Day Eight: Santarem to Golega

Plan was to walk 31k to Golega.  I got lost three times leaving Santarem.  Since the Fatima people have left the camino the waymarks are a bit dodgy.  Then I took the wrong road but thought that I could correct my mistake.  No, sorry, not today.  Proceed to beginning and start again.  Back to Santarem three hours later, forget walking 31k today.  So I hopped on the train and rode about 20k to Mato de Miranda.  That means roughly, death of Miranda, but I was undeterred.  By the use of dazzlying Vulcan logic and clicking my heels together three times I found the yellow arrow.  The path was mostly on farm roads and Golega turned out to be a pretty little town with the first scallop shells on the Camino Portuguese.

This has become the symbol for the camino in Europe not just in Spain.  The European colors are yellow and blue.  It's a stylized image of a conch shell which is the symbol for St. James and each of the rays represents a camino and they all converge at Santiago.

The central plaza in Golega.  The town bills itself as the horse capitol of Portugal and horse images were everywhere.  The tourism director for the town saw me aimlessly wandering and directed me to the alburgue that I wanted.

This is the door to the church built in the 14th century.  Almost looks like a mouth.  I'm not sure about the style - flamboyant gothic?  There is an architectural style refered to a lot in Portugal which is termed Manueline after King Manuel I.  He ruled over the golden age of discovery and he even walked the camino to Santiago.