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 4 – Azambuja and Porto de Muge: From the ridiculous to the sublime

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Monday August 31 – The observant among you will note the lack of a running total of our distance travelled on this Caminho. This is because we didn’t walk today; Jane may be a trooper but she’s not stoopid, and was worried that her cough was developing into a chest infection. We both thought it was worth checking in at a local pharmacy rather than risking finding out during a walk – in 30°C heat and constant sunshine – that we’d taken on too much. So, much as we relished the prospect of leaving the fairly ghastly Hotel Ouro, we hung fire so that we could visit a pharmacy. (To be fair to the hotel, the old-fashioned bathroom did deliver a decent shower once one had stepped into the bath, and the towels were of a decent size and fluffiness.)

The breakfast arrangement was to pick up a voucher at the reception which gave us a meal at the snack bar next door. It was not a generous selection, but there was some fruit, some pastries and a coffee machine, which set us the poser: did we want milk with coffee (bottom left), or coffee with milk (top right)?

Milk with coffee appeared to deliver the nearest to a flat white; ChatGPT tells me that “garoto” is an understood Portuguese term for a small coffee with milk. The sooner this country gets to grips with the idea of a flat white, the better, I say. That and Earl Grey tea.

After the rudimentary breakfast, we went for a walk into town, and discovered that Azambuja is rather a nice place – by and large well-maintained and apparently interested in making a favourable impression on visitors. There are two pharmacies, and the first one – Da Silva, a large, modern and impressive place – dispensed something to help Jane with the cough she’s been struggling with.

To get to the main street, one passes the bull ring

which is still actively in use, having (according to ChatGPT) hosted a Corrida as recently as May this year. (They don’t kill the bull in the ring, but that doesn’t mean that the outcome is usually in the bull’s best interests, by the way.)

The main drag is handsome

and there are some attractive buildings,

as well as some clearly with both a history and charm.

but our interest (pharmacy aside) was principally the church, which rated not only an icon on our personalised online map, but also a mention in Brierley. The exterior is plain enough

and features a pillory outside. Inside, it’s quite sumptuous

with a very ornate altar piece built around a mulit-tiered Eucharistic throne which, as any fule kno, is an Iberian Baroque special – an elevated platform on which the monstrance is displayed for public adoration.

The walls are extravagantly and completely tiled

with panels featuring the Stations of the Cross.

There wasn’t however, anywhere we could see that offered us a selo – a stamp for our pilgrim passports. Outside the church was an azulejo

which is very much in line with the town’s pedigree, if that’s the word, in bull fighting and horse riding. Generally, efforts have been made to keep the place looking cheerful

although some pieces are beginning to suffer.

As midday approached, we checked out of the hotel, whose receptionist told us about the taxi rank outside the station, so we hied ourselves thither – to see the sole taxi drive away as we approached. We had arranged with today’s accommodation that we would get there between 12.30 and 1pm, so we needed transport. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I whistled up my Uber app and found that there was a driver just six minutes away who was prepared to take us on to Porto de Muge. (You see, Guy – we can do the Uber thing, just choose not to almost all of the time 😉.)

I’m typically oblivious of anything in my surroundings not of immediate and practical concern to me, but Jane had noticed, over the preceding couple of days, that there were a lot of tomatoes strewn around the streets, like this, for example.

As we made our way to the station, we noticed several large lorries go by

presumably headed for the Sugal tomato paste factory down the road. And as we rode towards Porto de Muge in our Uber, we saw the extent of the tomato crops around here, which is huge – stretching to the horizon on both sides of the road in places, and (strangely to our eyes) being grown without supports. Apparently they are specific thicker-skinned varieties which grow to a certain size, ripen at roughly the same time, and can be mechanically harvested.

