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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and (later) peppers

and squash.

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

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

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

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

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

Many fields had already been stripped of their crop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or this.

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

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

Closer examination

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

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

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

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

Hah!

It was a bit of a climb, and then….

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

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

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

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

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

and arrived at our hotel

slightly before our bags did.

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

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

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

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

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

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.