Tag Archives: Hiking

Day 29 – Estrada to Viana do Castelo: Shortish walk, full-on day

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Friday 25 September 2026 – Another Long Post Alert!!

The observant among you will notice that we finished up yesterday in Ponte de Lima, but yet today’s entry starts from Estrada. This is because, having spent some time on the Central Caminho (mainly so we could see a lot of cocks in Barcelos), we have now decamped to the Coastal Caminho. Apart from giving us a chance to sample the different looks and feels of Litoral, Coastal and Central Caminhos, this gives us a chance to see something that is of a fair significance in the context of the Portuguese Way. That thing is in Castelo do Neiva,and I suppose we could have just taken a ride directly there. There were times today when I wish we’d done just that, but, whatever, Jane had selected the village of Estrada for our start point, about 25km to the south-west of Ponte de Lima as the crow flies. As the Uber car drives, though, it’s about 32km. From that starting point, our walk was about 15km and the forecast was for a nice day – about 23°C at most, and sunny – so we treated ourselves to a hotel breakfast and our Uber dropped us off at the temporarily closed Pizzeria Monica just before 9am. It was a misty morning

and, frankly, a chilly start, with the mist not making things feel any warmer. But we got going and it was almost immediately clear that we would find a different vibe on this trail than we’d had on the Central Caminho – there were many more pilgrims on the trail and a lot more items of Caminho infrastructure in place.

Shortly after we started, we reached the Caminho Marking Stone,

which is in some ways, I suppose, the Portuguese equivalent of the Cruz de Ferro, the Iron Cross on the Camino Francés. It’s not the highest point, like the Iron Cross is, but it does serve as a place for pilgrims to put markers, wishes, prayers and so forth.

As well as more pilgrims, another difference from the Central route that we’d walked was the larger amount of walking on woodland trails. On the Francés, it’s fashionable to be sniffy about being reduced to walking on tarmac roads, but we’d become used to it on much of our Portuguese walking thus far. In theory, it’s nice to walk in woodland, but the trails can be very much more tricky underfoot than tarmac or boardwalk.

So we stumbled along, up and down these trails for a while, until after a particuarly sharp downhill stretch we were suddenly alongside a river.

I think the stepping stones you see in this photo were once the Caminho route, but the waymarks took us to a proper bridge, the Ponte do Sebastião, to cross the river.

Immediately after crossing on the bridge, we came across a couple of good examples of the increased Caminho infrastructure that marked out today’s walking.

The first was this eye-catching advert for an albergue a little further along the path. The second was a lady who had parked halfway up quite a steep path and who was offering refreshments on a donativo basis.

Among her offerings was a particularly sweet persimmon that she cut for us so we could share it as we walked. The path continued up. And up. Because we had to visiit The Thing that provoked our switch to the Coastal trail; and it was still quite high above us. First, though, we passed the albergue which had constructed that advert we saw earlier.

The Thing was the church you see, perched high on a hill in this photo.

It’s the Santiago Church of Castelo de Neiva, and it was up quite a steep path. Now you might understand why I might have preferred it as our Uber drop off point. But I suppose some degree of suffering is part of the Authentic Pilgrim Experience, so toiling uphill it was, then. One can at least pause en route, a few metres short of the church, to admire the Santiago niche,

draw breath and then press on to the church, which is an attractive one, built in very much the vernacular for the area.

(On a parenthetical note, just by the church is this bas relief:

It represents the three children whose visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917 were the basis for building the Basilica there; so this site is also on one of the Fatima Caminho routes, even though the two Caminhos are not related at all.)

The Santiago Church

features, as one might expect, quite a lot of representations of the Saint.

Painting on the wall to the left of the altar
Carving in the Altar Piece
Stained glass window

The reason the church is important in the context of the Portuguese Way is embedded in one of the walls of the church.

These stones were discovered during a restoration of the church. They show an ancient 9th-century Latin inscription and a sign detailing the consecration of the Igreja de Santiago de Castelo de Neiva in Portugal, which took place in the year 862. This establishes the early importance and credibility of the Coastal route of the Way of St. James in Portugal in the face of a certain sniffiness on the part of those who believe (or wish to establish) that the Central route is the true way to go!

Oh, and there was a caff there. We were only a few kilometres into the walk, but a coffee stop seemed the right thing to do. A few other pilgrims were resting there, too.

Having walked all the way up there, we also, of course, got the benefit of a decent view over the surrounding countryside.

The rest of the walk was lovely. The sun had risen to dispel the early chill from the mist, and it made for pleasant walking, as did the general scenery.

A traditional, stone-framed espiguero

The first stork’s nest we’d seen on this trip

Vast amounts of Morning Glory…

…which this farmer was trying to combat with vats of weed killer

Adverts for albergues were very common on this stretch

and there were a couple of Caminho Pop-ups, providing refreshments and selos.

