Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Day 7 – Azinhaga and Vila Nova da Barquinha

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Thursday 3 September 2026 – A very quick update, as not much happened. That’s not to say the day was not without event, but we didn’t do any walking. Had we done so, we would have needed to cover 16.6km, which would probably have taken us five hours. According to Accuweather, even if we’d started out at 7am, we’d have been pretty uncomfortable by the end.

So I investigated what Uber could do for us. Bearing in mind that we were a long way from anywhere of any pith or moment, I was a little surprised to find that a car could be with us within a quarter of an hour. After a very basic breakfast – toast and tea, basically – we lazed most of the morning away and added a pin to Helena’s map to show where we were from. Assuming that she hasn’t spent many nights stabbing random pins into her large map of the world, Helena has hosted a huge number of visitors from every corner of the globe (except, of course, Antarctica, since no-one actually lives there). We took our leave of the delightful Helena at 11am.

We waited outside her house

for a couple of minutes for our Uber ride to turn up, and then Campos took us swiftly, and with equal disdain for both speed limits and small talk, along the road to Vila Nova da Barquinha. When we got into his car at 11am, the temperature was 30°C and when we got out some twenty minutes later it had risen to 32°C. Some of the road he drove was also the Caminho route and it became clear how unrewarding a walk it would have been.

We actually passed some peregrinos;

my hat is off to them for their courage, if not their judgement.

Having arrived in Vila Nova da Barquinha, we had about 90 minutes to pass before we knew, courtesy of a message exchange with our next accommodation, that someone would be on reception to check us in. Fortunately, just by the hotel is a park

and in that park there is a café,

so we could rest in the shade and stay hydrated. Actually by 1pm, the temperature had become uncomfortable even for just sitting still in the shade and so we hied ourselves across the road to the River House Hotel. It was locked, but there appeared to be someone visible inside through the window, and after we peered in theatrically for a few minutes there was a click and the entrance was unlocked, allowing us through into a blissfully cool reception area, where a lady peregrino was checking in, having very clearly done a fair bit of walking in the heat. Then it was our turn ad we were efficiently checked in, stamped, and handed the keys to our room.

The hotel is small and modern, and, as is so often the case with this combination, the rooms are well-organised. And, importantly, air-conditioned. We knew about one restaurant in the village, Tasquinha Adélia, and Google told us it was open until 2.30, so we hightailed it over there in the hope that they could fit us in for lunch. At first, it wasn’t certain, as the place was very busy

and the staff seemed to have their hands more than full. But they methodically worked at placing some ladies who had arrived just before us (because we vacillated; our fault) and a family who arrived after us, presumably having booked, and then we had our table. Like Peitaças yesterday evening, the menu was basic and the food was good, honest and copious. The place itself though, as you can see from the photo, is very eclectically decorated, and it had a nice buzz of conversation going.

By about 3.30, we’d finished our food and so headed back to the hotel, stepping out into really stinging hot temperatures. We had hoped to buy some milk at somewhere Google described as a grocery, but that was another of Google’s fantasy moments – it was (a) a clothes shop and (b) closed. The route from it back to the hotel led past an intriguing building

and we wondered what kind of museum it was, apart from a sealed closed one, of course. Apparently it has a variety of unusual exhibits, but it’s labelled as “temporarily closed” so we’ll never find out. Given its name, one might expect it rather to be permanently sealed.

Vila Nova da Barquinha has a couple of things worth looking at – a sculpture park and some street art. We went for a stroll down by the river

and saw some of the sculptures, but it was dusk by that stage. We’ll potter around tomorrow before we depart for Tomar and take some photos in good light. One engaging item we found comprised a couple of rotating disks, and one of them carries a compelling illusion.

So: plans for tomorrow, then. The coming weather prospect is not encouraging for long distance walking.

The Caminho route to Tomar is 23km, and involves some uphill work; to walk six or seven hours in what are expected to be hot and humid conditions seems to us to be a poor choice; so we will take a ride again tomorrow. Tomar, though, has an interesting history and one or two particularly significant buildings to explore. A rest day is on our schedule, and so I hope there will be plenty to entertain you from our time there.

