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Preparations

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Friday 21 August 2026 – It’s been over a year since Jane and I undertook a long walk, and so we have to reacquire some of the key habits concomitant with basically seven weeks on the move, staying at a new place (mostly) every night. We’re not hard core enough to carry everything, so our bags will be transferred daily. The organisation which will, erm, organise this is, as with all our Camino activities, Walk The Camino, who we hope will do the same splendid job for us as they have done before.

The emphasis will therefore be on travelling (fairly) light (the heavier stuff can go in the baggage to be transferred). Of course, therefore, I have been undergoing the usual pre-trip mild angst around what photo gear to take. On our previous Caminos I used my phone as the principal camera and took a drone in case a decent aerial shot was possible. Much as I would like to take the Nikon with me for capturing the delights of Lisbon, Sintra, Porto and Coimbra, I don’t think that I’m prepared to take the extra weight, since taking the Nikon implies also taking a laptop for photo processing which I feel I would have to include in my day pack. After much mental to and fro, I’ve decided that I will tolerate having to lug the drone with me; this won’t be every day, since there are quite large swathes of the route where drone flying is restricted.

So, for the donkey work of routine photography I’ll take my little Sony and also a new acquisition in case there’s video footage to be captured – a DJI Osmo Pocket 4P. On paper, this is a very impressive piece of technology – a (relatively) large 1″ sensor, and two lenses which offer a very decent zoom range, the lack of which was my main complaint with its predecessor. It should be easy to get professional-quality stabilised video footage, but let’s see if my usual ham-fistedness gets in the way of achieving that, shall we?

Since I won’t have the laptop with me, I’ll update these pages via a tablet, which will also be the backup device, saving me having to carry a backup disk drive with me. A fair bit of photo gear as usual, then, as well as power banks, cables, adapters and card readers. Just so you know how much I suffer in creating these pages, you understand.

Light though we wish to travel, there is one thing that is non-negotiable.

I realise that Portugal is sufficiently civilised and Anglophile that Twinings finest Earl Grey might be available in the shops; but d’you really believe we’re prepared to take that risk?

We will come across a major (for us) unknown on our journey, which is the change to the previously straightforward process of getting into a European country, which, since April this year, has in theory been governed by the new Entry Exit System.  The only experience we’ve had was the debacle of arrival at Pisa airport where the Italian authorities, in an excess of common sense, decided to abandon attempts to use the EES terminals in the face of the vast queue winding out of the airport building and onto the tarmac. EES is one of the passive-aggressive ways the EU has introduced to punish the UK for Brexit and it has the potential to give rise to major queues for non-EU travellers. The situation is sufficiently marked that there is even a website about the queues, which appears to crowdsource information about wait times.

Portugal is one of the two EU countries which has embraced EES (the other being Sweden) and it has put in place support for travellers to use the official app to register their visit. Since we have been good citizens and passed over our details, we might thus expect the queuing at arrival to be lessened. It’s disappointing, therefore, to read that Lisbon airport is one of the worst for queues for non-EU arrivals.

To be fair to Lisbon, the site appears to say that the arrival queue at time of writing (24 hours before we travel) is 20 minutes.

We’re not starting out on our Caminho immediately – we have a couple of days in Lisbon followed by a couple of days in Sintra (a place I’ve never visited before) to play tourist before we start playing pilgrim. Once we’re under way, though, I suspect the schedule of the days will fall into a familiar pattern: start walking as early as is reasonable and consistent with having some form of breakfast; late lunch shortly after arrival at the day’s destination; exploration of it after lunch; then writing the day up (me) and preparing for the morrow (Jane).  There will doubtless be Things To See as we go, and Jane does a great job of picking out the best ones so that we actually visit some places of interest rather than just peregrinating grimly past them. As well as Google, we have extra resources,

and so we’re expecting a good variety of places to visit and possibly get a selo – a stamp for our pilgrim passports – as we pass (we want to make sure we qualify for a Compostela for this Caminho to match the ones we have from the Francés and Finisterre Caminos).

Once we set out, in the main we’ll be staying one night at each destination. We’re not rushing, but will cover the 630km in 37 stages – average 17km per day. We will spend extra days in other places en route, notably Porto, as well as a couple of interim place where we get to do the laundry – these things are important, you know. I’m hoping there will be a good crop of photos and a selection of points of interest as we go, We head for Lisbon tomorrow – stay tuned if you’d like to follow the journey!

 

Homeward Bound – one final sight

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Saturday 20 June 2026 – As hinted at earlier, we had to get under way quite early in order to have any kind of chance of presenting ourselves for the 11.05 flight back to London in any kind of good order. An 0630 departure from Bonassola meant that we didn’t have the luxury of a hotel breakfast; we’d picked up their packed offering the evening before. I suppose their intentions were good, but I question the wisdom of including a hard-boiled egg. Trying to eat one of those without upsetting everyone within a 10-foot radius would be a non-starter, so we carefully took those out and left them behind.

