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 19 – Oliveira de Azeméis to Malaposta: Hat trick

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Tuesday 15 September 2026 – As mentioned yesterday, the relatively short distance (17km) to Malaposta and the relatively low (27°C) temperature forecast meant that we felt we could risk a relatively late start. The alarm still went off at 0600, which is relatively late, but still absolutely early in my book. The hotel provided a substantial breakfast and gave me a chance to take a photo of the magnificent azulejo on the wall.

We departed at around 0745, which gave us an insight into how come the main streets are so nice and clean,

but also reminded us that it’s difficult at times to distinguish between street art and general decay, although, in this case, I think we saw both.

It being around 8am, the roads were busy with both cars and people as the working day started. We passed one place where folk in blue overalls were exiting as well as apparently waiting to be be let in – a change of shift, I infer.

Our track led us downhill and across an unmarked level crossing, which we treated with our usual insouciance, only to hear, seconds after we’d crossed, a train go through;

so the line isn’t as deserted as I’d thought. Emerging onto the main street of the next village, Santiago de Riba-Ul, I was able to showcase another entry in my occasional catalogue of “times when marketing has failed to get the international consequences of a name right”.

The village features a Santiago Church

so we looked in,

noted the romanticised visualisation of the saint on the wall by the altar

but got a selo anyway. Almost next door to the church is the Santiago pastelaria,

so we looked in there as well, for a swift coffee.

It was quite noisy and busy with what looked like grandmothers looking after grandkids, presumably while mum went out to work; a nice cheerful atmosphere, albeit a high decibel count.

The Caminho trail took us off the tarmac onto a cobbled track

leading under an arch through which we could see an espigueiro.

Shortly after, we walked past a house with interesting architecture in the roof;

It almost looked as if, at the press of a button, the top level would quietly fold down into the lower level, leaving just a faint outline in the tiles.

The path led past an unusual plantation.

Jane identified this as Paulownia, or foxglove tree, which has attractive blue/lilac flowers. It would appear that this is being grown systematically, though on the other side of the path the eucalyptus seemed to be growing wild.

We crossed the railway again, at another informal crossing near Salgueiro.

At first blush, I identified the sign as being the body count of pelegrinos on the crossing; it is, rather, advice to cross in small groups rather than a single mass of people.

We were, at this point, on the Rua Ponte Medieval, so guess what happened next?

It’s more than just a restored medieval bridge, though. There’s a cockleshell shrine on the wall leading to the bridge,

and other small shrines built on or in the wall.

Our pilgrim, he of the authentic experience a few days ago, called them alminhas, which means “little souls”. These small monuments, found on roads, rural paths and in villages throughout Portugal, serve as places for prayers to the souls in purgatory and for the protection of pilgrims. Some alminhas feature images of saints, religious paintings, or crosses, while others are empty, with space to light candles and leave alms.

Nearby the river was a strange installation.

At first, I thought it was some kind of water pumping station, but all it appeared to be doing was to use an Archimedes Screw to lift water which then promptly fell back down again. In the end, by scrutinising the notices on it, we think that it was part of a sewage processing plant – of a design I’d never come across before.

On a hillside, we saw a large monastery, which is linked to the Igreja de São Martinho de Cucujães, and which overlooks the valley of the river we’d just crossed.

Quite soon, we came to realise that we ourselves would be climbing out of the valley;

another of the myriad occasions where, at a fork in the road, the Caminho always leads uphill. And it really was pretty steep: in the interests of keeping you accurately informed, dear reader, I used my phone’s protractor app to measure the road,

doing which I think came as a bit of a surprise to the lady walking her dog up the hill behind me. When we got to the top, we could then see directly across to the monastery church,

and could see the emblem on the side marking 2025 as a Holy Year (when St. James’s Day falls on a Sunday).

Almost all of the rest of the walk was through successive conurbations – we’re getting close to the big city of Porto, and it’s no surprise that population density rises as one approaches.

We were approaching the town of São João da Madeira, and passed some fancy houses, often adorned with some kind of art.

