Sunday 20 September 2026 – The 11km of the Caminho from Porto to Matosinhos have two disadvantages: they’re very dull walking; and they would make for a 33km stage to Vila do Conde, today’s destination. It’s possible to get from Porto to Matosinhos by public transport, but it takes nearly an hour, and, with temperatures once again rising into the 30s, we wanted to get started early, so Uber it was, then, at 0630 from the hotel (having taken a foraged bread-roll-and-banana breakfast in our room), and we were walking before 7am, over the river by the docks at Matosinhos.
The day had a much more “Camino” feel about it. Immediately we got out of the Uber, a lady peregrina came by; she was German, but living in Sweden, and strode out ahead of us. The first corner shop we came to had this in the window
and we saw several peregrinos during the day.
As you can see from the gallery above, we spent virtually the whole day on a boardwalk which starts just outside Matosinhos and extends most of the way to Vila do Conde. At first, though, we walked along the prom, tiddly om pom pom,
past the lighthouse and an artwork that had some kind of pretentious title I couldn’t be bothered to note.
Then the boardwalk started
and stretched virtually unbroken to our destination. It was actually broken in a couple of places, but it’s fundamentally over 15km of planking and posts, which is a significant amount of wood and a vast number of screws to hold it down. These boardwalks (passadiços) along the Senda Litoral route were built by municipal governments during the late 2000s and 2010s. They were created primarily as a soft-engineering project to prevent human foot traffic from destroying fragile coastal sand dunes and native vegetation, while simultaneously establishing safe public seaside pathways. While the Senda Litoral is an unofficial variant of the Portuguese Coastal Way rather than a medieval religious path, local councils welcomed pilgrims onto these corridors as a scenic, flat, and car-free alternative to walking the dangerous tarmac national roads out of Porto.
As the sun came up, we passed a chapel
the Capella da Boa Nova (Chapel of the new snake?). Despite the sun, there was a delicious sea mist which kept things cool for quite some way.
The boardwalk leads past the vast great Petrogal oil refinery,
and the powers that be have put various diversions along it – infoboards, exercise stations,
resting places
and the odd occasional nugget about the Caminho.
The above nugget was starkly at odds with a pilgrim office we visited further along the boardwalk
which itself was at odds with the waymark outside the cathedral which made the distance (you remember, of course) 248km. So, who knows? Not us – until we get there, when you can rest assured that I will update you on the amount we did walk, as well as the amount we should have.
Our previous experience of walking in the wilds of Portugal on a Sunday was of cafés and restaurants that were closed because it was Sunday. I’d been hoping that today, since we were basically walking along the beach through holiday resort villages, there would be places open where we could stop and get refreshment. For once, my optimism was rewarded.
At just over 5km, our qualifying distance, this place appeared beside the boardwalk. It wasn’t immediately obvious whether it was open, but we peered in and it was. By this stage, my breakfast had worn off and I was quite peckish, and Jane had the bright idea that we should order torrada (toast and butter) with our coffee, which was a stroke of genius. We got mountains of toasted local bread, butter and quince jam, accompanied by decent, hot, coffee, and it made a wonderful second breakfast. The chap who served us had a permanently harrassed expression on his face, and by the time we left it was justified, as lots of people started drifting in for their Sunday breakfasts; once again our timing was very fortunate.
The boardwalk runs by the sea, past opportunities for people to fish
and some nice little beaches, where we found that people were already set up for the day.
There was also an item of a bit more pith and moment – the Memorial Monument.
The obelisk marks the spot where the Liberal Wars (you remember them, don’t you? Of course you do!) effectively began. On 8 July 1832, a fleet organised in the Azores and commanded by King Peter IV landed an army of about 7,500 men on this beach, aiming to replace the absolutist rule of Peter’s younger brother Miguel with a modern liberal regime. The landing caught the absolutist forces by surprise, since they had expected an attack from Lisbon, and the liberals then marched on Porto, where they withstood a siege from Miguel’s forces lasting about a year. Peter IV won the day with help from the British (go, us!).
There were a couple of breaks in the boardwalk; at one stage a barrier was up and we wondered how serious its prohibition was.
Quite serious, it turned out.
But there were roads nearby to navigate around this breakage. There was another one later on, which was a bit more serious
and which involved walking through soft sand for a short while, which is not rewarding in sandals. Doing this, we passed a guy who, again, seemed to be setting himself up for a day there.
