Day 12 - To Tomar

To Santiago de Compostela: 462.8 km
Walled today: 21.6 km
Total walked: 174 km

We left Sao Caetano at 6:30 am, after the heat of the last few days 10C felt pretty chilly.   We had decided to skip Galegã, we were told it is really busy with over 600 competitors for the extreme triathlon this weekend (the town has a population of only 6000 people).

Very soon we arrived to Quinta Cardigan, it started as a castle given by Alfonso I (the founder of Portugal) to the Templar knights.  Alfonso I after obtaining the independence of Portugal dedicated his life to combat the moors. He liberated Santarem and later Lisbon from the moors.  He donated lands to the Templars on the condition that they help protect Portugal from the moors.  For a while the border between Portugal lands and the moors was the river Tejo thus a castle is on the riverside.

Later on, a palace was built around the Templar castle.  The palace is now abandoned but still can be seen as an example of wealth.  See the first three pictures below.

After a couple of hours we passed the town of Atalaia (the watchtower) and entered awesome woods of eucalyptus trees.  Very soon our friends Annie from Sweden and Kirsten from Holland caught up with us.  We walked a bit together and soon they left us behind.  After that we had almost 8 km of climbs and downhills with no towns or people. Towards the end the yellow arrows disappear so we found ourselves going the wrong way.  We had to reverse direction and following advise from a paper prepared by our friend Laurie (also known as Peregrina2000) we followed some transmission lines that obviously went to the town on top of the next mountain, the town of Grou which was our next checkpoint.

As soon as we got to the bottom of the hill we found a yellow arrow (yes!!!) and soon after that an going up a steep Incline (again!) We were taking an apple break when we saw another pilgrim coming up the hill rapidly. A very nice gentleman, a pilgrim from Japan.  Again, he left us behind ( we are slow remember?). And when we got to Grou it was early afternoon so we stopped at a cafe for lunch. It would be two more hours for us to get to the outskirts of Tomar where we, with very sore feet, took the train for one stop.  From the train station we went directly to our hotel.  Hotel does Templarios (we are in Templar knights lands), the best in town and pretty posh if I may say so.  We are spoiling ourselves since we plan to spend 3 nights here.

After  a rest and a shower we went to look for the church  and at an outdoor cafe right in front of the church we saw our Japanese friend with LeeRay and AnneMarie.  It was nice to see them and we agreed to get together for dinner tomorrow, then we went to mass, dinner and bed.

After the photos from the palace, we have a picture of Annie and Kirstan catching up with us, two pictures of Brenda on the hills trail and the last one is the Templars castle in Tomar.

At the church they have a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Fatima.  Somehow I felt really touched when I saw it.  Our Lady, pray for us and protect us. Holy Mary, mother of God pray for us sinners.