The pavements were not easy to walk on; they were rough and every so often there was a small pile of the tiles used in the mosaic footpaths here.

Since many of these little piles were by a rough patch where a new pipe was emerging, I guess that they’re awaiting replacement now that the pipe has been fitted; and it gave us to wonder: what’s the story with these Portuguese paths? Where do the pieces come from? How are they made? And how are the pavements laid?

Paging Google Gemini….

“Portugal’s iconic pavements with their designs using black and white stones (calçada portuguesa artistica) are a national, artisanal product sourced primarily from the limestone-rich Serras de Aire e Candeeiros region (the white ones) and volcanic basalt quarries in the islands (the black ones). The production is a hybrid process: while heavy machinery extracts and slices the raw rock, the individual 5-to-7 cm cubes are historically split by hand, and the intricate geometric mosaics are strictly laid by hand by master artisans called calceteiros. Because it takes 200 to 400 individual cubes to pave just one square meter, Portugal produces an estimated 150 million to 200 million stones annually from hundreds of thousands of tons of limestone. However, production is heavily bottlenecked by a critical shortage of labour. Due to the grueling nature of the trade, the number of active master pavers has plummeted, forcing cities to reserve this handcrafted tradition mostly for historic restoration and high-profile public squares.

“The ubiquitous, plain white sidewalks (calçada simples as opposed to artistica) found throughout every Portuguese town are made of the same domestic limestone and laid using the same manual methods as the artistic versions. The main difference lies in the sourcing of the stones: because they are strictly functional, these monochrome cubes are mass-produced and split using mechanical hydraulic presses at the quarries rather than split by hand. The installation, though, remains entirely manual. Today, this everyday white paving faces a major national backlash. Municipalities are struggling to maintain them due to the severe shortage of skilled labour. Consequently, many towns are replacing these basic white sidewalks with modern concrete or flat stone slabs, preserving hand-laid calçada exclusively for historic centres.”

So there.

São João da Madeira is a city and we spent the next several kilometres walking through it. It has an English School

and a handsome Mother Church

which we looked inside for a few seconds

but left quickly, as we thought there might be an Adoration going on. Opposite is a striking building

which I think is just a residence; but it’s nicely appointed.

We stopped in the town centre for a coffee and to watch the fountain, which is one of these which has various patterns playing across it.

It was amusing to watch the pigeons using it as a jacuzzi.

São João is also noted for having a most unusual thing: a Hat Museum.

In the 19th century, São João da Madeira grew very strongly, due in major part to the development of the hat industry there. J. Gomes de Pinho was the first empressario to establish a hat factory in 1802, but it was António José de Oliveira Júnior who would drive the local industry with his establishment in 1892 of the first fur hat factory. It would eventually become one of the major symbols of São João da Madeira’s new economy, the Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria Lda. Totally mechanized by the early 19th century, it would become the largest factory in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the 19th century.

In the early years of the 20th century the felt industry grew in Portugal, and during the 1940s the production of fur and felt production was centralized in the factories of the area, with the establishment of the Cortadoria Nacional do Pêlo, which was nationalized in 1945. In 1946, 1775 people worked in the hat-making industry in Portugal, with 1212 located in São João da Madeira.

Since we were not in a rush to beat the heat, we looked in to what we thought might be quite an intriguing place.

The receptionist, a charming lady, charged us the princely sum of €1.50 each for entry, and gave us a quick introduction to the museum. It spreads across three floors and goes through all the machinery and processes used in the creation of hats. It’s a surprisingly violent processes, requiring steam, acids, other poisonous substances and a load of pummeling to get from fur or wool to something robust that you can wear on your head. At first, the processes were manual but it became hugely mechanised and there’s a display of the many sorts of machinery that was used for the various hat-making processes.

Colouring the hats was akin to an art

and finishing them – shaping the crown and the rim – was an act of master craftmanship.

