Sunday 27 September 2026 – Today’s walk was a short one because yesterday’s was shorter than it might have been. The “official” – Brierley – stage runs from Viana do Castelo to Caminha, which Brierley says is 27km but which according to my calculations would be 31km. I’m not saying we can’t cope with 31km in a day; I am saying that I’m not going to if there’s an alternative which allows us a little more time to take in the surroundings rather than just yomping the distance. That’s why we only had 21km to cover yesterday, which got us to Vila Praia de Âncora, and why we had only 10km to cover today to get us to Caminha, basically by walking along the coast.
Our weather prospects today were a little less pleasing than the low-20s and sunshine that we’ve enjoyed for the previous few days; there was actual rain forecast. Although we didn’t expect it to be anything more than a few drops, we still made sure that rain jackets were easily to hand in our backpacks. As we left Vila Praia de Âncora,
passing the Anchor Fort
and a fishermen’s monument
which reads ”Tribute from the People of Vila Praia de Âncora to their fishermen and their families, to the hardships at sea and the waiting on land, to the tears of grief and to the bread brought back with every return”, the weather was, indeed rather grey,
but the rain obligingly held off for our walk, bar a couple of drops. Vila Praia de Âncora is very much a seasidey holiday sort of place, and there are various leisure activities promoted near the shore; pétanque,
watching the tide roll in,
or walking the path by the shore, when all you have to do is dodge the cyclists, e-scooter maniacs and
pilgrims.
They even cater for swingers here.
Of course, there are the nods to the Caminho as well.
A short distance along the path is another of these chapels-with-a-front-porch (Romanesque style) that we’ve seen quite a few of over the last days.
This one is the The Santo Isidoro Chapel, from the 19th century. According to the info board outside it, the chapel holds, inter alia, a status of St. James, but Isidoor Open?
Nope. So we’ll never know. Jane peered through the keyhole
but couldn’t see any Santiago statue. The waymarking is a little confusing in places
which might result from the confluence at this point of the Litoral and Coastal routes. It makes no practical difference – whichever you choose basically parallels the coast all the way to Caminha. Looking north, one can see Spain.
There’s the small matter of the river Minho between us and that hill, and at Caminha it’s possible to take a ferry across; some pilgrims do that, but our route was going to keep us on the Portuguese side for a while yet. Looking to the headland to the left, one can make out a fort.
This one is on a pensinsula, Ponta da Ruiva, strategically placed to keep an eye on those Spanish bastards in case they try to invade again; presumably it’s another part of the chain of the fortifications including Âncora and Viana de Castelo.
About half way along the walk is the town of Moledo
and one can opt either to carry on the Litoral path, or to duck under the railway
and continue on the Coastal path. This is what we decided to do in the (vindicated) hope that there would be fewer pilgrims and the certainty that there would be fewer cyclists and scooterists.
Unsurprisingly, given the density of pilgrimage going by, there are entrepreneurial pop-ups;
this one, shoreline side, offered a variety of tat jewellery and other creations and one could get a selo here, too; and there was one on the road side, also.
We stopped for a coffee (OK, yes, pastries, too) in Moledo, and walking the road side took us past a few vignettes,
including this rather fine mansion, which is typically Portuguese in that it’s utterly impossible to tell whether it’s lived in or abandoned. Eventually road side and shoreline side coincide (see what I did there?) and there’s just a long straight road into Caminha.
Caminha, then. It might seem that its name is related to Caminho, similar to the Touguinha/Touginho we came across some days ago. But it isn’t. The place name Caminha is centuries older than its association with the pilgrim route. Caminha/Caminho have different etymological origins and the similarity is entirely coincidental. The Romans had a military presence here, and the settlement grew as a fishing village before King Afonso III built a new castle and fortifications around it in the 13th century. Caminha later prospered as a trading and shipbuilding town, and its old walled centre still shows that medieval layout. A place with history, then. It’s quite handsome as you walk in
though there is the usual sprinkling of scruffiness which may or may not indicate an abandoned building. This building was certainly not abandoned
A statue pays tribute to its fishing history.
I captured the photo below as a grab shot as we walked along;
I’m not sure if the lady is a peregrina walking her pony, or whether she’s just dressed like one. You decide.
The historic centre is small but well-formed
To the left in the photo above, the Clock Tower (Torre do Relógio) is the last remaining structure of the 13th-century town walls, built under Afonso III. Originally a defensive gate-tower guarding the southern entrance to the citadel, it only became known as the “clock tower” after a clock was installed in 1673. It stands guard over a square with plenty of opportunities for rest, relaxation and refreshment.
We looked in at our hotel, the invitingly-named Design and Wine Hotel, but we were a couple of hours too early for them to have a room available, so we wandered the town for a bit and then had lunch at the hotel.
Walking through the arch in the clockhouse takes one into the main historic street.
You can tell it’s historic because it’s very grey. Off to the side we saw a vintage, rather than historic sight;
an old Riley 4/72, a car from the ’60s. This one had left-hand drive and so was clearly a naturalised automotive citizen, but as we’d walked in we’d been passed by a MG Midget in a fetching shade of blue which was a right-hand drive (i.e. UK spec) car. Coincidence? Or maybe there’s something of a collector living around these here parts?
At the bottom of this old street is the main church, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Assunção, and it’s a very impressive piece of masonry.
It stands inside the old walls where a smaller Romanesque chapel once stood. It was built between 1488 and 1556 entirely of local granite, with the typical northern-Portuguese three-nave plan, and wonderful 16th-century polychrome tiles above the arcades of the central nave.
The elaborately carved main portal, with Manueline stonework, is one of its highlights.
The cars parked outside it demonstrated that there was a mass going on, but it ended as we watched and so we were able to go inside for a short while after it had emptied.
The ceiling of the main nave is an impressive piece of carving,
and a side chapel is dedicated to seafarers
as you can tell from the ships suspended in it.
We were politely ushered out after a few minutes of our gawping, and so we headed back towards the hotel and lunch, via another church, the Igreja da Misericórdia,
which has – oh, goodness me! – a Eucharistic Throne!
The ceiling over the altar is very striking,
and the organ has some horizontal pipes,
and, I think, a pigeon nesting in it.
We had a decent lunch at the hotel, though, rather disappointingly for a hotel bearing its name, it didn’t have any white port in stock, so Jane had to make do with a tawny port & tonic, which was OK but not as good as the real thing. The food was good but it became clear that there were staff pressures; our waitress had to deal single-handedly with an entire dining room and the receptionist appeared to be rather harrassed. We eventually got into our room, which looks spiffy but closer examination shows it to be rather fading and in need of tarting up a bit. We’d seen all the things that were (a) worth seeing and (b) open, so relaxed for the rest of the day. As the afternoon came to a close, it was lovely to see and hear the sparrows and other small birds as they came and went and twittered about in the creeper festooning the walls of the hotel which face an inner garden. They were swooping right outside our window, presumably making preparations for roosting for the night.
We have a shortish – 15km – walk to do tomorrow, and Accuweather is making rumbling noises about thunderstorms in the morning. So we will probably make a later departure, once again with rain jackets close at hand. Come back in due course to find out if we got struck by lightning.