Was his guitar to entertain himself, other beach users, or to try to busk for money? We’ll never know.
The boardwalk gave way to a more conventional centre as we passed though the fishing village of Angeiras
where there was an entirely inexplicable construction:
the Crypto Content Creator Campus was just a shack with a couple of old ladies gossiping outside it – unless, of course, they were the Crypto Content Creators…
There were various opportunities for coffee/refreshment stops, and we took up on one about every 5km. The last one was in a rather shonky, but very friendly, bar on the outskirts of Vila do Conde
where the blokes were in a back room playing pool. The coffee there was pretty terrible, but we had a beer each, which was much needed, as by this time the temperature was getting on for 30°C and we were getting very hot. From this point, we left the boardwalk and used the roads in the hope that we could find some shade; there was some available, and it was very welcome.
Before reaching the town of Vila do Conde itself, we walked a couple of kilometres through a nature reserve,
and then re-emerged onto the roads into the edge of the municipality of Azurara, which edges Vila do Conde and is a handsome place.
The church of Santa Maria de Azurara, with the Manueline style Wayside Cross outside it…
…and its pillory
The road then took us towards the town of Vila do Conde itself, which we had to reach by crossing the river. It looked at first as though the town had its own small nuclear reactor
but it’s actually a chapel, more on which later.
The bridge gives a good view of the town
and the enormous monastery and church of Santa Clara, also more of which later.
First, we had to walk through the streets of the very attractive town
to find our hotel, the Hotel Brazão, which we did eventually. By this stage, the temperature was 33°C and we were very happy to have a glass of something cold in the hotel bar whilst we waited for our room to come available. Then we had to find some lunch; with several restaurants allegedly open until 3pm, this seemed an easy task, but the first two we tried turned us away. In the end, we came upon the Cafe Patarata
where a harrassed but very competent madame bade us sit whilst she dashed about getting food to all the other people in the place. We had a really delightful meal there, although she committed the cardinal sin of making a port-and-tonic with red port.
Back at the hotel, we rested for a while and then went for a walk. Obviously. We wanted to explore that really interesting nuclear reactor chapel
but sadly it was not really open to look inside; we learned from a notice in the town that there was a local dignitary’s lying-in-state after he’d died – funeral tomorrow, so we didn’t go in; but the walk around gave us a chance to see a few other things and appreciate the age and status of the town.
Vila do Conde sits at the mouth of the Ave river. Human settlement here goes back to the pre-Roman hillfort (castro) culture, and the Romans later used the area for its river and coast. The name, “Count’s Town”, is traditionally tied to Afonso Sanches, an illegitimate son of King Dinis. He and his wife Teresa Martins Telo founded the Monastery of Santa Clara here in 1318, and the town grew around it.
Its golden age was the 16th century, when it became a major shipbuilding centre during the Age of Discoveries. That legacy is visible in a full-size replica of a 16th-century nau (carrack) built at the old shipyard.
The Manueline portal of the Igreja Matriz (parish church) dates from this period,
(We looked into the church, but a service was about to start, so I just got a grab shot of the interior.)
Later landmarks and traditions include the Santa Clara aqueduct, an enormous structure of nearly 1,000 arches built in the 18th century to supply the monastery,
and a strong bobbin-lace (rendas de bilros) tradition. There’s a statue just outside where we had lunch to mark this tradition
There’s a very handsome town square – you can just see some more arches of the aqueduct in the background.
Near the replica ship is the King João II square, which hosts several items of interest, including a huge sculpture which is called a sun dial,
but, impressive as it is, it’s not usable as such. Other statues in the park celebrate various aspects of the town’s considerable history.
That, then, was our day – a long and eventually hot one, but enjoyable and interesting. Tomorrow we stray off the Litoral route that we’ve followed today and hack across country to join the Central route at Rates. Apparently the waymarks for this transition have been removed to try to focus people’s minds on sticking to one or other routes, but we’re sticking two fingers up to this mindset and finding our own way across. It’s not a long walk – maybe 13km or so – so despite high temperatures again being forecast for the day we probably won’t have to start out in the dark. With luck we’ll find our way OK, in which case I’ll be able to regale you with tales of our (i.e. Jane’s) navigational skills. Wish us luck!