The industry had significant political clout, too. Between the late 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, workers in the hat-making industry were at the heart of a vast movement of collective organisation. They set up trade associations, workers’ newspapers,
cooperatives and mutual support networks. They took part in strikes, demonstrations and other forms of struggle, seeking better wages, fairer working hours and more dignified living conditions. Their history thus intersects with the very formation of the Portuguese labour movement.

In the main part of the building, there was a lovely display of hundreds of hats.

Seeing it made me feel like I’d walked into a painting by Magritte or similar. Across the way is a section of the museum dedicated to modern craftmanship; it was displaying work by a Dutch artist, Saar Snoek, who (a) would only work with fibre that had been sheared (rather than from an animal which was killed and skinned) and (b) treated the making of hats as art rather than couture, as you can see from the sort of remarkable creations she’d made.

Walking on from São João da Madeira took us through Arrifana (the destination for the longer stage than we were prepared to do from Albergaria, you’ll no doubt remember). It has a Mother Church (Igreja Matriz),

several handsome buildings and decorative flourishes,

(some of which had a courageous architect)

some decidedly unfancy buildings

and someone setting up in business who I believe must have come from England;

surely a local couldn’t have perpetrated this?

After Arrifana, the conurbations continued to run together into a seamless whole.

The area lacks, one might say, rural charm; but that’s what you get in the vicinity of cities, and it didn’t detract from the pleasure of walking in the knowledge that we’re making progress. Indeed, that progress was underlined as we reached Godinha and got a distance update for the remainder of our Caminho.

There’s an Interesting Church here, too.

We had toiled up a couple of reasonably substantial hills by this stage, and all we had to do was to rejoin the N1 for the last couple of kilometres to Malaposta. If you remember, I’d wondered if Malaposta was the opposite of Bemposta, through which we’d walked yesterday. On researching this, I find the answer is “no”. Bemposta translates as “Well-placed” and is not uncommon as a place name across Portugal, apparently; and Malaposta was to do with the mail service – it was the name associated with the old postal coaching system and comes from the French malle-poste.

Walking the N1 is not the most romantic part of the Caminho, I must say, although the road leads past some very abundant patches of pampas grass.

But it also runs by sights such as this burnt-out building

and something that I feel is in some ways symptomatic of what one sees in Portugal;

lots of new building going on, but things are not maintained properly and end up looking very scruffy.

Before too long, we reached our hotel,

the Pedra Bela, which is OK as a staging post on our way into Porto. The receptionist was extremely not Anglophone, and the restaurant is closed on Tuesdays, but the room seems comfortable enough and our bags had arrived OK. We drank tea and ate some of our snacks until the time that the nearest restaurant, A Roda da Lage, opened and then walked the seven minutes or so to it.

It was a good meal in slightly bizarre circumstances. It wasn’t quite clear which was the entrance; we were the only customers and so there was a lot of hovering by the nice lass who was looking after us; and a lot of food was being put on plates and taken somewhere else. But it was a good value meal and they had both G&T and Port & Tonic, which is Jane’s fave at the moment. So, inner persons fed, we tottered back to the hotel and rested up for the remainder of the day.

We have an even shorter walk tomorrow – less than 15km, to get to Grijo, our final overnight before reaching Porto, where we have a couple of rest days. The day should be warm but not unbearably so, and thus we expect to take a hotel breakfast and get under way once again in daylight rather than stumbling around in the dark. I’ll let you know how we got on in due course.

Day 18 – Albergaria-a-Velha to Oliveira de Azeméis: Nice to be walking again

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Monday 14 September 2026 – With just 20km to do today, and the temperature not forecast to go over 30°C until midday, an early start seemed to be a good way to get the best out of the walk. I set the alarm for 0500, but luckily woke up anyway at exactly 0500, as some technical hitch with my phone had rendered its alarm silent; it was doing its best, poor thing, but it was the other side of the bedroom and behind a curtain so I can’t blame it for not waking me. (Or, spookily, perhaps it did; perhaps my symbiosis with my phone is more powerful than I realise?)