So, Marcio Emanuel delivered us to the door of the Quinta da Marchanta, whose staff had been very proactively in contact already during the day. A more extreme contrast between two places couldn’t easily be found – in the Ouro Hotel, the receptionist could hardly be bothered to put down her pastry to check us in, but here, we were greeted and shown round by the lovely Kim. Although the restaurant here is normally closed on a Monday, they had arranged for us to take a pilgrim’s lunch laid on specially for us, and provided us with a sandwich for supper; because we are planning to leave very early tomorrow to try to avoid the worst of the heat of the day they will provide an early breakfast for us; and, best of all, there’s a dedicated tea station, with kettle and

Twinings finest Earl Grey tea! There couldn’t be a better demonstration of the pedigree of this excellent place as far as I’m concerned (Ouro Hotel’s breakfast couldn’t even muster English Breakfast tea – pah!).

After our lunch, as we were walking round and admiring the place, who should turn up but the three Aussie (Tasmanian) peregrinos we’d seen en route to Azambuja. Jerry is the chap’s name; he’s there with his missus and friend.

The Quinta is well worth looking round; very attractively laid out, both outside

and in.

Our room has an extensive balcony overlooking the complex and we were able to completely relax for the rest of the day. This is the sort of place that makes us wish we had more than one night here. But, sadly, we don’t. We have to get to Santarém tomorrow, which is (we are told) about 16km away, and the forecast temperature is once again likely to climb to 30°C in the afternoon, hence our desire to leave betimes. We are hopeful that Jane’s cold and cough will have improved to the point where four or five hours walking (unrelieved, sad to say, by any coffee stops) can be contemplated; also that what I fear is a burgeoning cold that I’m now developing won’t pose a problem. We’ll see. Beyond tomorrow, the temperatures forecast are brutal, rising to 41°C (that’s 106°F in old money) and continuing in the thirties thereafter. When we walked the Camino Francés, we managed to cope with such temperatures by starting very early, and maybe we’ll be able to do so again. Or maybe we will continue with the Uber strategy. Stay tuned over the next days to find out.

Day 3 – Vila Franca de Xira to Azambuja: cool, then hot

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Sunday 30 August 2026 – Today’s distance: 17.84km. Total so far: 59.27km

Today’s walk was never likely to be one for great inspiration, consisting largely, as it did, of following the railway north on a variety of walking surfaces. Jane was feeling somewhat better than yesterday, although not yet fully recovered, so we set out for another day, headed for Azambja, about 18km away. However, there was one departure from the norm of the previous days: it was cloudy and cool!

Indeed, we felt some drops of light rain on our faces as we walked, and there was reason to think that it had rained a bit recently.

We rejoined the Caminho

and carried on following the copious, variously staged and helpful waymarks that we passed on the way.

As I’ve mentioned before, our route runs concurrently, for the moment at least, with the Caminho de Fatima, which had some formal milestones dedicated to it,

but we also saw some guerilla activity from the Santiago camp, which made us grin.

The daubed yellow arrow is a significant presence on the other Caminos we’ve travelled as well as the formal markers; it was good to see it here, too.

The route was fairly dull – simple trudging along the various roads and paths – and the surroundings, by and large, were fairly industrial still.

We passed under a bridge which had a couple of mysteries attached to it: a simple cross, with the Portuguese for “faith” scribbled at its base;

and a stencilled sign next to it.

We didn’t realise it at the time, but it translates as “Pilgrims of the wheel bend but do not break”, a reference to those who undertake the Caminho on two wheels instead of two feet. In a strong (albeit at the time undetected) morphic resonance, just a short while before we saw this emblem, we’d been passed by a large bunch of cyclists

who lifted our spirits by, almost to a man, greeting us with “Bom Caminho”, having, I suppose, spotted our cockleshells. It was a lovely moment, and the sign of a slowly increasing recognition of the Caminho and us peregrinos.

The industrial landscape included what seems to be a storage yard for stackable container-based site offices

and a bus graveyard.

but in the spaces between stations on the railway, we began to see increasing signs that we were moving into a more rural environment. For example, there were aestivating snails in the roadside grasses

some actual livestock, the first, I think, that we’ve seen since departing Lisbon,

and, on the outskirts of a village, some allotments.

The village in question bade us welcome

and gave us hope that we might get a bit of secular uplift in the form of a coffee somewhere. No such luck, however – at 1030 on a Sunday morning, everything was closed and there weren’t any of local population to meet (bar one lass out running who greeted us cheerfully enough). What we did see, though, was another group of pilgrims, who were gathering themselves having, one assumes, taken some rest.  We were also in need of rest by this stage, and the town at least obligingly provided a convenient place for that,

although the view from it was not particularly bucolic.