Day 6 – Walking around Santarém

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Wednesday 2 September 2026 – Today is the first day of a 3-day heat wave, with forecast temperatures rising to 35°C today, 40°C tomorrow and 36°C in Friday. Our bags go to Azinhaga today, and that would be a 27km walk – probably seven hours on foot, with just the one possible coffee stop shown on the map, at about the halfway point. In any case the wisdom of undertaking such a walk is questionable; given that Jane has yet to get back to full health, it made the Uber decision an easy one. So: no Caminho hiking today. But Santarém is an interesting city, and so we walked around it before riding to Azinhaga.

Our hotel room had been comfortable, but the breakfast provided was not one that I would expect from a hotel that parades a four-star rating on its roof. The selection of fruit was meagre and of breakfast cereals dismal. We made up for the shortfall with toast and pastries. One consolation was that as one waited the interminable time for the toast to become, well, toasted, there was at least a delightful cabaret going on outside the window.

The hotel is a couple of kilometres outside downtown Sentarém, and the walk in took us past the bull ring, which is clearly a thriving entertainment centre.

Jane had worked out a list of Things To See, which included a number of churches, which we like to look into. The first church, the Edifício e Igreja da Misericórdia, an attractive edifice,

was closed for maintenance. So we carried on. Our next destination was the cathedral,

which we fully expected to be open, and it was. The building it’s in is a combined church and museum, and the official route through takes you first into the church and then the museum. As one would expect, the church’s interior is very impressive. It’s opulently appointed,

and its ceiling is remarkable.

Many areas are lavishly tiled, for example behind the altar,

although appearances may be deceptive. In other, more accessible, places, we could see that some of the decorative work is painted or inlaid stonework, rather than tiles.

The ceiling above the altar is another impressive piece of artwork

and there are ornate chapels around the sides of the nave.

The museum has, as one would expect, many artefacts to display, including this wooden crucifix, the Christ of Mont’Iraz, dating from the 13th century

which is unusual, as it shows Christ with one arm detached from the cross. it is said that Christ crucified released one arm from the cross to address a shepherd begging for divine intercession and in Catholic theology, this “Cross of Forgiveness” symbolizes Christ reaching down in mercy towards humanity.

My interest was mainly in some beautiful azulejos,

and other lovely tiling work in the refectory area as well as elsewhere.

Outside the cathedral is the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Piedade.

We looked in, and it would seem to be an interesting interior, but Something Was Going On

which we think was probably choir practice, as the standard of singing was really quite high.

Also outside the Cathedral is a café, so we availed ourselves of its offerings, marvelling at the existence of a Benetton shop nearby. Who knew that Benetton was still A Thing? Not I, for sure.

The central area of Santarém is a cheerful place

with some very decorative tiling for street names.

(more on the Portas do Sol later) as well as some other quirks, like this mosaic David

and this delightfully-named street – Pastry Shop Passage!

The Igreja de Santa Maria de Marvila has a very decorative Manueline portal,

and is apparently the most tiled church in Portugal.

It was originally a mosque, but became a church under the reconquista* of Portugal in the late 12th century. Some of its Moorish architecture remains, for example in the shape of this doorway,

but the church has had extensive makeovers, not least in the Manueline style, and has tiles over practically every surface – some 65,000 in total we were told!

The roof over the altar is a lovely piece of decorative vaulting.

There was one more church to look into (and get a selo from) – the Igreja da Graça.

Again, this has a beautiful Manueline portal

and it has a huge, though barely elaborated, interior.

It also has, unusually, a 20-segment Rose Window,

which is the emblem the church uses in its selo.

Outside of the churches, there were a couple of things that were must-see, such as this Bordalo II Hoopoe,

a part of the city walls of interest to peregrinos, the St. James Gate (Santiago Gate),

and a couple of viewpoints exploiting the city’s elevated position. These could be found in the environs of the gardens of the Portas do Sol. The walk there took us past a couple of artworks. The first was a reverse of something I’ve noted a few times in Portugal; you catch a glimpse of something that might be artwork on the outside of a building, only to find that it’s actually decaying plaster creating pattern. This work, though, was the other way round; I thought at first it was decaying plaster, but actually it’s a drawing,

with some kind of Knights Templar overtones, though what the two fingered salute is about is beyond me. The other artwork was similarly obscure in meaning.