Anyhoo…

I had expected to have some kind of faux-cheery interaction with one or more of the other guests of the place, but when we got down to the lounge at quarter to six, it was silent and everyone seemed to have taken their breakfasts already. So we ate what we fancied of our breakfast pack, left as promised, and were on the road at, oh goodness me, 0625. Being able to appreciate the dawn colours seems to be becoming a bit of a habit.

Before long, the road gave way to a track

and we carried on, past a Memorial to Nossa Senhora do Socorro

and on to another forestry track, where Eucalyptus once again figured strongly, although not, as far as we could tell, in a programmatic way.

The track led us eventually back on to the major N1 road at Albergaria’s new town, Albergaria-a-Nova, where we passed an albergue which gave us a useful status check on our walk.

So: we’re over half way there, then!

The N1 is not a rewarding road to walk on, as it features a lot of heavy traffic, but we trudged along, passing the occasional attractive tile work

(I hesitate to call it an azulejo, as it hasn’t much blue in it); an attractive modern church

at which Jane scored us another selo; a modern-looking lavodouro

and a place which said it was “from pilgrims for pilgrims”

but which was closed, so not much use for us pilgrims, then. For the last couple of these photos, we’d actually diverged from the N1 onto a parallel minor road. We thought we saw another misty morning scene

until the drifting smell told us that this was smoke from a fire, which, of course, we hoped was intentional. By this stage we’d done about 10km, i.e. half the day’s walking and so it was jolly well time for a coffee. There was a place back on the N1 so we cut back to it.

It was a bit transport caff-y, but we got a decent hot coffee and a chocolate salami each, which I hoped would boost my somewhat flagging energy levels (it seemed to work, by the way). Then we carried on along the N1 and rejoined the Caminho a bit further up, crossing the railway at a level crossing to do so, and then walking alongside the actual railway track for a while.

I have to say that I’m rather glad it’s a very, very minor rail route, as a passing train might have meant us making an undignified dive down the bank to avoid being flattened.

Most of the rest of the walk was on quiet roads: past an attractively decorated school in Curval;

seeing a very substantial mansion in the middle distance;

passing another, seemingly less well-used lavadouro;

and a distinctive church, the Igreja Matriz do Pinheiro da Bemposta.

Although we didn’t pass this church directly, we did walk through Pinheiro de Bemposta, which has some handsome buildings

and then reached a bridge crossing the N1.

The peregrina you can see on the bridge is actually the 86-year old Louise from Pennsylvania, who had started out very early this morning and was walking at her own steady pace. We had a quick chat with her as she rested in the outskirts of the old village of Bemposta. She would be walking a longer distance than us, a 30km stage to Arrifana; clearly made of sterner stuff than us.

The old village of Bemposta has a considerable history of which the village is proud; the handsome buildings in the short stretch of its main street are described in info boards which give a description of the distinctive characteristics of each of the buildings.

The 15th Century Casa de Bemposta

The ‘Paços do Concelho’ building used to be the headquarters of the administrative and judicial power, probably built in the 18th Century. I hasten to add that we bypassed the beer truck, even though it was open; a beer at 10am didn’t seem somehow right

The Casa do Arco. It looks disused, but houses a dwelling

The last photo is unidentified by info board, but I thought it was a handsome one.

Exiting Bemposta through the arch gave us a good view of the distant countryside

though actually a less uplifting one of the nearer landscape.

The rest of our walk was through various conurbations before got to our destination. We went down through Besteiros, with more pointy roof features

some attractive tilework

and this handsome place

with its symbolic guard cat on the lych gate.

Our track took us back perilously close to the railway again,

and down a pleasant cobbled path

where we got our first view of Oliveira de Azeméis at the top of the hill we would eventually have to climb.

The track went over a small river. On the bridge was Senhor da Ponte, Our Lord of the Bridge.

We had to cross the railway again, via a very informal route

which was pretty much at the start of the final climb towards Oliveira de Azeméis. It was a 100m ascent in about 1.5km, so not desperately steep, but the weather was hot enough by now – around 30°C – that I for one was exceedingly glad when I finally tottered to the top. We then had a short walk through the town, which is a handsome place, nicely kept tidy, with some striking buildings

touches of prettification

and a generally refined air along the main street.

