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Camino Portuguese Thursday 30/04/2026 Viana do Castelo to Vila Praia de Ancora


30/04/2026 Thursday
Another 20km day today. We were down for breakfast by 7.30am, where we also made a bread roll for lunch, cake for morning tea and filled our travel cups with fruit. Todays walk was listed as having very few services, so we made sure we had enough food.
It was raining when we were about to leave, so we put on our ponchos and headed out. That's the last we saw of the rain. It started out as overcast and steadily improved throughout the day.
Our stop for morning tea must have only recently reopened for the season. We ordered a cup of tea and ate our cake.
We tried to only stop every hour, not counting the times everyone waited for me to catch up.  Walk an hour - 5 minutes rest. Walk an hour morning tea, repeat, lunch, repeat, afternoon tea.
Our walk was a combination of boardwalks and forests with welcome shade, with the occasional road thrown in.
We were going to walk the final part into Ancora along the boardwalks, but the sand dunes had totally reclaimed them. We couldn't even see the fence lining the sides of the walkway. There was no way Kim and Julie's knees could have handled the sand, so the long way it was.
We had dinner a short walk from the hotel, but Kim stayed. Vegetable soup for Ali and I, Calamari for Julie and myself and Codfish sausage for Ali.  We took back vegetable soup for Kim.
Shower, Fisiocream and time for sleeping.
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