Whilst we were there, the other pelegrino group came by and we established that they had started on the same day as we had, and were headed, like us, for Azambuja today. The chap we spoke to was Australian and was wearing a kilt, which could well be a very practical choice, given the warm weather.

As we exited the Vila Franca area, the landscape took another step towards the rural, and one could definitely get a sense of moving out into “the countryside”.

The next town also provided a place for us to take a bit of a rest.

Whilst we were there, another group of hikers came in and took their rest at a neighbouring table. I think they were a family group – four of them, likely parents and their two daughters – but they were kitted out with heavier gear than we were, so may well have been taking all their stuff with them. They weren’t Anglophone, so we didn’t get into conversation, but exchanged a cheery “Bom Caminho” as we left; another piece of evidence for increasing presence of peregrinos.

The town we were in, Vila Nova da Rainha, was pretty substantial,

but, like Vala do Carregado before it, was dead quiet. I was quite surprised that somewhere as substantial boasted just the one café, and that was closed, so we simply made our way through it. It clearly had a significant wartime miltary history, as shown by various exhibits as we passed.

Our route from there to our final destination lay clear before us – a strada bianca!, 

and the sun had come out by this stage so it was beginning to get quite hot. The forecast was for the temperature to be in the upper 20s, but we were out in the open and it felt somewhat hotter than that. We trudged on to the next station along the line, and decided that we should take a rest in the shade. The only seats in the shade were on the central platform and for a moment it looked like we were going to have to clamber up a non-trivial number of steps to get across, and then away from, that central platform; by this stage, that seemed like it would be sodding hard work. However, mirabile dictu, the station’s lifts were operational! (This is the exception from all the station lifts we’ve tried so far for the last couple of days). So we gladly availed ourselves of this unexpected benison and had a few more minutes of rest in the shade before carrying on.

Rather than go back on the rather dull dirt road we’d been on, we decided to cut over to the main road that led directly to the hotel, in the hope that there might be a shady side. There wasn’t, but at least it was a different kind of dull as we completed the last few kilometres to our hotel. One significant – and very noisy – piece of industrial kit we passed (belonging to Sugal, the producers of tomato concentrate and paste)

with its gleaming pipework and immaculate towers, made me wonder: do they employ someone with a mop and bucket to keep the pipework and all the other bits tidy? Because if they don’t, this is how they end up.

Anyway, this sort of philosophical musing almost overcame the dullness of toiling along the main road, until we caught sight of our hotel in the distance.

It’s the Ouro Hotel part of the “Black Bear” service station setup, behind the actual pumps

and its signage, as far as we are concerned, was inaccurate, as the restaurant was closed. Werl, it’s Sunday, innit? Our reception was somewhat lacklustre – it seems a shame to intrude on the privacy of these places – but our bags had arrived and our (spacious but basic) room was available, provided we didn’t mind hoiking our bags up a couple of flights of stairs. It’s an odd place, basically an overnight stop for business travellers I suppose, rather like the ones we’ve stayed at on previous nights, only without the mod cons and nowhere near so nice (luckily we’d packed a travel kettle). The reception décor is a bit bizarre

(that crystal lump in the corner is real!) and there’s a zero gravity massage chair

with a sign saying “for management use only”.

I had a comedy moment when I went into the snack bar and asked the lady behind the counter for some milk (which we needed for a cup of tea, of course). It took quite a while and lots of sign language to get across the idea that I wanted just cold milk; no, not hot; no, not with coffee. Anyway, I came away with enough for several cups of tea, and, apart from venturing back to the snack bar for erm, a snack, we retired for the rest of the day to plan for the forthcoming hikes.

While the weather has been really quite warm for the last couple of days, the area is shortly due for a heatwave, with temperatures forecast to rise as far as the 35-39°C range. With a couple of exceptions, we haven’t got any serious uphill work to do during the hot weather, but will still have to plan our days carefully, with very early starts – and if necessary, make use of a taxi or a train. We’re not proud – we want to enjoy ourselves, not kill ourselves. On that basis, it’s worth your while to keep an eye on these pages to see how we got on, particularly if schadenfreude is your thing. If the posts suddenly stop, then the weather will have got the better of me. But until then, I’ll do my best to keep you updated.

