Friday 28 August 2026 – And so our long trek starts. The official distance of the Caminho is 630km, and the chunk we addressed today was allegedly around the 18km mark. The alarm was set for 0600 so that we could take an early breakfast at the hotel. We managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, but it had become clear during yesterday that Jane was coming down with a cold, poor love. This didn’t help her night’s sleep, but anyway we got on with our morning routine as best we could, got our bags down to reception so that they could be collected and sent on to our destination today – Santa Iria de Azoia, a town up the Tagus River from Lisbon – and got some breakfast inside us. We had been burning through our stock of Twinings finest Earl Grey at an alarming rate and indeed had used half of it just in our time in Lisbon. My confidence in being able to find replacements in the shops had been entirely misplaced thus far – frankly, you’re lucky to find even English Breakfast in the supermarkets of Lisbon. Carlos, bless him, had given us some supplies, which were keeping us going; I just hope we can find some before too long.

We officially started our Caminho at 0845 in lovely sunny weather in front of the Cathedral

and cast about for a Caminho waymark which no less a source than John Brierley had told us was at the foot of some steps.  We eventually found it – just a small sticker on a lamppost, which is a bit anticlimactic.

We found another one not too far away

but these were the only waymarks we found for several kilometres. Had we been reliant on them to find our route, we would have been buggered; but of course we had our invaluable online map from Walk The Camino, so were never in danger of losing our way. Even with that we had to make a few ad hoc adjustments in the face of roadworks and other construction efforts going on.

One can understand why Porto is a more popular starting place than Lisbon for people doing a Caminho; the walk out through the capital’s largely industrial and almost entirely scruffy suburbs is not particularly uplifting to the spirit. This was pretty much in line with our expectations, so we simply got on with finding our way along our route, which bordered railway and port areas.

It wasn’t all grime and gloom. Among the tatty and grimy buildings there were a few things worth noting as we passed:  architectural touches;

an area where Fado was clearly a popular art form;

some large format street art;

some buildings which were once handsome or might once again be;

and generally an attempt to cheer things up a bit.

Our route took us past the very imposing Pantheon building

and also a particular artwork that Jane wanted to see (and make sure I’d seen, too).

The koala is one of several animals created aound Lisbon by Bordalo II, a  Portuguese street artist and self-described artivist. This installation is a great example of his typical work – large installations and murals made from recycled trash, with the intention of highlighting waste and over-consumption in our world today. It has a 3D element to it, as one can see when looking more from the side.

More of Bordalo later.

Other things we passed: a bizarre open shopfront;

a Romanesque arch leading counterintuitively to a view of gasometers;

and several imposing buildings which, despite appearances, are flourishing businesses.

We’d gone over 7km before we spotted our next Caminho waymark,

and it became clear at this point that we were moving out of the scruffy, industrialised suburbs, into an area of considerable redevelopment.

We were entering the Parque das Nações, the neighbourhood that emerged around the site, next to the River Tagus, where the 1998 World Expo was held. It was a complete change from the very industrial and rather shabby areas we’d been walking through thus far. Importantly, as we’d done 8km by this stage, there was a coffee stop, which suited us very nicely; I was feeling the need for a rest, and Jane, fighting her cold, was particularly ready to take a seat and some refreshment.

Coffee and pastries fortified us to carry on, and we headed for something that Jane, again, particularly wanted to see and to make sure I saw it, too. You approach it in a kind of “do you know what it is yet?” kind of a way

and eventually, it becomes clear that it’s another imposing piece by Bordalo II.

Isn’t it fabuous? An Iberian lynx, made entirely from rubbish and recycled materials – hard hats, lawn mowers, dustbin lids, you name it. An extraordinary piece of work.

There were other artworks on display around the Parque, such as this “paddling pool”,

and we came across another Caminho waymark – just the fourth since we started, and really not a very impressive attempt at one, either.

In the background one can see the Vasco de Gama Bridge, which at the time of its construction (just in time for the 1998 Expo) was the longest bridge in Europe at 17km.

We approached it along the waterfront, where the suspension part is most prominent.

(If you look carefully under the span on the left, you can see a small blue blob – that was pretty much our destination for the day, Santa Iria de Azoia.