As you might expect, Bonassola at 0620 was not busy.

It would have been dead quiet were it not for the bin men doing their thing. Our final ride in that dreadful bus got us to Pisa airport shortly before 9am, and we walked into a bustling terminal. In pre travel discussions among the group, given the possible, nay probable, disruption caused by the UK no longer being part of the EU, we had wondered whether this was leaving enough time to ensure we’d complete all the formalities. In the event, the timing worked out pretty well. We found the BA check-in area, which was closed but which opened pretty soon after we started queuing, so evidently BA thought that the standard 2-hour window was adequate.

Having checked in and been allocated seats that were almost hanging off the tailplane, we then set about getting through security. This looked like it could turn into the stumbling block we’d feared.

About half way along that mass of humanity were the gates that allowed one into the security area. However, it seemed that this was entirely normal for your average morning in Pisa airport; the staff seemed quite relaxed, and only had to call out one flight for urgent prioritisation. People took the queue in their stride, and we inched forward, eventually forming a line into security, and thence to the border. Those with EU passports could take the e-gates, and most of the Brits queued up for the old-fashioned “stamp your passport” desks. Jane and I actually tried the e-gates in case they were (a) quicker and/or (b) of the modern EES type, but they weren’t either of those things. Our passports let us through but were then stamped anyway. Our next trip is not for a couple of months and is to Portugal, which has adopted EES and thus will be a different travel experience; let’s hope they’ve sorted out any wrinkles before we get there.

I might have been in cramped seats in the penultimate row of the plane, but I had a window seat and accidentally looked out at just the right moment.

So I got a decent view of the famous Leaning Tower and the rest of the Piazza del Duomo, much better than the fleeting glimpse we caught as we travelled out to Bonassola the week before. Finally, an aerial view! We’d been to Pisa the previous year and I had got some early morning photos around the Piazza that I was pretty pleased with, but it’s a No-Fly area for drone photography (of course! grrrr!) so I missed out on an aerial shot then. This one is not ideal, but I was glad to have caught it.

The rest of the journey was uneventful and, to quote John Cleese, relatively crash-free, and we were home and lashing into a mug of Twinings finest Earl Grey by 2pm. Although our week had been hard work at times and I continued having difficulty with staircases for a few days after, it was a very fine trip – spectacular photography scenery and a lovely bunch of people, with whom I rather think we will keep in touch.

So: Cinque Terre, eh?

It was lovely to see the villages and to get such brilliant views, but it was hot, hard work.

Why is Day 1 always the bastard, eh? Eh?

The raw figures make the walking look easier than we found it. The temperatures didn’t help, and neither did the crowds on some walks. But particularly, the terrain was tricky in places – rough patches and quite large steps up and down among the rocks were commonplace. But it was absolutely worth going and I would recommend it as a short break for anyone.  As we toiled up and down the hills, I formulated some guidelines which might help others considering a visit.

Cinque Terre Rules

  1.  If you like walking, you’d better like quite tough walking – there are no easy routes. Walking poles recommended.
  2. If you are going to walk, then mid-April to mid-May, or last week in September/first week in October are good times to go.
  3. These are the best time to avoid the crowds in the villages as well.
  4. If you don’t want to walk, then an afternoon ferry ride along the villages is a great way to see them at their finest.

HF Holidays did a very fine job of presenting us with a well-organised, rewarding week and I would recommend it to anyone, particularly if walking is your thing.

Our next trip will involve rather a lot more walking, though I’m expecting it to be less arduous despite being much longer. Unless something spectacular happens, therefore, my next entry in these pages will be in late August and I’d be delighted if you were to join us on our next travels.

Day 7 – The journey home and valedictory thoughts

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Thursday 14 May 2026 – Breakfast in the hotel was a chance to say cheerio to some of the group. The journey to the airport would be the opportunity to say our farewells to some of the others. All in all, the trip has been an affable social affair with like-minded souls all trying to get to grips with the complexities and subtleties of Istanbul’s chequered past.

Our transport to the airport was planned, at a relatively comfortable 9m, for three hours before our flight’s departure time, so I was expecting the traffic to be bad.  It wasn’t, but there was one unexpected phenomenon.

Seçkin had many times commented on how lucky we’d been with the weather, but I hadn’t really believed him, thinking that rain was relatively rare at this time of year. But it hurled it down with rain for much of our journey to the airport; so we had been lucky, after all.

We got to the airport with two and a half hours to go before our flight.  Another surprise awaited me. You have to go through security to get into the airport.

All bags went through the scanner and it was a more thorough security check than I’d seen anywhere else. We got to the BA check-in desk, and they told us very politely that we should come back in half an hour, as they were taking check-ins for an earlier flight.  We took this as an opportunity to get a coffee, but when we went back to the desk, this is what we found.

