The Monastery Is Magical

We began the day with breakfast, well, I began the day with soreness, but that’s beside the point. We ate with our new British friends Margaret and Robin, a 70ish couple who never utter a word about any of this walk being crazy hard. I mentioned the sand mountain we climbed yesterday (they climbed it a day earlier). I may have used the phrase “butt kicker.”

They said, oh yes, that was a bit of a challenge. But didn’t you feel virtuous after you reached the top, they asked.

Indeed.

They departed this morning for the next leg of the journey. We probably won’t see them again as they are staying in the planned hotel in Sintra and I decided to upgrade to something with the word “palicio,” thinking that might be the palace we deserve after all this walking.

We set out a little later today because of the rain and wind and, honestly, we cut off about two miles of our walk. I hate to even confess it. We took a shortcut to the monastery because of the mud, the rain and maybe a little tiredness in our muscles.

The monastery was unlike anything we’ve ever seen. They refer to it as the Cork Convent but it originally was home to eight friars who followed the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. The monastery was constructed in the 1500s in harmony with nature, incorporating enormous boulders into the structure. It was several buildings linked together, but very very austere. The friars vowed extreme poverty and each only owned a robe (habit), a bible and one other item that represented a saint. They slept on the floor in rooms the size of small closets, which they had to enter on their knees. They spent their time divided into eight hours of sleep, eight ours of work (on the grounds and with the poor in the area) and eight hours of quiet prayer and meditation.

There’s no need for me to go into any more detail, but what’s important is that it was a place that was inspirational. It was so beautifully built into the environment, that it was part of the landscape. We spoke in whispers and we were among fewer than six people at the site.

We left there and decided to follow the walk notes home instead of trimming another two miles from the day. That was entirely Betsy, by the way.

We were to walk down into a village. I can’t remember the name right now, and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it was down. And while walking down is preferable to walking up, it really just means there’s much more walking up to come. I tried hard not to focus on that.

When we got to the very bottom of this village, there was a bar (mentioned in our walk notes) and we gladly entered. Betsy stepped up to the bar and ordered an espresso. I said “espresso!” with such shock that the man behind the bar thought I wanted one as well. I couldn’t believe we weren’t having alcohol to fortify us for the walk ahead.

I drank the espresso.

Then, we started up. It was hard, and at its hardest point, we stopped to catch our breath and heard something strange. A clomping behind us. Mind you, this path is barely wide enough for a person. There’s a wall on one side and another wall on the other. Nowhere to step off. We looked toward the sound.

A man on a horse coming up the path at almost a gallop. We had to get out of the way and the only way to do that was for us to gallop up the path as well.

We’re back in our place now, having some wine and talking about moving on tomorrow to Sintra. We have two days of walking left. This trip has been everything we had hoped it would be, and more.

-Kim