In the spring of 2013, May 1st to be precise, my life began anew. I was soon to be 65 years old, was newly retired and had just moved to Portugal for the first time. I had spent the last 45 years of my life basically sitting in one office or another – the operative word here being “sitting”. Between work, driving my car, watching television and sleeping I had spent the major portion of my hours NOT being on my feet. This was about to take an unimaginable turn!
Part of the choice of moving to Portugal was to not own a car. Sounded great. No car repairs, no payments, no gas prices, no insurance. Again, this sounded great. My retirement money was going to go a lot further without the obvious and hidden expenses of owning a car. What I failed to give a lot of thought to was the fact that I still needed to get around and that the only mode of transportation available was either public or private – and by private I mean my own private feet! My pretty, pampered feet that were used to wearing “sit and look pretty” shoes and had, for many years, not walked much further than from my car to walk around a store and back to my car.
We lived in a small farming community just outside of Mortagua in Central Portugal. To get to the nearest grocery store in town was approximately 6 kilometers (nearly 3.6 miles) - each way! I would love to be able to tell a story of how I discovered a hidden strength inside me that had me practically walking on air when taking this trip, but this is certainly not how it went. What I discovered was aches and pains from muscles that I did not know I had. At one point I literally could not go up and down the steps to get into our house. Add to this the fact that it was summer and the temperature hovered right around 100 degrees and what you have is a recipe for pain. The saving grace of this walk was that it was all flat ground. I really had no choice but to carry on and work through the struggles that my body was experiencing – I had to get to the store! I made this walk three times a week for 5 months. By the end of this time it was still hard, but not as hard. Improvements were being made and my body was slowly accepting the fact that this is how it was going to be. I was definitely loving getting out and being in fresh air and sunshine every day. My aches and pains were, for the most part, gone and I was actually noticing that I was starting to look forward to our walks.
Then we moved to Gois.
Gois is situated in a river valley also in the heart of Central Portugal, built in and surrounded by mountains and hills. The river going through the village was stunning, and there was a way to walk quite a ways along the river and there was a beautiful park set up with a walking trail that we took great advantage of, but walking the same place all the time gets boring after a few times so it was time to strike out into the countryside – the very hilly countryside!
Part of the choice of moving to Portugal was to not own a car. Sounded great. No car repairs, no payments, no gas prices, no insurance. Again, this sounded great. My retirement money was going to go a lot further without the obvious and hidden expenses of owning a car. What I failed to give a lot of thought to was the fact that I still needed to get around and that the only mode of transportation available was either public or private – and by private I mean my own private feet! My pretty, pampered feet that were used to wearing “sit and look pretty” shoes and had, for many years, not walked much further than from my car to walk around a store and back to my car.
We lived in a small farming community just outside of Mortagua in Central Portugal. To get to the nearest grocery store in town was approximately 6 kilometers (nearly 3.6 miles) - each way! I would love to be able to tell a story of how I discovered a hidden strength inside me that had me practically walking on air when taking this trip, but this is certainly not how it went. What I discovered was aches and pains from muscles that I did not know I had. At one point I literally could not go up and down the steps to get into our house. Add to this the fact that it was summer and the temperature hovered right around 100 degrees and what you have is a recipe for pain. The saving grace of this walk was that it was all flat ground. I really had no choice but to carry on and work through the struggles that my body was experiencing – I had to get to the store! I made this walk three times a week for 5 months. By the end of this time it was still hard, but not as hard. Improvements were being made and my body was slowly accepting the fact that this is how it was going to be. I was definitely loving getting out and being in fresh air and sunshine every day. My aches and pains were, for the most part, gone and I was actually noticing that I was starting to look forward to our walks.
Then we moved to Gois.
Gois is situated in a river valley also in the heart of Central Portugal, built in and surrounded by mountains and hills. The river going through the village was stunning, and there was a way to walk quite a ways along the river and there was a beautiful park set up with a walking trail that we took great advantage of, but walking the same place all the time gets boring after a few times so it was time to strike out into the countryside – the very hilly countryside!