title: Stone and Water: Walking the Spiritual Variant of the Camino Portuguese
author: Mr Roy Uprichard
description: Roy Uprichard was born in Belfast, and as a mature student graduated from Queens University with a BA Hons in Politics and Sociology and an MSSc in Irish Political Studies. Then, for the next twenty four years, he lectured in Further Education, working with young adults with learning difficulties. In 2010, in a partially successful assault on middle-age spread, he trekked part of the Annapurna circuit in Nepal. In the summer of 2012, he discovered the Camino Frances, walking the final sections from Sarria. That Autumn he walked the Camino Portuguese from Valenca, and on his retirement in 2014, returned to walk the entire Camino Frances, recorded in his Travel Memoir, Restless Hearts. He has since walked St Cuthberts Way in Northumbria and in August 2016, the Camino Portuguese from Porto, taking the extraordinary Spiritual Variant option, the Stone and Water route through hidden Galicia. He lives in North Down with his wife and hopes to continue walking and writing. In the interests of privacy, he has changed the names and nationalities of most pilgrims met during the summer of 2016. A walk through hidden Galicia on the trail of Saints and Scholars. Also By Roy Uprichard: Restless Hearts Walking the Camino de Santiago An emotional and spiritual journey across Spain. In this evocative mix of Travel Writing and Memoir, an Anglican fallen out of love with the Church finds himself drawn to walk the Camino de Santiago, where, deeply moved by encounters with other restless hearts, he begins to find his way again. Some of the 5 Star reviews of Restless Hearts on Amazon: I recommend this without hesitation. Packed with details and poetry, it will lift your soul. This beautiful book invites the reader to join in the author's journeys, both physical and spiritual. Would recommend to anyone wanting to get an insight into the Camino both physically and emotionally. Enjoy. Fantastic book for anybody who has, or indeed hasn't experienced the Camino. You feel as if you too are walking with him, bathed in the sunlight of the experience. The immediate challenges and experiences of the Camino trigger the author's memories of long forgotten incidents so that we have walked through many different layers of history by the time we reach our destination at Santiago de Compostella.
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  # Benita
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### H. Rider Haggard
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### NOTES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  It may interest readers of this story to know that its author
  
  
  believes it to have a certain foundation in fact.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  It was said about five-and-twenty or thirty years ago that an
  
  
  adventurous trader, hearing from some natives in the territory
  
  
  that lies at the back of Quilimane, the legend of a great treasure
  
  
  buried in or about the sixteenth century by a party of Portuguese
  
  
  who were afterwards massacred, as a last resource attempted its
  
  
  discovery by the help of a mesmerist. According to this history
  
  
  the child who was used as a subject in the experiment, when in a
  
  
  state of trance, detailed the adventures and death of the unhappy
  
  
  Portuguese men and women, two of whom leapt from the point of a
  
  
  high rock into the Zambesi. Although he knew no tongue but
  
  
  English, this clairvoyant child is declared to have repeated in
  
  
  Portuguese the p