Category Archives: Walking

Day 11 – Walking (!) from Quinta da Cortiça to Ansião: a delightful day

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Monday 7 September 2026 – The Quinta was a good oasis in the middle of nowhere – spacious room, availability of hot water and milk, etc, but the facilities didn’t extend to air conditioning. We had a fan in the room which was better than nothing but rather noisy. Consideration of the weather (i.e. temperature) forecast, the improvement in Jane’s cough – she was able to sleep through the night without paroxysms – and the relatively modest distance to our next accommodation in Ansião of about 19km made the idea of actually walking seem like a reasonable prospect; if we set out before 7am, we could expect to arrive before midday, and the temperature should still be below 30°C by that stage.  As I’ve said previously, the breakfast arrangements at the Quinta meant that some breakfast foods were laid out overnight, with bread, we were told, arriving at 6am. So the alarm went off at 0500 (ah! the Camino!) and we were in the kitchen, along with all the other peregrinos staying there, before 6am.

The smooth organisation of the Quinta fell rather to pieces at this point, at least for those who wanted coffee at breakfast; the coffee machine refused to dispense coffee (but was still OK for nice hot water for our tea, hurrah!). Also, the bread hadn’t arrived by about quarter past six, so we (and all the other peregrinos) decided to cut and run, having had just cornflakes and fruit. We took a small milk container with us because, well, you never know.

So, we departed at 0625, with the moon still in the sky and into beautiful, cool – possibly even a tad chilly – conditions.

Others departed at the same time as we did,

and we got a real feeling of – at last! – being On A Camino, rather than just wandering along being stared at by locals because we were wearing backpacks. Another good thing was being able to moan (quietly) about the other peregrinos; the girl on the left in front had no ferrules on her sticks, so they were a staccato accompaniment to what would have been lovely early morning twilight if they’d only stop prattling to each other. There was also the sound of quite loud conversation behind us for about 20 minutes, and soon we were overtaken by

a solo peregrina, who was gabbling away on her phone! One wonders why, if she dislikes silence and her own company so much, she is bothering to walk a Camino. But this is all me being grumpy. Of course other people can do their Caminos the way they want, even if it does show that they’re idiots.

Jane, ever eagle-eyed, spotted that we passed some fig trees which were sporting some lovely ripe fruit,

so we helped ourselves to Nature’s bounty (or at least the bit we could reach) to supplement the rather limited breakfast we’d had.  All the way along our route today there were various fruits to be seen: sweet chestnuts, walnuts, pomegranates, persimmons, quince, peaches (or possibly apricots, depending on whether you believe Google lens or not) and even apples.

We started off on tarmac, but soon diverted onto a cobbled path,

past Belladonna Lilies, which were in full flower. Eventually, of course, the sun cleared the horizon

but because of the low angle, we continued to walk in shade.

We came to a section where there were several Cork Oak trees,

in an area which looked like it was being sympathetically managed,

with careful and not excessive extraction of the bark. Since this tree is a big part of the Portuguese ecosystem, it was good to see.  I noted one that had been cut down, for whatever reason, and it is a good demonstration of how thick the bark can be.

We walked through pleasant countryside, tiny hamlets and some smaller villages. As we went along, there were some nice decorative touches to be seen: sculptures;

the occasional mural;

decorative topiary;

architectural flourishes;

lots of decorative tile work;

and this lovely mailbox.

Another thing that gave today that “authentic Camino feel” was the existence, after 5km, of a town, Alvaiázere, which was substantial enough

to feature somewhere to stop and take coffee,

so we did, of course, and a pastry (got to make up for that lack of bread, y’know), in a café which gave us chapter and verse on how much further we had to go.

The sun rose, as is typical of its daily behaviour

and occasionally provided some nice warmth – it really felt almost chilly. But our route was largely in shade

for which we were duly thankful. The kilometres after Alvaiázere were up quite a long ascent, and I’d taken my walking poles with me in case it turned out to be burdensome. But actually it was perfectly comfortable to walk up; being largely in the shade really helped, of course.

Every so often, we’d pass through a hamlet, and it was actually difficult to decide whether some of them were entirely abandoned or just very, very quiet.

There were several buildings which were clearly disused. This one was rather magnificent in its decrepitude

and this one was clearly being sold as a bit of a doer-upper.

We had a variety of surfaces to walk on, mostly either tarmac or cobbles. There was the occasional stretch of dirt road and at one point a fairly rough track which required care with one’s footwork.

Eventually we saw in the distance what I took to be Ansião

and we headed there, despite some slightly confusing waymarkery.

The outskirts provided some pleasant touches to the houses we passed

and we soon reached the town proper,

and, at 1126, just five hours after setting out, our accommodation, Ansiturismo, which is described as an Alojimento – lodgings, I suppose.

On entering, we found ourselves in a general situation that I suspect we’ll encounter many, many more times before we get to Santiago – there was no-one at reception, and check-in time noted as 3pm. So we discussed what we should do next in quite loud voices, just in case someone might hear us. And our luck was in! A lady came down the stairs very clearly equipped for doing the cleaning. Her English was limited but her preparedness to help boundless. She showed us across the road to another establishment, where our Walk The Camino booking was registered, and they gave us the magic combination that enabled us to unlock the key to our room, which had been cleaned and was ready for us. The cleaner also showed us where our bags were and led us to our room; she really couldn’t have been more helpful, and we were very appreciative.

As you can see from the photo, Ansiturismo is a modern building, and, like the other modern places we’ve stayed at, well-organised. The room had air con and a kettle! (There was also a fridge, but although it was making noises, it didn’t appear to be cooling anything.) So we could indulge ourselves in a cup of tea and a bit of a rest before heading out to find some lunch.

Ansião is a reasonably substantial town, so I had thought that we would have a choice of bars and/or restaurants. We walked towards the one I had thought would be a good choice, only to find that it was closed, so we headed back to one we’d passed earlier, which began to look like the only option. The town was very quiet, but is not bereft of charm.

It even boasts a Town Name!

I was slightly amused by one place we passed. I’ve commented before that it’s sometimes difficult at first blush, to distinguish whether a wall is covered in artistic display or decayed plaster. This building had both.

We took our lunch, therefore, in Manjar do Diogo, which translates as “Diogo’s Delight”. It’s a lunchtime joint, with a pastelaria and a cafeteria, so we went into the cafeteria bit and a nice young lass behind the counter explained how things worked and ladled masses of good healthy salad on to our plates (as well as opening a bottle of beer each for us). Total cost of lunch was €19, good value and healthy. Having stuffed our faces, we took coffee in the pastelaria and scored a couple of cakes (for later on, in case of extreme pangs, you understand), and headed back to our – now cool – room in Ansiturismo. By this time, the sun was stingingly hot, so we were glad we’d made the earlier start.

Today has been a very pleasant day. We have a walk tomorrow of a similar distance to today’s – 20km, ending in a small place called Zambujal. I rather think it’ll be not dissimilar to the Quinta da Cortiça, i.e. the only accommodation anywhere near; I can’t find evidence of any other bars or shops or that kind of thing. We will start out early again – earlier than Ansiturismo is prepared to offer us breakfast – so need to go shopping for supplies before the stores close today. The temperature should be less than today and I’m hoping that tomorrow will be as enjoyable as today has been.

 

 

 

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.