The views afforded over the river Targus are lovely. From outside the Portas do Sol, one can see the old city walls

and from the gardens, looking over the city walls, you get sweeping views along the river.

The gardens were attractive and very pleasant – not least because they feature a café!

There are a couple of statues, one to commemorate the soldiers of the First World War

and one of Afonso Henriques.

King Afonso I was the first king of Portugal, from 1139 until his death on 1185. He achieved Portugal’s independence, establishing a new kingdom and doubling its area with the Reconquista, an objective that he pursued until his death.

The gardens also have an aviary, mainly populated by budgerigars,

although there are a couple of other species there as well – this is a cockatiel.

By this stage it was getting hot and so we thought we would head for Azinhaga. Summoning an Uber took literally seconds, and we had an interesting and engaging ride with Yasim, originally from Pakistan and in Portugal via Dubai, to the Casa de Azzancha Alojamento Local in Azinhaga. We had a few moments of dread, as we’d been deposited in, frankly, the middle of nowhere in very hot sunshine in front of somewhere that appeared to be closed. But in a few moments we were hailed from a passing car, and the owner, the delightful Helena, parked up, let us in, and explained how things would work, bidding us make ourselves welcome. It’s a lovely place

and so we helped ourselves gratefully to the kettle and the laundry facilities.

Azinhaga is not a big place, but it does have a restaurant, Peitaças. Life being how it is, it’s at exactly the opposite end of the village from our accommodation, some 20 minutes walk away. The walk over gave us the chance to see the various parts of what’s a nicely maintained village, overall: the newer houses;

the older ones;

the cute ones;

and the rather lovely idea of growing plants out of specially-created holes in the pavements.

The restaurant was pretty much as we’d imagined it: very basic, with a limited food and drinks menu, but a friendly reception, good, honest food and great value. We both had picanha steaks – a rump cut – and chips, and it was excellently tasty. Afterwards, we walked back to the Casa through the gloaming

accompanied by the traditional sound track one finds in these places.

It’s been a good, relaxed day, a sharp contrast to how it would have been if we’d taken on the hike. Tomorrow’s forecast is, as I said earlier, for 40°C heat and so there’s no way we’re walking in that. Our destination, which is another small village, seems to have one or two things that will repay exploring, so doing that is plan A, assuming we can find a cab driver willing to come out to this neck of the woods. Check back in later to find out…

* The Reconquista is one of the terms used to describe the historical process spanning almost eight hundred years, from the 8th to the 15th centuries, during which the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula progressively sought to recover the territories occupied by the Muslim Moorish kingdoms.

Day 5 – Walking again: Porto de Muge to Santarém. Tomatoes!

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Tuesday 1 September 2026 – Today’s distance: 19.3km. Total so far: 78.57km

Of course, the total so far is no longer any kind of accurate assessment of the total distance of the Caminho we’re walking, since we rode some of yesterday’s route rather than walking it. So the total so far will simply reflect what walking we’ve actually done. It will drift further away from a total Caminho distance over the coming days, and possibly weeks, as the weather dictates whether (see what I did there?) we should walk on any given day.

This morning was a good example of weather dictating. We knew, or at least were persuaded by reading the Accuweather website, that the forecast temperature for our destination today, Santarém, would be 30°C. Bearing in mind that the last part of the route is an uphill pull – the first of this Caminho – we wanted to avoid having to face this in the heat. So we decided that we should start early, as soon after 7am as we could.

The lovely chef at the Quinta da Marchanta made sure we had some breakfast ready at 7. It was a touch rudimentary, but nonetheless we appreciated her efforts to make sure we had some food, unlock the reception so we could leave our bags and provide us with a selo – we wouldn’t want to have passed a lovely place such as this without marking it in our pilgrim’s passports.