Fine houses such as those above were built at the end of the 19th century by former emigrants returning with new-found wealth from Brazil; they are known as casas dos brasileiros.

Our hotel, the Hotel Dighton,

had many things to recommend it, such as air-conditioning, a room they already had available for us and a restaurant that would serve lunch until 3pm. Our bags hadn’t yet arrived, but it was anyway lovely to be able to relax for a while before going for lunch. And it was a Nice Lunch; a Very Nice Lunch. It’s a very old school, quite posh restaurant, with proper service (they’d pour one’s wine for one, if one drank wine), linen napkins, 70s-tastic music, a splendid azulejo and a chef in charge of a great open-fire grill

who assiduously attended to his grill, fanning it to keep it Just So.

He produced a wonderful grouper steak for Jane and some very succulent lamb for me, and we really enjoyed it; for me, probably the best meal I’ve had so far in Portugal – and there have been some good ones.

After lunch (and the eventual arrival of our suitcases) we thought we’d take a short walk around the town. It has a huge variety of churches, but the Mother Church is a fine building

with an impressive azulejo-surrounded portal.

Inside

there is a very substantial Eucharistic Throne.

It’s slightly odd that we keep finding these thrones when they’re something that the Papacy banned centuries ago and which we’d thought were kept largely out of sight.

Near the church is a Roman momument,

the Marco Miliário da Milha XII (12th Mile Milestone), which marked Mile 12 of the ancient Roman military road that connected Coimbra to Gaia in eastern Portugal. It was originally erected between 23 AD and 24 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, and was originally discovered in the late 18th century in the nearby parish of Ul.

Having taken a swift coffee (OK, and pastries) at a lovely confeitaria, we finished our walk by visiting the fountain at the bottom of our hotel’s street.

and then headed back to the hotel to rest and recharge for the next day.

Tomorrow’s destination is Malaposta (the opposite, we suppose of the Bemposta we visited today?) which is just 16km away – a relatively short walk on a day which is forecast to be a positively frigid 27°C. This means we can even indulge ourselves in a hotel breakfast, which should be a solid start to the day. I’ll report on it in due course.

Days 16 & 17 – To Águeda then Albergaria-a-Velha

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Sunday 13 September 2026 – As hinted in the last entry, today, being not a walking day (28km in temperatures of 35°C? What could possibly go wrong?) involved a late breakfast and then whistling up another Uber. The breakfast at Vinyl M was delivered on a tray but was remarkably good – yoghurt, bread rolls, cheese, ham, croissants and a creditable flat white coffee. Our Uber arrived a few minutes late, but delivered us swiftly to our next accommodation, the Hotel Conde d’Águeda, where the lovely Beatrice on reception not only had a room ready for us but also spent a decent amount of time talking about the various sights we could see around the town. Brierley hardly gives Águeda an entire sentence, but we were actually really looking forward to walking round to see the various bits of street art that Jane’s researches had told us were to be found. We had a cup of tea, first, of course, which enabled us to plan our next moves in the light (and heat) of the heat wave which was due to last a couple of days more. The A/B decision was: (A) walk around in 35-degree heat to see the artworks we knew about now, then get an early night to start walking at 0600 the next day; or (B) sod that for a game of soldiers, rest up for the day, see the artworks in cool of the next morning and get another Uber. Jane’s plan was A; mine, unsurprisingly, was B. Reader, I won the day! We decided that seeing the art in comfort was better than walking the 16km to Albergaria. That said, we went for a walk anyway. Obviously.

Our hotel was handily placed to walk to much of what was worth seeing, so we waited a bit to allow the day to cool a bit and then set out. It wasn’t difficult to see where we could start – there are colourful artworks all over the place,

but one of the main things to marvel at was the Umbrella Sky Project.

