn onto a dirt road. While walking down the dirt road that leads us back to the ocean we see a couple of paragliders that end up flying almost right over us.
As we are walking alongside the ocean I spot some guys fishing with a cargo ship passing in the distance behind them. Most of the morning was spent walking alongside the ocean on a dirt/gravel path. We eventually find ourselves walking on the beach where we realize we are off the trail. So through the bush we go in search of finding a road that will take us back to the
highway. After a few minutes we find a dirt road which we follow to a highway. After walking a short distance on the highway we come to a small town where we find a café for lunch.
As we were standing outside the café the owner came out and gave us directions on how to get to the yellow arrows which ended up being an uphill climb. We finally find the arrows and start walking through narrow streets with high walls on both sides. As we continue the trail leads us into the forest where we have up and down climbs along with some twist and turns.
At one point Moira and I look back for the other three and we do not see them. We wait on the trail for them to come and after about 5-8 minutes we don’t see them, I go back on the trail looking for them. Still not seeing them I return to where Moira was and she calls Julian who tries to tell us where they are which turns out they make a turn when we followed the arrows to go straight.
We continue following the arrows which take us
higher and higher and higher into the forest. Eventually we come to the high point in the forest where we start our downhill decent to the city. As we are coming out of the forest we find a café where we stop for a cold drink.
Upon leaving the café we continue following the arrows which takes us past a home where several family members were sitting outside and we overhear this little boy say “they are headed to Santiago”. A little further down the road we realized if we continue to follow the arrows they are going to take us further from the city which is not what we want. So Moira gets out her iPad and googles the directions to the hotel. We change direction and as we are walking we have a young man come running up to us asking if we speak English which we reply “yes” and he said we were going into the wrong direction. We explained to him we are going to our hotel and thanked him for being concerned.
We eventually come to a roundabout where I take a picture of two fishermen in a boat. After passing the roundabout,
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My ship has come in! we now have a straight shot to our hotel. On our way, who do we see to our wondering eyes??? Harlan, Karen and Julian coming out of a café where they had just finished their ice cream. Had a good laugh over us getting separated on the trail – they followed an arrow that had them turn left which brought them about 500 meters from where we had lunch after having walked 4.5 kilometers while our arrow had us following the correct path even though we had to change to get to our hotel.
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Tot: 0.034s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0163s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb