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 32 – Carminha to Vila Nova de Cerveira: Flat out easier

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Monday 28 September 2026 – Accuweather was still mentioning the possibility of thunderstorms in the morning, so we didn’t rush to leave, although of course we still needed to get our bags ready to be collected by 8am. The first struggle of the day was having a shower. Our hotel is called Design&Wine, and it has fallen down on both of those things: no white port (wine); and the bloody shower in our bathrooom (design). The whole point of design, surely, is to make something easily usable, and whoever designed the shower fitment needs a good talking-to on that point.

It really shouldn’t be necessary to include instructions for something that needs to be used with  a good degree of precision first thing in the morning.

Ridiculous!

Anyway, we managed to get ourselves showered and dressed and down for breakfast, which was a good meal, and then we relaxed for a while before setting out at about 10.30. We actually discovered that we had a choice of route. Our destination, like our start, bordered the river Minho. The formal Caminho route, as shown on our online map, led steeply up away from the river at a place called Lanhelas and followed a very wiggly path to Vila Nova de Cerveira: total distance, 15km. Looking at the map that Garmin Connect uses to plot its routes, and cross-checking with the Brierley book, showed us that there was a newish path that had been created that led all the way along the river bank between the towns – 13km and no steep uphill! Unsurprisingly, we opted for the latter.

As we departed, the weather looked rather grey

and we hoped, as we went along, that the weather that would be arriving 

would be more from the right hand side of the picture than the left. Spoiler alert: it was. 

We were part of a small knot of pilgrims making a start, and one of them had arranged her stuff in a way that  would have driven me mad if I’d had to carry it.

Look, I know it’s none of my business, but muttering about fellow pilgrims is part of the Camino experience. I mean, another thing: performative use of walking poles, like we saw in Vila Praia de Âncora:

four people, all able-bodied, on perfectly flat level ground, using walking poles. Apart from poncily announcing to the world, “Look! I am a Pilgrim!”, I can’t see any reason why those people were clicking their way along the prom.

Anyhoo…

We passed a chapel, Nossa Senhora da Ajuda

and crossed the railway at a level crossing, literally as the alarm sounded and the barriers came down, separating us from the group of pilgrims just behind us.

The train that came by was one of just two trains that passed in the four hours we were walking today; it’s not a busy line.

To start with, our route was simply along the road

which was not too bad, as the margin for pedestrians was quite wide. It took us to and through a neighbouring town, Seixas, which had several things to recommend it, not least of which was an interesting pastelaria called Dona Rabanada.

This turned out to be rather lovely; rabanada is basically the Portuguese name for French toast, and this pastelaria did a huge variety.

There were many points of interest in the town: a church dedicated to São Bento

with lovely painted ceilings above nave and altar;

something that looked a bit castley,

up on a terrace that gave us a decent view over the area;

a naked espigueiro;

a wind rose;

an extraordinary building, a palacete from 1911 and now a hotel, the Villa Idalina;

an unusually pointy parish church;

our very own tunnel under the railway to get back towards the river;

some attractive corners;

and the first of many pleasant riparian scenes.

In front of us was a pilgrim who obligingly gave me something more to mutter about.

Again, none of my bloody business, but I’m of the generation who think of tattoos as being the hallmarks of sailors and thugs.

Seixas gave way to Lanhelas and the Diverging Of The Ways:

off to the right – the formal Coastal route of the Caminho Português (and a steep uphill section); straight on, along the river, the “ecopista”. This is a smooth, well-constructed path, which leads past various facilities that have been set up, such as bicycle stands and picnic areas

exercise parks and fishermen’s storage cabins,

and more scenes of riparian delight.

There was a section which took us temporarily back along the road, but basically the path wound alongside the river all the way to our destination.

We got flagged down by one owner of a cabin who flattered Jane into accepting a selo from him, and who was then mightily impressed by the fact that we had started in Lisbon and had the stamps to prove it,

and we saw a farmer harvesting corn,

which gave us a bit of an insight into how it’s done.

Just outside Vila Nova de Cerveira is the rather aspirationally-named Mota Beach.

We spent a bit of time blundering about the outskirts of the town exploring whether a bar there was open (it wasn’t: closed Mondays) and then made our way past a couple of bizarre artworks,

a mural which likely has some local significance but is a closed book for visitors,

and the remains of a 17th-century fortress.

(Parenthetical note: I thought it might be interesting to fly the drone over the fortess to see what it looked like from the air. I consulted my Portuguese drone map and, guess what?

the Castela is just inside a restricted area which our accommodation is just outside. Rats!)

Anyhoo: we found the way to our accommodation, the Quinta de São Roque.

We have plenty of experience of turning up at overnight accommodation places to find them locked and deserted. This one, however, was different: it was open – and deserted. We could see our bags had arrived, which is always a comfort, so we dropped off our backpacks and found the nearest place that could offer us sustenance, a pastelaria just down the road. The variety of snacks on offer was fairly scant, but they had coffee, beer and friendly service, so we settled down to wait. We fell to chatting with a couple of Californian ladies also at the pastelaria, and it turned out that they were also waiting to check in at the same place. We went back some time after the official check-in time to find it still deserted, but eventually a lass called Ana turned up and checked us – and the two other couples waiting – in and showed us our room. The Quinta is a large place, full of charisma and traditional furnishings (but a bit short of plug-in points, you know how these things go).

Our room is lovely, old-fashioned and has the most wonderful mosaic in the bathroom floor.

There’s a sizeable garden with an espigueiro to match

and, as Jane found out, some persimmon trees with ripe fruit waiting to be picked and eaten.

If we want to take advantage of the breakfast here, we will have another relatively late departure. The temperature of the day is not a matter of concern, but there are impending wind and rain warnings which are; we hope we’ll be able to get to our destination before things get too blustery. We will head to Valença, where we have a rest day. Again, we could walk the formal Caminho route, with hills, or walk by the river – slightly longer, but a lot flatter. Guess which one we’ll take…..

 

 

Day 31 – Vila Praia de Âcora to Caminha: Short and sweet

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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.

 

 

Day 30 – Viana do Castelo to Âncora: Another good day

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Saturday 26 September 2026 – The staff at the Chocolate Factory hotel has asked us to nominate a breakfast time, so we’d asked for 7.30am. We turned up on time (of course) and were served breakfast on a large tray. It included pretty much all the things we like for breakfast – fruit, yoghurt, bread rolls, the normal kind of things that one finds in a Portuguese hotel breakfast. There was pain au chocolat, of course, and chocolate cake, and pancakes with chocolate sauce, so we left pretty well chocolated breakfasted, into a steady stream of pilgrims:

not a huge crowd, but more than just the odd one or two.

Our first target was to get inside the cathedral to get the photos of which we’d been robbed the previous evening. We got there and saw that the door was, indeed, open, so we went inside….

to find that scaffolding surrounded quite a lot of the interior! There was a side chapel

which included St. James,

so we made the most of that, and left. As we passed the Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Agonia

(our lady the agony aunt?), Jane noticed that the route we were on – which we’d kind of blundered along, looking at yellow arrow waymarks and following the crowd – was not the route shown on our online map, so we blundered about some more to get us back on our track. It would seem that there are several slight variants of the route, and none of them are at all significant, it’s just that we like to know exactly where we are and where we’re headed.

Where we were headed took us past a rather serendipitous alignment of a fountain, a church and the Basilica,

and onwards past what we take to be a quarry;

it’s not usual, in our experience, to find them by the side of a normal road. Then we left tarmac for a while

past an offering which might have been for pilgrims

or maybe dog owners exercising their pets? We also found our first all-stone espigueiro,

which is an example of things being preserved for historical and cultural reasons; this being somewhat in contrast to this scene, which kind of sums up a very Portuguese landscape:

an abandoned house right beside a brand new building site.

We weren’t sure about the actual length of the walk today, but reckoned it would be at least 16km, with, it seemed, the first coffee stop at about half way. Eight kilometres is quite a long way to walk first thing without some kind of caffeine injection, so when, at around the 5km mark, we saw this advert

we decided it must be worth a diversion, as we had (just about) made the minimum qualifying distance. And it was. It was a delightful place – good coffee, excellent service, well-organised and obviously popular with the locals. I was all for staying for a second coffee, but we had to move on, really.

Shortly after leaving the café, we came up behind a couple of pilgrims, and I wish I’d been swift enough to take a picture: one with a full backpack, the other with almost no discernable bag at all. We all turned a corner to find a steep bit and the backpack chap dropped back. We exchanged a rueful comment and it turned out that (a) he was a Brit and (b) he needed an excuse not to carry on chatting with the lady he’d been talking to as we saw them. It turned out that she was Chinese and their conversation was entirely through Google translate, which must have been very difficult; so Bob dropped back and walked with us while the Chinese lady got out of range, as it were. We passed various scenes as we walked and talked

and, to be honest, mainly listened to Bob. He was a decent chap, came from West Runton in Norfolk (where I’d spent two holidays 60 years ago), but he talked too much and walked too slowly for me; if I am forced to amble, my back starts hurting. We passed a wonderful, if eccentric, sculpture garden,

a cross with votive offerings from passing pilgrims,

and a generator that looked like Darth Vader.

In the end, I got a bit fed up with his slow pace and walked on a bit ahead, only to catch up with an Australian group and fall into conversation with them. It was all very pleasant, and definitely part of the Camino experience, but when we reached the halfway house café, which, at 10km along the road was a further qualifying distance, the break for coffee made for a break in the grouping; we chatted to another couple at the café, who had been on the same Elevador ride down from Santa Luzia yesterday as us. Jane and I seemed to need less time to rest and so got away slightly before everyone else so that, really for the first time today, we had the trail to ourselves, which was lovely. I was so glad to get back to some solitude that I entirely forgot to take any photos of the café, which was another well-organised place, or the various people we’d been chatting to, which is a bad omission on my part. However, the walking and talking, which was nice, and the solitude afterwards, which was blissful, made me realise that we have a dissonance in our approach to these walks; we like to walk by ourselves, but we also like to have the opportunities for coffee stops. And you can’t have coffee stops without pilgrims.

The next few kilometres were very pleasant;

quiet, not too bad underfoot except for a couple of rocky patches when we left tarmac or cobbles, and with a few things to look at as we passed.

At the 14.5km mark, though, we had a hill to get over; not too much ascent – about 75 metres, but quite steep, and rocky in places.

It wasn’t all hard work, though, and there were some opportunities to use taking a photo as an excuse to have a bit of a breather: this dovecote, for example;

and this example of Morning Glory cimbing a grapevine.

The uphill section ended with one steeper passage,

with, on the wall there, an azulejo which seemed to say “are you mad, or something?”

and more steps made this something of a testing part of the walk,

not that the gradient seemed to be too much for a cyclist who came past.

We made it to the top, which was approximately marked by a cross, once again with votive offerings around and on it

and, of course, then had the benefit of a lovely view over the surroundings.

We could have taken a coffee before the climb, but We Were Strong and decided that we should have a coffee as a reward; shortly after we started down there was another place to stop,

with a great terrace

and some bizarre decor touches,

all overseen with charm and efficiency by a chap who looked disconcertingly like Gareth Southgate.

He was obviously a good manager, too.

Under way again, we soon could see our destination, Âncora, in the distance

and the road led down into the town

past, in one place, an unusually decorated house;

I think that literally all the roof tiles I’ve seen except these have been terracotta coloured.

It wasn’t just a case of walking straight down the road into town and to our hotel; the Caminho trail veered off the road past this unusual cross,

a rather cute chapel,

and an attractive garden/rest area.

We crossed a stream via an old bridge

and eventually emerged into Vila Praia de Âncora, which is handsome enough, if a bit faded in places.

The main square has an attractive church, the Capela de Nossa Senhora da Bonança,

which has beautfully painted ceilings above both altar

and nave.

Jane got a selo from this church, and then we set out to find the tourist office for another selo. This involved crossing the railway, which literally runs through the middle of the town.

This led us to the beach, which has a long prom (tiddly om pom pom)

with the tourist office at one end.

Selo duly obtained, we headed for our hotel, the Meira.

By this stage we’d covered 21km – somewhat longer than we’d expected – and so were glad that, for I think the first time this trip, we’d arrived after check-in time and so were certain that our room would be available. Once in the room, our main priority was, of course, a cup of tea and a bit of a relax. After a while I went out with the drone because – joy of joys – this is a place where flying is not restricted. My main object of interest was a small fort that is right on the beach, not too far from our hotel. It looked an interesting shape and I wanted to be able to capture it in an aerial photo.

It looks small and cute, and perhaps a bit artificial, but actually is part of a chain of coastal fortifications built to strengthen the defence of the Minho area and northern Portuguese coast against Spain. Although it is often associated with the Portuguese Restoration War (1640–1668), the evidence indicates that the fort itself was not yet built in 1668. It was probably constructed around 1700 during the reign of Pedro II. The defensive forts along this coast included, inter alia, the Forte da Areosa, near Viana do Castelo, whence we’d departed earlier; it was that fort which gave the Castelo name to Viana. Truly, it’s the fort that counts.

Anyhoo, I did a video as well, of course.

Unusually for us, we had dinner as opposed to a late lunch, mainly because we have a very short walk in front of us tomorrow and so can be very relaxed about when we start. The hotel restaurant has closed, as it’s after the season, but the receptionist recommended a nearby restaurant called Fonte Nova, so we went there. We had a decent meal – the local version of fish and chips, which is very tasty and comes with rice and salad as well – served at a great pace by the manager who was running the place single-handedly and very affably. We did note one apparently quite forceful exchange, though, with someone (blue shirt) who came in for a short while.

Money changed hands and blue shirt left; we have no idea what was going on there.

Today has been another really enjoyable day on the Caminho; great weather (the brutal heat of previous days has cooled to low-to-mid 20s), some chatting, some solitude, some drone flying. As I say, the morrow should be quite relaxed, as we only have about 9km to cover to get to Carminha, our next destination. However, for the first time since we left Lisbon, there is the prospect of some rain – not too much we hope. So we’ll keep an eye on the forecast and plan our day accordingly. Stay tuned to find out if we got soaked, why don’t you?