Close to, the bridge is, unsusprisingly, pretty impressive

It’s officially some 17km long, if you include all the access roads, but the part that crosses the Tagus is about 10km long. From the river bank near the bridge, you can look back at another Expo landmark – the Vasco de Gama Tower.

The tower is 160m tall, and features the highest viewpoint in Portugal; the Myriad hotel is a later addition which opened in 2012. We actually ignored one possible attraction at the Parque, the gondola ride which runs long the waterfront towards the tower. But if we’d done that, we’d have missed the impact that the Lynx made, and so I think we made the correct decision not to ride it.

Vasco de Gama, as you probably already know, was a mariner, explorer and nobleman around the late 1400s and early 1500s. His discovery of the first direct maritime route between Europe and India via the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean from Malindi in Kenya to Kozhikode was to open up European exploration of, and commerce with, India, and is considered a landmark event and a turning point in world history. Carlos had given us to believe that he was a thug and not really an expert navigator, that his brother did all the hard work. It’s certainly true that he was capable of extreme violence if given the mandate for it; but he really was the master of a multi-vessel expedition fleet; yes, there were more experienced navigators in the fleet, but Vasco de Gama made some bold decisions which enabled his achievements and secured his place in history. His brother was involved with one of his expeditions, but wasn’t, as far as I can work out, the real navigation brains of the family.

Shortly after the bridge there’s a Caminho divergence point. The traditional route veers off left and goes a way inland, but recently a more direct route has opened up which stays beside the waters of the Tagus. Since doing the old route would add some 8km to our journey, we’d decided that we’d go for the riverside version. I’m glad we did, and not just for the shorter walk.

At first, I feared that we were in for another dose of the dreaded strada bianca which had made quite a lot of our Via Francigena route less than rewarding when we walked it in Italy a year ago

but when the path veered left, the new route took us over a new bridge, the Ponte Ciclopedonal do Trancão, which is a combined cycle and footbridge (you’ll have guessed that from the name, of course).

This leads to a boardwalk; I’d had a look at Google Maps and formed an impression of what this would be like that was entirely wrong. It’s not just a few planks laid down to make things easy for walkers (or even Walkers), but a significant piece of infrastructure called the Percurso Ribeirinho de Loures.

I might add that even though this is now recognised as a formal Caminho route, there’s no indication on any of the signage that this is so.

However, it’s a pleasant way of crossing the Tagus’s riparian marshland. Apart from anything else, there are occasional points where one can take a breather out of the worst of the direct sunshine, which Jane was particularly pleased to find.

The other thing (or things) we were particularly pleased to find were

flamingoes. Jane had heard that there were flamingoes by the river, but Carlos had rather given us to think we’d missed flamingo season.  He was emphatically wrong on that; there were hundreds of ’em

along with a host of other water-loving birds.

The walkway connects a number of parks along the banks of the Tagus, and is pleasant walking even in the heat of the direct sun; one feels out amidst nature, which is a Good Thing. There’s a lot of industrial stuff going on inland

(there’s that blue blob we first saw as we approached the bridge), but one feels somewhat isolated from it.

What was not such a Good Thing, though, was our uncertainty about exactly how to get off the blessed boardwalk. We knew that we had to cross a motorway and a railway to get to our hotel, but it was entirely not clear how we were supposed to do this. Google proposed a route that was sheer fantasy involving a bridge that simply isn’t there; Garmin proposed another one but that would add distance. In the end, and after only one fruitless excursion into the marshlands, we found the way out to the road network that led under the motorway and over the railway, and

there was our hotel! So we made haste and arrived there – just as the restaurant was closing for lunch. Never mind; after 19.5km, we were more interested in a mug of tea, which we managed to organise forthwith.

Jane was really ready to rest and relax at that point, but I took it upon myself to mount one more mission; the continuing search for stocks of Earl Grey. There was a Lidl next door to the hotel, so I confidently strode thither, sure that I would return with bags of teabags to replenish our store. I was in for a surprise; there was none! What is a man to do when an established store doesn’t have the right tea, eh? Never mind: the hunt goes on.

We return to the boardwalk for tomorrow’s route, which will take us further up the river to Vila Franca de Xira. Opinions differ about the length of the walk, which might be 17km or it might be 21. We don’t know right now. What does seem clear is that we will be largely without coffee stops, which is a shame, but I expect we’ll survive. Tune back in soon to find out, why don’t you?