It isn’t only us!

 Posted by LP

Be warned, this is a bit of a whine - in our 10 days of walking, there has not been one where we have not been “lost” as some point - by lost I mean, not sure if we are on the Camino path, not sure how to find our accommodation or generally confused about our location ……and it is not just us, many of our fellow walkers say they have spent lots of time looking at their phone or guide book to try and make sense of directions - as VQT noted in an earlier posting, there is more than one Portuguese Camino (Coast, Central and Litoral) and these crisscross each other and have multiple alternative routes, etc - it is simply not enough to walk north with the ocean on the left! - of course the Camino is signposted, although sometimes the signs are sketchy or non-existent - they come in a variety of styles:

Here is a home made sign to Santiago in the middle of the woods 

Here a home owner has put a Camino direction tile next to their house number

Sometimes the sign is next to a distraction, like this giant tropical fish painted on the rock

A yellow arrow pointing up (for straight ahead, not levitation) 

A tyre/tire at the side of the road painted with a yellow arrow 

On Portugal sometimes the path is painted yellow (when beside a road)

Light poles are often used for crudely painted yellow arrows 

Here is a pastoral version, the sign (arrow and clam shell) next to a wonderful flowering fuschia   

One pole with several signs for the Camino and other paths 

A pair of walking boots with the yellow pointed left for Camino and the right one painted blue for the Fatima pilgrimage (to Fatima near Lisbon)

Walking out of Vigo today the signs were in the shop windows (as here in the grocery shop window)

Arrow and clam shell painted on concrete pole 

This is the first marker we passed today, it says Santiago is less than 100 km away 

Sometimes we have a plethora of signs such as here, 2 painted arrows and the ceramic tiles of the clam shell and the yellow arrow (of course this does not make up for the times when signs are absent)

This arrow is painted on the street 

This sign cautions when the path is joining a road with traffic

For all our complaints about routes and signage, we are grateful for this marvelous opportunity 💚

⬇️⬆️➡️⬅️⤵️↙️↘️↖️↗️↔️↕️⤴️↩️↪️🔃🔀🔄