Day 7 – Tomar to Alvaiázere

Day 7 – Tomar to Alvaiázere – 29km/18 miles

Today was my far the best day on this Camino so far. It was a long day but a good day in many ways. I’m an effort to best the heat, we started walking at 6:30am. It started with a very nice hilly forest path before leaving up into the mountains surround Tomar. This was actually the stage with most elevation and it felt good to use some other muscles going up and down. We caught up to Crystal from Australia at the first bar stop and continued on. Dylan, his son and girlfriend took a rest day in Tomar so now it was just the four of us. We’ve heard whispers of other people but have never seen them.

Along the next few kilometers we came across a man sorting fruit. He insisted on giving us 10 pounds of assorted fruit including pears, oranges, and cherries. I guess he didn’t know we had to walk 20 more kilometers. Soon ahead we had an option to take the road and cut off 2.5km of mountainous path so we decided to let the Camino decide and flipped a coin. The Camino decided no shortcuts on this day so we went up. The path was a steep climb and I cursed that coin to the top, but we made it dripping in sweat. From there we followed the small road well above the towns below and had a nice lunch along the road. Sometimes these impromptu stops are the best. Finally we came across an albergue run by a Dutch woman named Leida. She had walked the Portuguese a few years ago and decided to buy a house in a small village and convert it for walkers to use. Talk about a life change! I admire that. We all talked for a while and she made us some delicious omelettes. After saying goodbye we had 9km which included some delicious homemade lemonade at another albergue until finally arriving at ours. This one is very relaxing and we had the place to ourselves. It is run by a British family who converted a old homestead into lodging and a restaurant. We enjoyed dinner and the sunset and called it a night. This marks one week done!