Day 2 – Santa Iria to Vila Franca de Xira. Another hot one.

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Saturday 29 August 2026 – Today’s distance: 21.90. Total so far: 41.43km

After her sterling efforts to walk from Lisbon despite her heavy cold, Jane had immediately fallen asleep after our arrival in Santa Iria yesterday, and continued to sleep reasonably well through the night. So we were both well rested in the morning, and Jane, although not yet well, felt sufficiently recovered to decide to take on the day’s walk. We took breakfast at the hotel – a decent spread – and set out at around 0840 into a day of bright sunshine, with temperatures of around 28°C forecast. We retraced our steps to the entrance to the boardwalk we’d walked on yesterday

and the fact that it was a weekend became very clear, with many people walking and cycling along in an “I’m taking exercise” kind of a way, rather than a “I’m walking to work” way.

As yesterday, the inland side of the boardwalk was an area of considerable industrial exploitation

but one feels well isolated. It’s a pleasant walk, and more so because the temperature hadn’t really climbed by this stage. We came to the end of the boardwalk, and entered a different park, one which stretched all the way to and past our destination for the day, Vila Franca de Xira.

Notably, the notice showed the first waymark we’d seen for a long while to the Caminho de Santiago (which is concurrent with another, the Caminho de Fatima, all the way to Santarém. The Camino de Fatima is a network of pilgrimage routes to the Sanctuary of Fatima, a sacred and popular pilgrimage place in Portugal, a small town 130 km north of Lisbon and 200 km south of Porto). From here on in, we saw regular and reliable waymarks for the Caminho de Santiago.

We also saw a less formal waymark – a cockleshell hanging on a bridge.

The shell – Coquille St, Jacques in French – is a symbol of the Apostle we British, courtesy of the translators of the Authorized Version, call St. James. You remember, from reading our first Camino blog, of course you do, that his name in Hebrew is nearer Jacob; Iago is the Spanish equivalent of of Jacob, so Santiago = St. James.

Anyhoo…

Ever since we left the industrial outskirts of central Lisbon, we’ve been benefiting from the development work of the riparian land beside the Tagus: Parque das Nações → Parque Papa Francisco → Ciclopedonal bridge over the Trancão → Percurso Ribeirinho de Loures, the long boardwalk over marshland. Now we entered the Parque Linear Ribeirinho do Estuário do Tejo; similar idea, but different underfoot (or bicycle tyre).

Delightfully, as well as yet more flamingoes, we saw a couple of Spoonbills.

Although not feverish, Jane was not feeling her best, and so we took a rest stop as soon as it presented itself after about 4km, at a place called Porto de Abrigo.

They didn’t seem particularly glad to see us but still took some money off us for a cold drink and a lukewarm coffee. We pressed on after a while, and the day began to warm up.

This was a stretch of the dreaded strada bianca, which is potentially very dull to walk along in the heat of the sun. However, in Italy, we were basically walking south, so had the sun in our faces; here we were walking north, with the sun behind us, which made it less oppressive.

And so we entered the Parque Linear Ribeirinho do Estuário do Tejo, which was another of the series of parks stretching north beside he Tagus from Lisbon. At first it was not so attractive, as it went past a wasteland.

Next on our walk was this.

The Baden-Powell Square. The reason for the name became clear soon, as this was right by the headquarters of the local scout group. There was another curio beside our route.

This is the mould they use for creating those tetrapod concrete constructions one sees, typically on beaches, as something to make the lives of any invaders just that bit more tricky. Then we were back on boardwalk,

This included a place for people to be able to sit and watch the local birdlife, of which there was plenty, including more flamingoes.

To folow the Caminho trail, we left the boardwalk to join a more conventional dirt track

with the inviting possibility of a coffee stop dangled in front of us.

The track led eventually to what looked like it might be the local jet fighter dealership,

but was actually the Aviation Museum at the next town, Alverca.