In a matter of moments, the queue had gone from nothing to quite a substantial thing.  Fortunately, I spotted that, being still a Bronze member of the BA Club, I was allowed a priority check-in, so that saved my blood pressure. And going through security was fairly swift, as, being a modern airport, they had the scanners that don’t require one to take out laptops and tablets.

I said that on arrival I was boggled by the size of the arrivals duty-free area; the departure lounge duty free area is an order of magnitude bigger. It’s so big that staff are on tricycles and Segways to get around. There are even electric wheelchairs to cart assistance-needing customers around the place.

But there are some elegant décor touches to leaven the relentless retail landscape.

Very nice Art Nouveau touches in the departure lounge

The signs in the departure lounge were telling us to go to our gate, so we did; there, a nearly-polite man told us to bugger off for 15 minutes as they weren’t accepting people at the gate yet. We looked around for somewhere to sit, and there were no seats in sight, but ol’ jobsworth at the gate was adamant – bugger off and come back in fifteen minutes.

So we wandered around in search of somewhere to sit, and eventually found a not particularly comfortable perch, where, directly in front of me, was this massive sign.

Not bloody yet, they don’t.

We waited the obligatory 15 minutes and, when we got back to the gate

there was, of course, a queue. We joined it and although Jane was allowed to go in and sit down, I had to go and join another queue,

for, would you believe it, a security check. This would thus be the third security check I’d been through. And it was exceedingly thorough. And slow. Not helped when someone on their electric wheelchair jumped the queue.

It’s ableist, I tell you.

So I had to wait while people in front of me basically had to entirely unpack their hand baggage so that one of the two staff there could check it over, and put detector wipes through a machine for all tech items and footwear. So I had to remove my laptop, my tablet, both cameras and my power banks whilst this chap did his checks, and then put them all back in again afterwards. I suppose it’s just a random security check and I should be grateful that they’re paying attention; but I was struck by the difference in attitude to security between here and the very peremptory observance of it in downtown Istanbul.

The flight was entirely uneventful, and I was able to get on with some photo editing for the four or so hours we spent getting back to the UK, where

the sun was shining! We deplaned and headed through the passport gates to the baggage area to our carousel.  After some moments the bags of a handful of passengers on our flight came through, but then….nothing. I’m normally quite patient when it comes to doing the baggage stare thing, but 45 minutes is asking too much of me, so I went off in search of a BA Assistance desk.  There was one not too far away, but

it was bugger-all use to me, so I kept on walking, pretty much to the other end of the baggage hall, where there was a BA desk which actually had some staff. And, of course, a queue. Jane hurried across to give me the baggage receipts so I could discuss the situation should I ever get to the head of the queue, and then, about an hour after we first got to the baggage hall, technology stirred itself from its slumbers and the BA App told me that our bags were about to be delivered – but on a different carousel. I have no idea what had been going on in the interim*, but I was glad that the systems were sufficiently joined up that I didn’t have to wait in that queue any longer.

Our taxi driver was remarkable phlegmatic about having had to wait, and took our bags to his car (a Dongfeng; I’ve never come across one of them before), and paid his ticket. When we got to the barrier, though, it stolidly failed to lift, so our guy had a chat with the chap on the other end of the help button, who sounded as if he was in a call centre in Bangalore somewhere; eventually we were allowed out of the car park and, with a single bound we were free – to join the rush hour traffic on the M25!

It was lovely to get home, make ourselves a nice cup of tea and gather our thoughts about the last week. It was an intensive schedule and there was a lot to take in. Perhaps I should have read things up more before I departed thither, or maybe the Peter Sommer schedule should have included some kind of preliminary get-together with everyone to give a basic historical briefing so people would be better able to understand the blitz of names and dates that whizzed past as we went round the city. I certainly feel that I’ve learned a huge amount about the history of the city and the Ottoman culture. One thing we didn’t get from the week was to do with the reason we came here. We’d thought that by coming to GHQ of the Orthodox Christian Church we might come to understand the flow of the Orthodox religion and related iconography that led to what we saw in Romania. We didn’t. That’s not particularly a criticism of the Peter Sommer agenda, but a reflection of the complexity of the history of Constantinople. We would have needed to visit the Patriarch’s Church in Istanbul and understood that part of its history, and that religious aspect simply wasn’t the focus area of the itinerary we were following.

So: while I enjoyed the week, learned a lot and am glad I went, I don’t feel an urgent need to go back to Istanbul. It’s a bit too hectic and crowded for my comfort. Having said that, we’re entertaining thoughts of visiting India, and I wonder what I’ll make of that?

Once again, then, these pages will go dark for a few weeks. We have a short-haul European trip with a bit of walking involved in it in about a month’s time. I hope we’ll have your company then, but for now, cheerio and take care.

 

*  PS. It seems we were lucky. The following day, 20,000 bags went missing in Heathrow Terminal 5, according to The Times, the fifth time this year that there has been a baggage issue there. One could infer that the problem was building up as we were travelling through – or that it’s a perpetual potential problem.