What a lovely place. Beautiful. Glorious weather. Wonderful food. The Portuguese do long range walks very well indeed. And a luggage transfer service – what an Idea. You have to wonder if other places could use such a thing.

A note on path etiquette. Obvs for a single man – adjust as necessary to your actual outward appearance.
1. Meet single woman – give widest berth or step off the path. If no eye contact attempted, do not even proffer a greeting of any sort. Just pass on by.
2. Couple same sex, or visually same sex – no prob. least troublesome. Usually the dominant one will greet first. You’ll know them because you’ll have been listening to their non-stop droning come floating up the cliff face as they approached.
3. Mixed couple – always greet the man before the woman. Don’t even look in her direction until he has returned. He is usually leading. Occasionally there have been tight looking, Pilates lean, terribly efficient women pushing on in front, constant stream of instructions – commands – in the air. Always seem to have been German.
Then there are the desperate ones. The leading man’s constant verbiage about the minutiae of the scene has created a look in her eyes, as she greets me in turn, of something like, “Why? Why did I ever marry this bore?” Sometimes with the desperation there is a hunger. Sort of, “Will you lend me a saintly hand, and just shove him off as we go by”. All God’s li’l’ children don’t forget.
Last of course, the various Europeans who just ignore you as if you don’t exist. It isn’t meant as an insult but does take a while to get used to.

I wonder sometimes, as I plod along. How much time do I have left?
We all dwell on our mortality some times but it does press on you as you get older. I don’t just mean, how much time in general, but how much time I’ll be able to carry on with this? Someday I’ll hit the big wall and won’t have the will to drag myself on. I’ll just drop where I stand, hopefully with a contented smile on my face, to be found by the next along the trail. Please don’t let it be an American.