Before 0730, then, we were on the road, on a trail which would basically run parallel with the River Tagus all the way to our destination. Before too long, the path led us up on to a levée

which we walked along for quite a way, whilst it was a good path. We guessed that the levée must be a bulwark against river floods, hence there being boats apparently high and dry on the river (right-hand in the photo) side.

I was a bit puzzled by the presence of some dwellings on the same side as the boats; if it’s going to flood, aren’t they at risk? Anyway, we carried on as long as the path on top of the levée would let us. We got a good view of the fields on the left-hand (non-river) side as we walked, and the crops there included grape vines

and (later) peppers

and squash.

After a while the path descended back to the road, but for practically the whole of our walk the levée was a feature on our right-hand side. At first, it provided some welcome shade, which gradually dimished as the sun rose

but actually the first two-thirds of our walk were often in some kind of shade and certainly in cool temperatures. Every so often, we went up on the bank to see what was on the other side; in one case it was horses, who clearly thought I’d gone there to feed them.

Another interesting feature on the bank was a pilgims’ swing.

It was lovely to see it there, although there was no clue as to who had provided it. Around about the same time, we caught our first glimpse in the distance of today’s destination, Santarém, a hilltop city.

The main thing that provided interest and distraction for us was the agriculture happening on the left-hand side as we walked. The main crop was tomatoes. This is hardly surprising, as Sentarém is the heart of the Ribatejo region and the historical epicenter of Portugal’s massive industrial processed tomato industry*. We’d seen some evidence of this in the massive Sugal plant we’d passed on the way into Azambuja and the fields we’d glimpsed from our ride to Quinta da Marchanta. But for the majority of the rest of our walk, it was impossible to ignore the vast scale of what was going on. We were lucky to get some insight, as we went, into how things work, as it was clearly Tomato Harvesting Season.

Many fields had already been stripped of their crop

leaving a few uncollected specimens at the edges of fields. Many fields were ripening, pending being harvested.

Anyone who is interested in growing tomatoes in the UK will immediately notice several critical differences between the typical UK crop that’s tenderly nurtured, often in greenhouses, as it climbs and ripens, delivering fruit progressively over several weeks – if the buggers ever ripen in our pathetic sunshine, that is – and what we see here. The crop growing here stays low to the ground, ripens all at the same time and is easy, nay designed to be easy, to harvest in bulk. The resulting fruit are sweeter, have thicker skins (so that they can survive being close to the ground) and are destined exclusively for mass exploitation for industrial processing to pastes and concentrates used in, again, principally industrial, cooking.

Over the course of our walk, we saw several different facets of what is a critical part of the economy of the area. In a way, it’s massively centralised, with major processors, such as Sugal, producing the final products, whilst also being distributed, in a highly choreographed way, among smaller concerns who are taking their own individual harvests to feed into the maw of the big companies.

We’d seen harvested fields as well as those yet to be cropped. And we saw a couple of harvests actually going on. There seems to be a tomato-specific version of the Combine Harvester, which hoiks up the plants (and any fruit lying loose), shakes them around and spits the tomatoes (only the red ones, though) into a trailer pulled by an accompanying tractor.

These guys were making slow progress, but slightly further on was an operation that seemed to be going much more smoothly.

One trailer was nearly full, and behind it was another, waiting to become part of the process.

In some fields, we could clearly see the irrigation pipes that had been laid when the plants were plugged into the fields, back between March and May (staggered, to ensure a steady flow of ripe fruit). The plants are laid as plugs (rather than seeds) and the (miles and miles of) piping laid at the same time.

Like Combine Havesters, the harvesting machines seem not to be able to reach right to the edge of the fields, so there’s a manual process of picking edge growth and slinging it into the path of the machines that will come.

The track we were on became busier and busier with lorries taking the filled trailers off to be processed.

There was one quiet moment when we passed one chap who had climbed on to his trailer and appeared to be jettisoning unripe tomatoes.

Presumably the optical sorting of the harvester, designed to select only red tomatoes, had let him down.