Águeda’s roots go back to Celtic/Lusitanian settlement, with the area occupied since at least the 4th century BC. It shows up in documents from 1050–1077 under names like Casal Lousado, Anegia, Agatha and Ágada, and by the 9th century was known as Ágata. Through the Middle Ages it belonged to the monasteries of Lorvão and Vacariça rather than having its own royal charter, and functioned as a stop on the road to Santiago de Compostela. It became a municipal seat in 1834 after Portugal’s Liberal Revolution, and was only granted city status in 1985. Historically it made its name in metalworking, bicycles, and ceramics – hence it has the nickname “Portuguese Bicycle Capital”.

The transformation to being a “street art town” is very recent and very deliberate. The Umbrella Sky Project was born in Águeda in 2012, created by the design firm Impactplan working with the local council on what started as a small installation on one narrow street. It was inspired by the image of Mary Poppins floating down with her umbrella, and it was part of the AgitÁgueda festival, which used it to add colour and shade during the hot summer months. Photos went viral, and, as we were to see for ourselves, the town leaned into it hard; it’s now spawned licensed versions in cities from Lisbon to Pensacola, Florida. That festival became the, erm, umbrella for a much wider street-art push, including a strand called Rexenera aimed at getting big murals and sculptures into public squares.

So, worth spending extra time to appreciate, then.

There are colourful embellishments everywhere you look around the town centre,

and the Umbrella Sky presence covers several streets.

The Umbrella idea has been mercilessly exploited, time and time again

and the “Sky” aspect has also mutated in places, as we discovered when we walked further afield the following morning (see later).

As we walked around, the Disneyland-esque feel of the place almost made me feel as if we’d been transported to somewhere in the USA. It’s quite the riot of colour (which, sadly, somewhat disguises the areas of neglect which are quite common in Portugal). It gives an agreeable air to walking around and, say, stopping for a beer and pizza. So we did. I think we must have got our timing a bit wrong; as we took seats outside the Sant’Oregano pizzeria we were almost the only customers and it took an unconscionable amount of time to produce our pizzas – over 40 minutes. By the time we’d finished them, the pizza place – and the street it was on – was quite lively, with a Saturday night buzz, so I think we might have been a bit early. The pizzas were good and the beer was welcome, but the quantities were excessive. So, after we’d eaten, we decided we should go for a walk. Obviously. We headed down to the river and walked along it to see a work by a particular artist, and it was lovely to see it; but the light wasn’t at its best, so we resolved to include it in our walkabout the next morning.

When we got back to the hotel we noticed that the ground floor bar was labelled an “honesty bar”; and I’d thought I’d seen some gin on the counter when we’d checked in. I had not been wrong;

there was indeed an excellent selection of gins, but we couldn’t find the necessary ice and tonic to make any of them into a decent drink. We asked at reception and the nice lass there went off and came back with ice and tonic, so the situation was saved. She also offered to put the charge for the drinks on our room bill, which was fine – but it means that the description of “honesty bar” is not very accurate. No matter – it was lovely to have a decent G&T.

So: that was yesterday. Today, we walked further afield in the relative cool of the morning. Breakfast was taken on the top floor of the hotel, whence we got a nice view of the misty morning

and one of the Umbrella Sky streets.

Before we went out, Jane also took this shot of a mural that we could see from our bedroom.

We walked nearly 4km to search out the things we knew about, and there were three particular works that we wanted to see. More of them later, but there was much else to spot. Of course, we wanted to find the various Sky projects, and there were several non-umbrella ones to be seen.

This one has the theme of fishes and the sea,

another is a “garden” in the sky,

and there is a sunflower street, too.

There is artwork all around: some big pieces

some medium-sized ones;

and some small touches.

The cogwheel is essentially Águeda’s symbol of industry. Águeda developed a strong industrial base, particularly in metalworking, machinery, bicycles and related manufacturing, and the town’s heraldry reflects that. The cogwheel appears prominently in the municipal coat of arms, alongside grapes, pine trees and wavy blue lines, which represent the River Águeda.

There are embellishments on and around several buildings, such as the town hall and the arts centre.

