Wednesday 23 September 2026 – According to Garmin, the distance we had to cover today was 16.2km. According to Accuweather, the pattern of the day’s temperatures would be this:

Not as disastrously hot as previous days, but still worth Getting On With It. An estimated four hours of walking plus an hour of buggering about taking coffee and photos suggested that getting out at around 7.30am would get us to our destination, near Belugães, before the temperatures peaked. The hotel offered breakfast from 7am, and we were ready!

So, it seemed, were a load of others.

Everyone waited patiently outside the door to the breakfast room until Jane suggested seeing if it was open – which it was. This meant that we could set off at around 7.35am with a reasonably good breakfast fuelling us.

At the edge of Barcelos town centre is a statue of a Peregrina.

Frankly, it’s difficult to tell from her body language and facial expression what’s going on: celebrating arrival? hailing a taxi? being unable to understand where to go next? You decide.

The waymarking for the day was good, albeit varied. A formal waymark gave us useful information,

a less formal one at least told us we were on the right track,

as did an official one

and there were a couple of fancy ones later on, too.

We caught sight of our final cock as we exited Barcelos;

note the background here – I shall return to it later.

It was still reasonably early – before 8.30am – and there was a lot of mist around, which lent itself to a few attractive landscape creations,

but not all views were misty.

There were things we’ve seen on previous days, like the front porch and steps up to the bells at this church, the parish church of São João Baptista in Vila Boa;

a lavadouro, this one from, it would seem, as recently as 1964;

and some we hadn’t, such as this mural which was a Portuguese variant of the “Stars of Estrella” murals we saw when we walked the Camino Francés,

and this pair of boots

which probably have a story to tell, but which were silent as we passed.

The Camino vibe was strong again, with peregrinos behind and ahead of us as we walked a cobbled road and made an informal railway crossing,

and the first coffee stop after 5km was doing good business, not least because it was the last café for several more kilometres.

It, too, was strong on Camino vibes.

Beside the trail further along was this interesting noticeboard;

a list (not exhaustive, of course, but interesting) of some key albergues along the section of the Caminho Português north of Porto. I guess it would be possible to plan your entire route from it, although some of the stages would be rather long – and, these days, I’d suggest that there was a possibility that some of them were no longer active.

The route northwards was pleasant, mainly tarmac or cobbles, and wended through various villages, some small, some larger – but none with a coffee stop. Here are some things we passed.

At around the 7 km mark, the road started on a gentle, but relentless, climb

which carried on for the next 2.5km; you can see the saddle between two hills that the road was heading for.

Looking to our left, we could see the scar and new planting resulting from eucalyptus logging activity;

this is actually the same scar we saw in the background to the Last Cock of Barcelos photo.

A couple of houses on the way up had decorated their walls

and one had made a fetching garden installation from the pedras de calçada that are elsewhere used to make pavements.

There were some nice rural views on the way up,

an attractive church

and an appropriately named cemetery.

Having reached the top, we then headed back down again, into a small town called Aborim which had a big (and Interestingly modern) church, Igreja Paroquial de Nossa Senhora de Fátima de Aborim. It wasn’t open, of course.

As we looked beyond its cross, we could see not mist, but smoke.

Consulting Google Maps told us that this was from a severe fire in the Viano do Castelo region. This was to our north west, and we got increasingly clear views of the scale of the fire as we walked along.

We also caught sight of Belugães, some 5km away

but first, having gone about 12km, we awarded ourselves a coffee stop in the intriguingly-named café Rosa Cintilante.

I immediately thought of this as “Scintillating Rosie’s Caff”, but it actually translates as “shimmering pink”. Anyway, it was a welcome break, and a chance to chat to three Texans who were passing through at the same time as us.

The rest of the day’s walk took us past a couple of interesting items: a bird posing for its portrait

(my telephone told me that it was quite probably a Northern Wheatear, because my telephone knows these things); and a modern construction that looked very much like an espiguero.

To get to our accommodation, Casas do Rio, we had to cross a couple of bridges, only one of which was easily visible, the Ponte das Tábuas, a medieval construction over the River Neiva, serving the old road from Öporto to Valença.

This bridge has been documented since 1135, originally called portum de thabulis which
suggests that the original building was made of wood and was remodeled to its current construction more recently. The other bridge was the Caridade Bridge, which crosses the Nevoinho stream, which in turn is the river near which our destination, the Casas do Rio, stand. It’s supposed to be elegant, but it’s small and overgrown, and it was hot

and we wanted to get to our accommodation and rest.

Jane tugged at the bell rope and the sound caused whoever was inside using the hoover to stop and come out to see what the noise was about. She in turn called for Lucia, the lady in charge, who was delightfully helpful, ushering us towards the honesty bar,

equipping us with beer and telling us how things worked here, which was useful, since the information we’d had thus far really didn’t tell us what to expect. How things worked was exceedingly flexible – Lucia showed us the menu of food available, which was simple but good, and we agreed what time we wanted to eat.

The distance we’d walked was just under 16.5km, almost exactly in line with our expectations; it took us five hours  in total, of which we spent four actually walking; and the temperature when we arrived was exactly what the forecast said it would be. We love it when a plan comes together.

It was just after 12.30 when we arrived and Lucia had our room ready for us in a jiffy, so we could relax until our early dinner, which suited us rather well, us being hot and tired and that. Our room was, indeed, a commodious chamber

with some lovely decorative touches, including a tiny model espigueiro

and this wonderfully retro sound system.

We had dinner on the lawn of this rather lovely place

 

and were able to retire early to relax and prepare for the morning.

We have 19km to go tomorrow, to reach Ponte do Lima. The murderous heat of the previous days is – at last! – forecast to give way to something that is merely sultry; about 27°C at most. However, it still seems a good idea to get away betimes, as walking in the relative cool of the early morning is very pleasant. So Lucia has provided a packed breakfast for us in our room so that we can depart when we like. I’m rather looking forward to Ponte do Lima – it should be an interesting place and I hope I’ll be able to fly the drone there, too. Stay tuned to see how things turn out.