Apparently, Alverca has strong links to the aviation industry and this museum is part of a network of museums across the country dedicated to Portugal’s aviation history.

By this stage, Jane was flagging somewhat and so we needed to find a coffee stop. We flirted with the café at the station, but eventually settled for one in the town.

While Jane rested, I went off to a large Continente supermarket just down the road, in search for Earl Grey Tea. ChatGPT told me that this chain stocked it, and I had high hopes of finding Twinings finest Earl Grey there. Actually, what they had was Liptons. but, you know, any port in a storm and all that. So I bought rather too many boxes of it and we spent some jovial moments back in the café trying to find places to stuff these teabags. Then we carried on.

Alverca is a pleasant enough town, with places under trees for people to sit in the shade

and we saw that the fashion for patterns in the pavements is not limited to Lisbon.

We’d taken something of a detour from the official Caminho track in order to find the coffee stop, so our route onwards, to rejoin is a little further along, was along the main roads. At one stage, if you’d asked how it was going, I’d have replied

“OK so far”.

The walk along the road wasn’t particularly pleasant, but we didn’t actually get run over by any of the traffic, and we did pass an amazingly long pipeline going uphill

or possibly downhill, to a very industrial-looking cement works.

Eventually, we turned off the main road and entered another, quieter, town called Alhandra.

Jane, not in the best of moods, it must be said, was less than amused at my wondering where the famous Moorish palace was. Alhandra is a pleasant place

with some quirky bits that I didn’t fully understand

but mainly it led to a long shared pedestrian-and-bicycle track. This had various bits of artwork beside it

one of which I was intrigued to note included, in the background, some graffiti.

The reason for this became a little clearer when Jane pointed out the name of the artist

whose Insta name appears to be @vile_graffiti, which I find rather amusing.

At one stage the unrelenting sun gave way to a shady stretch, something we were both grateful for by this stage,

and I wondered what the little construction was on the right. It turned out to be a barbecue oven

which appeared to be being used by some guys fishing nearby,

presumably for their Saturday picnic.

We were passed by a couple of cyclists shortly thereafter, who greeted us with a cheery “Buen Camino” – the first people to have recognised what we’re doing since a chap outside the cathedral in Lisbon.

Looking more closely

I realised that one of them was sporting a cockleshell, as we were on our backpacks, and so she recognised us as being fellow peregrinos.

We reached the border of Vila Franca de Xira

at the same point as one got a view along the river to the town’s quite impressive bridge

but we still had a way to go to the town – and indeed thence a further couple of kilometres to our hotel. Jane told me that she was really in need of a rest somewhere in the shade, and so when we turned a corner to see

this rather pleasant little bar, it was a nice moment among the heat and toil of the day. It was very lively, with seemingly a number of the village locals all sitting round outside nattering to each other. I treated myself to a beer, which was so good I had to have another one, and then we moved off on our final push towards our hotel. First, we had to pass through the town’s municipal gardens, from which one could get a view of its rather lovely train station.


We could see our hotel in the distance from the road,

so when we eventually reached it

it was a great relief. Our room featured a kettle so we immediately got a chance to test the Liptons Earl Grey. I can report that it’s perfectly fine – not Twinings, but not bad. Jane was supposed to have sampled it, too, but she was too busy being asleep to do that. It had really been another tough day for her, poor love, and we can only hope that the worst of this cold has passed by the morrow.

She did recover enough for us to go down to the restaurant for a bite to eat; it was a buffet supper, and quite decent food, including the chance to have a decent salad with some vegetables, which our diet has been rather short of lately. And that was it for the day – we really weren’t up for explaoring the town, so headed back to our room to relax before bedtime.

The morrow holds more of the same – a trail that doesn’t stray too far from the banks of the Tagus and takes us to Azambjua. Garmin promises that it’s “only” 18.5km, but the sun will be shining and the temperature will be similar to today’s (I saw a thermometer outside the pharmacy in Alverca reading 31°C, but then it might just have been the pharmacists trying to drum up business by making people feel faint). So, we’ll take a checkpointon how Jane’s feeling and embark on the day accordingly. Check back later to see what we eventually got up to.