Speaking A Foreign Language

I came to expect a certain response from people in Lisbon and Porto when I tried to speak Portuguse to them.  They smile.  They nod. They respond by asking if I would like to speak English.  Sometimes they even go so far as to claim that they understood what I was trying to say.  Then I get into the smaller places, a bakery or store in a smaller town and they just look confused when I try to say something as simple as hello.  I have always had a problem with pronunciation and it just gets worse when I try to speak any other language.  It is frustrating, but something I expected. 

What I didn't expect was the problems following the yellow arrows.  It seems there is a bit of a conflict between the Camino da Coastal people and those of the Senda Litoral.  Dispite it's name, the Camino da Coastal doesn't always follow the coast.  It takes wide loops inland to go by a church or something.  Whereas the Senda Litoral follows the coast as closely as possible.   Today, for example, I followed the arrows down a dirt road through a eucalyptus forest to a soccer stadium, then more forest and a school.  They took me through a town bypassing all businesses so I couldn't restock my snacks.  Coming into Esposende  tonight the arrows insisted that I cross on the south side of a round-about so as to miss all the direction markers for the cars coming into town, then take you down an alley to go past a church.   What I really needed to see was the direction marker for the tourist information building.  I know this is very un-pilgrimlike, but screw the arrows from now until I join the main route, I'll follow the maps I downloaded.  It should save me about five km per day.

I kept crossing paths with a French couple today.  They had extra time after finishing thieir camino so decided to walk the coast north from Porto as much as possible before they go home.  They didn't have a guidebook or even whatseems  like a map, but were going towards water whenever they could.  I last saw them headed for the beach right before a golf course that my sources said was impassible.

Not many pictures today because the forests and farm lands aren't all that pretty.  This is a stone cross where I headed inland to avoid some sand walking and got kidnapped  by the coastal route arrows.

I have no idea how far I walked today, but the marker about three km ago said 201 to Santiago, so I'll go with 60 down and 198 to go.