The track we’d walked through all of this was a single strada bianca, something that we’d found really dull when we had to trudge along them in Italy. Today’s 13km of walking along similar dirt roads was very interesting and engaging as we tried to work out what was going on, and what the story was with fields like this

or this.

These, it seems, are harvested fields which have been cleared and prepared for sowing of cover crops for the winter, typically rye or legumes, to maintain the soil quality ahead of the next year’s crop rotation (maybe to corn or rice). The photo above appeared to be some kind of brassica.

Eventually we emerged onto a tarmac road on the outskirts of Santarém. We found a Mystery Object there.

Closer examination

showed that it was a historical flood marker, which explains the importance of the levée whose shade we had enjoyed for so much of our walk. There were clues that we were close to a major river.

By this stage – 13km – we were theoretically just three or four kilometres from our hotel, which was this side of the centre of Santarém. Google suggested a route (from which we could actually see our hotel)

which we followed and which turned out to be the same sort of fantasy as the exit it had suggested from the Santa Iria boardwalk. We didn’t know this at the time, so started along it, only to find this.

Channelling my inner contrarian, I decided we should ignore that, as Google asserted that it was only a few hundred feet to a road that would take us to our hotel.

Hah!

It was a bit of a climb, and then….

That was a message from the developers for the land (who appear to be building a hospital) to say “We don’t give a bugger about your contrariness: You. Shall. Not. Pass.”

So we meekly went back down and joined a (longer) road route. We were passed by a couple of peregrinos

who were doing the Fatima route and appeared to be worried that they’d missed a turn; we were able to reassure them that they were on the right route. Photographs don’t easily show gradient, but we were walking up a reasonably stiff incline and the temperature had risen perceptibly, so when we passed a lavadoiro which offered a seat in the shade

we stopped for a bit of a rest. We’d done 17.5km without a break by this stage, quite a lot of which was in the cooler part of the day, but this seemed a satisfactory distance to have covered without so much as a coffee or a pastel de nata, particularly as Jane was still recovering (nicely, as she does these things) from her cough. (Fingers crossed, I might have escaped catching this cold.)

We completed the drag up the hill to the town, past a statue celebrating the local version of bulfighting, which appears to involve unarmed men trying to grab the bull, literally, by the horns as part of subduing it,

and arrived at our hotel

slightly before our bags did.

The walk, therefore, had involved the first uphill work of any pith or moment of our Caminho so far

(spot the little bump where we’d hiked up the Google Fantasy track) and we were glad to have been able to cope with it in temperatures approaching 30°C.

The nice chap on reception found us a vacant room, despite us being a couple of hours before their official check-in time and we settled in to a spacious room, albeit one without a kettle. Luckily, the hotel could spare one, and it and our bags were available simultaneously within minutes, so we were able to have a nice cup of tea and a rest. Because we’d set out early, we’d arrived while the hotel was still serving lunch, so we took advantage of this before relaxing for the rest of the day.

Under normal circumstances, we’d have (obviously) gone out for a walk round the town, particularly as Santarém has a few Things To See. But the weather has stepped in to change the way we’re going to approach the next few days. The earler forecasts of a brutal 41°C peak have given way to one of just 37°, but even so; one of our days would be a long walk – 27km – and that kind of heat for that kind of walk could pose serious problems. So we’re going to spend the morning tomorrow exploring the town, move on by train, Uber, hook or crook to our next destination, Azinhaga, and similarly thence to the one after that, and so on whilst this heat wave passes. So the “total distance” travelled will, as I said earlier, drift away from an official Caminho distance. Come back in due course to find out more about the joys of Santarém and the Portuguese public transport infrastructure.

* This is something that has happened in our lifetimes, and not by accident. In 1957, the Portuguese government, seeking ways to address its balance of payments problems, wanted to exploit Portugal’s natural answer to California’s Central Valley. A small conglomerate of entrepreneurs drove a pivot from piecemeal production of traditional tomato variants into the massive, mechanised industry we see today – Europe’s third largest and the world’s fourth largest producer of processed tomato products.