There are some more traditional artistic touches around;

the azulejo panel illustrates the historical lifestyle of the nearby Aveiro district coastline, showcasing the iconic bateiras (traditional flat-bottomed boats) and the marshy lagoon landscape. The Águeda municipality, particularly the Fábrica de Faianças do Outeiro de Águeda and master painters like João Breda, has a deeply rooted history in producing monumental, hand-painted blue and white tile panels that celebrate regional Portuguese landmarks and traditions. (I’ve taken the em dashes out of the above so that you won’t know I got it from AI.)

Given the town’s history, it unsurprising to see bicycles represented around, such as these verges on the garden sky street.

There was a substantial bric-a-brac market going on (this being a Sunday) in and among the artworks.

However, the things that really interested us were works by Bordallo II – he of the “art from trash” installations. Águeda boasts no fewer than three: a robin, down by the river;

a salamander, by the town hall;

and, slightly further afield, a kitten.

(You can infer from the solar panels above the kitten that this is lit at night.)

Walking around to see all of these things was an agreeable way of spending the morning. Just before midday, we checked out of the hotel and were Uber-whisked by Jose (listening to religious anthems all the way – well, it is Sunday) to our accommodation in Albergaria-a-Velha. jane spotted a grain store on the way. In Spain, these are called horreos, but in Portugal their name is espigueiros, and they are, I read, found principally in the north-west of the country. This being the direction we’re headed, I would expect us to see more of these as we walk further north – because walk is what we firmly intend to do whenever the weather renders it other than a stupid idea.

Jose dropped us off in a hot, sunny street in Albergaria, and we walked along it to find our accommodation, Estalagem dos Padres – Inn of the Priests.

It was, of course, locked and deserted. Fortunately, sitting on the street opposite the entrance was an Australian lass, Georgina, who was in contact with the owners, and, long story short, we got in to what is evidently a remotely-operated establishment. Our keys were in a drawer, our breakfast will be delivered to a drawer in the well-equipped kitchen and there was a kettle, with milk in the fridge. We were able, then, to have a cup of tea and a chat with Georgina in the lounge area,

and work out what to do with the rest of the day.

Georgina has been hard core and walked all the way from Lisbon; well done to her! She has chatted with a few people along the way and helped a couple, including, she told us, an 86-year old lady from America, who’d been having difficulty finding the way (not surprising, given the lack of signage in Lisbon). I was working on this blog in the lounge area when who should turn up but the American lady, Louise from Pennsylvania. We chatted a bit before she went off to her room, and then it was time for Jane and me to go out and find somewhere to eat.

It’s just this town, you know? Some pleasant buildings, some abandoned houses; in many ways just typical Portuguese town.

although there were a couple of things to note as we walked in search of a meal. The square has a fountain

which is rather neatly matched by an azulejo opposite.

There’s a torre,

which is actually a part of the Boa Vista Castle and Mansion. I’d love to tell you more, but it was closed. Werl, Sunday, innit?

Having said it was just typical, Albergaria is obviously a place of great pith and moment, since it has a couple of bars that are actually open on a Sunday, and, mirabile dictu, a restaurant, Memórias, that was open all day.

We had a good, copious, meal there and tottered back to the Estalagem for the rest of the day. On the way back, we noted the rather unusual pointy bits on the building labelled “Primary School”.

Like so many buildings in this country, it was clearly very fine once, but appears now, sadly, to be disused. The finials are called picos or pináculos in Portuguese, and these days are just a matter of decoration, but once held some significance: because the roof is of such critical importance in a building, the more ornate it was, the longer it would take workmen to lay it, and thus the richer was the family whose roof they decorated. There’s possibly an element of warding off evil spirits (presumably giving them a pointed look), which may have applied to the school. We’ll never know.

Tomorrow, our target is Oliveira de Azeméis, which is about 20km away (and at the top of a hill; sigh), so if we get on with it and don’t hang about we should be able to walk there and arrive before the worst of the day’s heat. An early start beckons!