9Tuesday 29 September 2026 – Even before we went to bed last night, it was clear that the wind was getting stronger. As we went to breakfast, strong gusts were whistling through the trees and bushes in the garden at the Quinta. It wasn’t raining, though, so we decided to get out and get walking as soon as we could after finishing our breakfast; we were out on the Caminho before 9am. As – I’m prepared to bet money on this – you probably guessed, we decided we would take the riverside, less hilly, walk to our destination, Valença, which would be around 17km away. It was a grey, blustery day,

and we were keen to get to our destination before any rain came along. Our route to the riverside led us past some of the sights of the town: some more faces on murals;

inexplicable artwork;

(this reminds me of the old weather forecasting stone joke: “stone wet: raining; stone swinging: windy; stone gone: hurricane), as well as what is quite an attractive town centre.

There’s a handsome twin-spire church, the Mother Church of the town,

and, yes, it has a Eucharistic Throne.

We had been under something of a misapprehension about these thrones, thinking that they had been banned by the Papacy. In fact, they haven’t – just that the rules about what should be displayed on top and when have been tightened. Management apologises for misleading you on that. The church also had some lovely modern stained glass.

Outside the church was yet another reminder about what lies in front of us.

As we were walking, I noticed, on a hillside, an odd protrusion,

and wasn’t sure whether it was an illusion formed by trees, or actually some kind of installation. Closer view (thank you, Samsung 30x magnification)

showed that it was, indeed, an installation, a representation of a stag. This caused Jane to wonder whether there was a link between the name of the town – Cerveira – and the French for “stag”, which is “cerf”. And indeed there is. “Cerveira” is associated with the Portuguese word “cervo”, which may have referred to a large herd of deer in the area. There’s also a complicated local legend about a King Stag and his one-to-one duel with a nobleman during the reconquista. Thus there is a huge sculpture by José Rodrigues, called “O Cervo” on the nearby Monte Encarnação.

Once we’d seen that, the stag theme became ubiquitous

Our route didn’t give us a decent view of the 17th-century Castelo de Vila Nova de Cerveira (which I couldn’t fly a drone over, you’ll remember), but we did pass near another fortification just outside the town,

the Forte de São Francisco de Lovelhe. We couldn’t easily get any closer, so had to make do with this glimpse. Going past this fort led us back down to the ecopista that we’d been on yesterday, and so we yomped along that almost all the way to Valença. We thought we’d caught the authorities out in a logical impossibility with the signage

before we realised that the cyclist in on the signpost is wearing a motorbiking helmet. Still, it’s interesting that horse and cart were forbidden on the track. There wasn’t frankly, a lot of variety. We saw a bird-watching hide,

some gleaning going on in a harvested corn field by the track (there were a lot of these),

a stand of poplars and eucalyptus

and lots of acorns on the track.

It’s the acorn-falling time of year, I guess, and the blustery wind probably encouraged a few reluctant clingers-on to let go, as well. As we left Cerveira’s municipal area and entered Valença’s we passed a noticeboard which explained that EU money contributed a large amount to create the ecopista and its surroundings.

The Valença end of the ecopista was slightly less well-maintained

though to be fair, river bank erosion was clearly an issue in this area.

Eventually we came to the end of this section of the ecopista

and there was a section of boardwalk which repaid careful attention to footwork.

In the distance we could see Valença.

The path took us over the Ponte Medieval da Veiga de Mira

where we rejoined the formal Caminho track. The reeds beside this track demonstrated how blustery it was.

The Caminho track diverged from this ecopista-type surface

and we walked into the town past some bizarre votive offerings,

and encouragement

to the convergence point where the route we’ve been on, the Coastal, meets the Central. One would have expected some signage to mark this. One would be disappointed. This is all we found, by the roundabout where they meet.

However, there’s excitement on offer in the shape of the route through the “fortaleza”.

This is Valença’s USP – an entire and intact fortified city wall. The Fortaleza de Valença is one of Portugal’s great frontier fortifications, built and extensively strengthened in the 17th and 18th centuries to defend the northern frontier along the Minho river against Spain. It has a double enclosure surrounding the old town, with massive walls, bastions, gateways and deep defensive works. It remains remarkably intact and one of the things that I find really attractive is that it’s not in a restricted area for drone flying, so I might be able to get some lovely photos and/or videos of the place. My appetite has been whetted by the photo on that noticeboard.

The Caminho route into the Fortaleza is indicated by three stones

which are even older than Mick, Keef and Ronnie, but the paint job is from 2022, done by the Portuguese sculptor Dinis Ribeiro.

The Fortaleza is a really impressive piece of work.

and it leads through to the working town within,

with the inevitable tourist things to be seen,

as well as artworks such as this carnation – a symbol of the 1974 Portuguese “carnation revolution” which overthrew 48 years of the Estado Novo dictatorship and paved the way for modern democracy in Portugal.

The fortifications stretch across two fortified enclosures, so it was about a kilometre through this historic centre to our hotel, which is a Pousada,

the Pousada de São Teotónio. Many Pousadas across Portugal are in historic buildings; this one, though, dates from the 1960s. No matter, it is posh, the bar has both white port and gin, as we found out whilst waiting for our room to become available, and it is our home for the next couple of days as we have a rest day tomorrow! Yay!

Although our room wasn’t available when we arrived, other aspects of our timing were pretty good; The rain plainly decided not to stay in Spain, and headed over our way. It started raining soon after we arrived, and became torrential later on.

So we snuggled down for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, the forecast is much cheerier, so I suspect that the obvious thing for us to do is to go for a walk.