Hardest Day!

We left Esponsende this morning at 8:30, which is a lateish start for us. The temperature was to be about 26 degrees.  This route takes us along the seaside so a welcoming breeze was blowing. The beach is the Sauve Mar Beach, we were following the yellow arrows through pleasant areas where people had a variety of homes, some quite grand and others no so. There were lots of beautiful flowers that we could see over the sometimes high walls. The road parallel to the sea was a board walk but soon we were on uneven cobbles. The “way” is pretty well marked and we are used to looking for markers on the roads, sides of buildings and poles as we walk. Though there are many pilgrims on the walk we don’t actually pass that many, we seem to be fairly spread out. This is Sunday and we pass a church from which we hear beautiful voices singing, a choir perhaps and then the sermon from the priest is also broadcast. There are several churches in a village but only one appears to being used.
Our path has mountains on our right and distant sights of the sea on our left. We are climbing quite a lot, the heat is intensive! The water in our camelbacks is becoming warm.....but we must drink as the sweat is pouring off us!
At about 1pm we stop at the M bar and cafe for lunch.  Some pilgrims who had arrived before us had the salad which they said was good....so we ordered it also along with cold lemonade.  It was good to sit and relax, refuel ! Soon we were on the road again for another stretch of elevation! We had another  12 km to go today to reach our booked accommodation.
We all turned on our music which seemed to motivate us to move!
The town we were to stay in called, Viana do Castelo was reached by crossing a very long bridge. It was extremely windy which was a welcome respite from the heat but the narrow path over the bridge was high over the river so a stumble would have been disastrous ! Once over the bridge we descended again to street level and looked for our accommodation.
We eventually found it and were met by a very nice young man who was able to help us out in several ways, dinner, beer, and tips for the morning.
After making ourselves more presentable we were off for cold beer! We sat at an outdoor patio bar and had grande beers then walked about 50 steps to a Sports Bar .....with white tablecloth service, for our gratis dinner. .....we all chose the local cod specialty, with vegetables.  After enjoying some assorted appies our dinner arrived.....enough for 8....not 4.  We were served by a very nice young man who I’m sure was much amused by us!  Our meal seemed to include as much as we wanted to drink, we only managed 2 bottles of local white! , which seems to be the “green” variety, in other words new! We each ordered dessert and so ended our night.
We retired to our hotel.......this IS Sunday and the young man in charge was leaving his post at 9pm. As he expected we would be later he gave us the code to enter......after mucho vino we had several tries and much laughter before we successfully opened the door.
As we plan to leave before the breakfast is served there were 4 boxed breakfasts waiting for us on the front desk.
As mentioned this was the hardest day....a lot of elevation and kilometres. Tomorrow will be slightly less and terrain will be flatter, temperatures also cooler.
And so another adventure was had on the Camino.