Yep, you got it, more hills and more indifferent roads and mad drivers !  What I have begun to notice is that the Camino walkers have given way to Fatima walkers.  Fatima seems to be a big thing in Portugal, and people walk from all over Portugal to visit the place.  My route took me through Fatima, where I had lunch and a snooze, and past the basilica and pilgrim centre which was moderately crowded.  I’ve been t0 Lourdes a few times, and Fatima is definitely a notch above Lourdes in its hotels and restaurants and general air.  All very swish, modern and contemporary.

If you are not familiar with Fatima and its story, then expect to come up against lots of Catholic stories and thinking which, as so often, require a sifting through judicious filtration and a healthy application of common sense if you are to get anywhere near what is really being said or meant, or come close to the reality. The Fatima story of apparitions and apocalyptic secret messages, threats of holocaust and destruction, sin and God not being happy with us and the world, the "dancing sun" which is supposed to have appeared etc. - well, they all leave me cold. And not a little annoyed that I am expected unquestioningly to believe such stuff.  Fatima and its story does seem spookily conspiratorial, secretive, and threateningly apocalyptic.  I think it's designed to make people scared and afraid of the world, the future, and of God.  What's the use of that ?   Except, perhaps, as a mechanism of control. A small detail leaves me particularly unsympathetic to the whole story.  The three children (see picture above) who apparently received the apparition of the “Lady in white” in 1917 were very young - 10, 9 and 7.  The “Lady” told two of them that they would not have long lives.  And, in 1919 and 1920, two of them duly died of the Spanish ‘flu.  I suppose the justifying narrative is that God loved them so much that he wanted to spare them this world and take them to the next ?  How cruelly capricious !  The third child spent most of her life in a convent, dying at the age of 97.  I know that in 1917 the world was embroiled in the First World War, and perhaps sensitivities were heightened as to the terrible things that were happening in the world (although Portugal was neutral during the First World War), and perhaps this led people to being open to believing all kinds of weird explanations for what was happening, and what could be done to make things better.  But, I’m afraid the Fatima story just doesn’t do it for me, and I am content to be critically agnostic about what is claimed to have taken place and to be suspiciously wary of the "messages" and "warnings" that are supposed to have been delivered to the children   And by critical, I mean that I think much of it is - well, frankly, patent nonsense.  Medugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina is another case in point.  Very strange, secretive, cult like  and pretty dubious.  But, people flock there as well.

My own reservations aside, I do recognise that people walk from all over Portugal to Fatima.  And, as with the Camino to Santiago, I am intrigued as to why they do it.  I don't think that they can all be fools and  taken in completely.  So, maybe there is something there that draws people for positive reasons ?  A wider spirituality, challenge, achievement, community. common purpose etc ? I suspect as well that there is something of Portuguese cultural pride in Fatima, something that has given modern Portugal an identity and put a part of it on the map, at least in the Catholic world, (although why they feel the need for more when they have such a wonderful discovery and navigating history in the likes of Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan et al), I do not know !  And so the Portuguese walk the Fatima Camino in their thousands..  Each to their own. Live and let live, I guess.

I bet the inhabitants of Fatima count themselves very fortunate that the story of Fatima stuck and took on a life of its own, bringing in huge numbers of pilgrims / walkers over the last 100 years and more, all needing to be fed, watered and housed.  It will be a profitable business, without which they would still be herding the sheep and the goats in the surrounding hills.  So, I don’t blame them for hanging on to what they have and to the story that underpins it.  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, I guess, would be their thinking !

I ended the day in Pombal, staying in the little lovely and classy Hotel Belem, and eating in a fish restaurant as the Portuguese watched some apparently important league football game with great relish. And then they tucked in to crab and octopus and all sorts of delightful looking crustaceans to celebrate their win, or drown their sorrows, depending on the result. The large glass of white wine I had served to me cost less than the little sachets of sardine paste that came with some bread as an amuse bouche.  1.50 euro.   I’m sure there’s a red wine I’ve had in the past called Marques de Pombal ?