Tag Archives: Azambuja

Day 4 – Azambuja and Porto de Muge: From the ridiculous to the sublime

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Monday August 31 – The observant among you will note the lack of a running total of our distance travelled on this Caminho. This is because we didn’t walk today; Jane may be a trooper but she’s not stoopid, and was worried that her cough was developing into a chest infection. We both thought it was worth checking in at a local pharmacy rather than risking finding out during a walk – in 30°C heat and constant sunshine – that we’d taken on too much. So, much as we relished the prospect of leaving the fairly ghastly Hotel Ouro, we hung fire so that we could visit a pharmacy. (To be fair to the hotel, the old-fashioned bathroom did deliver a decent shower once one had stepped into the bath, and the towels were of a decent size and fluffiness.)

The breakfast arrangement was to pick up a voucher at the reception which gave us a meal at the snack bar next door. It was not a generous selection, but there was some fruit, some pastries and a coffee machine, which set us the poser: did we want milk with coffee (bottom left), or coffee with milk (top right)?

Milk with coffee appeared to deliver the nearest to a flat white; ChatGPT tells me that “garoto” is an understood Portuguese term for a small coffee with milk. The sooner this country gets to grips with the idea of a flat white, the better, I say. That and Earl Grey tea.

After the rudimentary breakfast, we went for a walk into town, and discovered that Azambuja is rather a nice place – by and large well-maintained and apparently interested in making a favourable impression on visitors. There are two pharmacies, and the first one – Da Silva, a large, modern and impressive place – dispensed something to help Jane with the cough she’s been struggling with.

To get to the main street, one passes the bull ring

which is still actively in use, having (according to ChatGPT) hosted a Corrida as recently as May this year. (They don’t kill the bull in the ring, but that doesn’t mean that the outcome is usually in the bull’s best interests, by the way.)

The main drag is handsome

and there are some attractive buildings,

as well as some clearly with both a history and charm.

but our interest (pharmacy aside) was principally the church, which rated not only an icon on our personalised online map, but also a mention in Brierley. The exterior is plain enough

and features a pillory outside. Inside, it’s quite sumptuous

with a very ornate altar piece built around a mulit-tiered Eucharistic throne which, as any fule kno, is an Iberian Baroque special – an elevated platform on which the monstrance is displayed for public adoration.

The walls are extravagantly and completely tiled

with panels featuring the Stations of the Cross.

There wasn’t however, anywhere we could see that offered us a selo – a stamp for our pilgrim passports. Outside the church was an azulejo

which is very much in line with the town’s pedigree, if that’s the word, in bull fighting and horse riding. Generally, efforts have been made to keep the place looking cheerful

although some pieces are beginning to suffer.

As midday approached, we checked out of the hotel, whose receptionist told us about the taxi rank outside the station, so we hied ourselves thither – to see the sole taxi drive away as we approached. We had arranged with today’s accommodation that we would get there between 12.30 and 1pm, so we needed transport. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I whistled up my Uber app and found that there was a driver just six minutes away who was prepared to take us on to Porto de Muge. (You see, Guy – we can do the Uber thing, just choose not to almost all of the time 😉.)

I’m typically oblivious of anything in my surroundings not of immediate and practical concern to me, but Jane had noticed, over the preceding couple of days, that there were a lot of tomatoes strewn around the streets, like this, for example.

As we made our way to the station, we noticed several large lorries go by

presumably headed for the Sugal tomato paste factory down the road. And as we rode towards Porto de Muge in our Uber, we saw the extent of the tomato crops around here, which is huge – stretching to the horizon on both sides of the road in places, and (strangely to our eyes) being grown without supports. Apparently they are specific thicker-skinned varieties which grow to a certain size, ripen at roughly the same time, and can be mechanically harvested.

So, Marcio Emanuel delivered us to the door of the Quinta da Marchanta, whose staff had been very proactively in contact already during the day. A more extreme contrast between two places couldn’t easily be found – in the Ouro Hotel, the receptionist could hardly be bothered to put down her pastry to check us in, but here, we were greeted and shown round by the lovely Kim. Although the restaurant here is normally closed on a Monday, they had arranged for us to take a pilgrim’s lunch laid on specially for us, and provided us with a sandwich for supper; because we are planning to leave very early tomorrow to try to avoid the worst of the heat of the day they will provide an early breakfast for us; and, best of all, there’s a dedicated tea station, with kettle and

Twinings finest Earl Grey tea! There couldn’t be a better demonstration of the pedigree of this excellent place as far as I’m concerned (Ouro Hotel’s breakfast couldn’t even muster English Breakfast tea – pah!).

After our lunch, as we were walking round and admiring the place, who should turn up but the three Aussie (Tasmanian) peregrinos we’d seen en route to Azambuja. Jerry is the chap’s name; he’s there with his missus and friend.

The Quinta is well worth looking round; very attractively laid out, both outside

and in.

Our room has an extensive balcony overlooking the complex and we were able to completely relax for the rest of the day. This is the sort of place that makes us wish we had more than one night here. But, sadly, we don’t. We have to get to Santarém tomorrow, which is (we are told) about 16km away, and the forecast temperature is once again likely to climb to 30°C in the afternoon, hence our desire to leave betimes. We are hopeful that Jane’s cold and cough will have improved to the point where four or five hours walking (unrelieved, sad to say, by any coffee stops) can be contemplated; also that what I fear is a burgeoning cold that I’m now developing won’t pose a problem. We’ll see. Beyond tomorrow, the temperatures forecast are brutal, rising to 41°C (that’s 106°F in old money) and continuing in the thirties thereafter. When we walked the Camino Francés, we managed to cope with such temperatures by starting very early, and maybe we’ll be able to do so again. Or maybe we will continue with the Uber strategy. Stay tuned over the next days to find out.

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.