It seems José who runs the albergue has his dinner paid by his employer every night at the restaurant down the road, so 3 of us headed off with him.

He was basically the floor show for the evening, and Manuel from the USA, whose parents were Portuguese, says he was swearing just like his father used to! Milena, from Mantova in Italy, was happy to be able to chat with me in Italian.

This old building still has vintage road signs on its wall .
I think I crossed this railway line at least 6 times today.

A large part of the walking was once again on asphalt as the route makes its way up through the never ending mixture of urban, market garden and industrial landscape .

Today’s flower gallery .

The old village of Bemposta had a number of historic features described on story boards, which you don’t see that often in Portugal.

Many of the buildings date from the 15th century.

The story board describes the column below as a pillory and mentioned that it was used for public executions.

A stream is channelled down to a laundry and fountain at a lower level.

I saw a few more public laundries today including this very old one.

However, you also see newer laundries in good repair . I was very surprised to see a woman doing her washing at one today. She didn’t want her photo taken, but here she is taking some of the washing in a bucket up a hill to her home.

Another surprise has been seeing scattered hórreos, or celeiros in Portuguese. These elevated grain stores are extremely common in the area around Santiago, but I hadn’t expected to see them this far south.

A door on an abandoned building.

I was only walking 22km today and my accommodation wasn’t available until 3pm, so I found a nice spot to sit down for lunch.

A medieval bridge.
An unusual scarecrow .
Old houses have been abandoned for new apartments.

Rain is forecast now for the next 5 days so wish me luck!

My Relive video for today