As we approached Viana do Castelo, we passed an impressive looking monastery and church – São Romão do Neiva.

There was construction work going on; it’ll be lovely when it’s finished. There was a Caminho innovation nearby

offering all sorts of things that might help the Pilgrim In Need (not just chocolate bars and water, but also plasters, electrolytes, rain gear – and Durex!). Opposite the monastery was the Capela da Senhora do Crasto, though getting to the Capela was a bit challenging,

and I considered taking it on

for only the briefest period.

We passed another Santiago church

the Igreja Matriz da Paróquia de São Tiago de Vila Nova de Anha. The keen of eye will already have spotted the brilliant white St. James in his niche under the cross, but Jane spotted something else as well.

In the stained glass window, we see Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the Moor-slayer, the legendary warrior representation of James, depicted as a knight on a white horse helping Christian armies defeat the Moors. This was the first time we’d seen this representation of St. James in this country. The legend says he miraculously appeared on a white horse with a raised sword during the mythical Battle of Clavijo in 844 AD to help King Ramiro I defeat Muslim forces. Historians agree that the battle and the miraculous intervention never happened; the story and imagery were invented centuries later during the medieval expansion of Christian kingdoms. Marketing, in short.

We were nearing Viana do Castelo, but first we had a final hill to climb – quite a steep one.

Of course, we got the benefit of great views as we breasted the rise,

and I also had a schoolboy grin at a signpost.

We could see Viana do Castelo, and shortly we could also see one of its best-known landmarks;

its iron bridge. We would have to cross that to get to our hotel.

The route down was, in places, steep and tricky, but then led to the road into the town and towards the bridge; and we could see another significant landmark, too;

high above the town is the Basilica of Santa Luzia. Impressive as it looks, I decided there and then that I wasn’t prepared to walk up to it.

The bridge, then.

The 563m long Eiffel Bridge is a double-deck iron bridge that spans the Lima River. Opened in 1878, it was designed by the firm of French engineer Gustave Eiffel (years before he built the eponymous Tower in Paris) to replace an earlier wooden bridge. The lower deck carries the Minho railway line while the upper deck serves car traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians.

Our hotel, the engagingly-titled Chocolate Factory,

was but a short walk from the bridge. It operated as a chocolate factory from 1914 for a century, but the building fell into disrepair when the company owning it moved on. It has since been redeveloped as a rather lovely boutique hotel. They don’t manufacture chocolate there any more, but they do do some final production work and sell chocolate in their own shop.

Our room was available, so we headed up for an immediate cup of tea to help us plan the rest of our time here, for Viana do Castelo is an interesting place. It was founded in 1258 by King Afonso III as a fishing settlement, flourished during the Age of Discoveries – its shipyards built vessels used in Atlantic exploration – and grew wealthy in the 16th-17th centuries through trade with Newfoundland (cod fishing) and colonial Brazil. In the 19th century the name was modified to distinguish it from many other Vianas, with “Castelo” referring to the 16th century Forte de Santiago da Barra, originally built in the late 16th century under Spanish Habsburg rule of Portugal to defend the harbour entrance.

Having set my face firmly against walking up to the Basilica, I was delighted when Jane told me that there was a funicular railway to take people up the hill; so we included that and the Cathedral as Things We Must See, and we went for a walk. Obviously. The town itself is handsome;

we passed the Igreja das Almas (Church of the Souls), which was the city’s first parish church

and has a Eucharistic Throne.

Honestly, you can’t move without stumbling across a Eucharistic Throne in these here parts.

We decided that we should make visiting the Basilica a priority – provided that the funicular was working and that it hadn’t had the same fate as others after the Lisbon disaster. So we walked out to it; it has a charming base station

which is managed very firmly by a lady who marshals people with great energy and charm; for there was a queue; not a long one, but enough to fill the confines of this very small base station.

Above the ticket office was a delightful azulejo of the Basilica.

One could peer up the line to see the car depart or arrive

The funicular, or The Elevador de Santa Luzia, to give its proper name, is rather more than a tourist lift: it was part of Viana do Castelo’s early-20th-century ambition to develop Monte de Santa Luzia as a destination in its own right. It started operation over a hundred years ago and is a very impressive piece of engineering. It climbs 160 metres over about 650 metres, with an average gradient of roughly 25%. Two cars operate as counterweights to one another: the descending car helps pull the ascending one, with the two meeting halfway.

Its 650-metre course makes it Portugal’s longest funicular. It takes about seven minutes from bottom to top, and debouches just beow the Basilica, which is a breathtaking building.

The building was constructed between 1904 and 1959 and is a striking blend of Neo-Byzantine, Neo-Romanesque, and Gothic revival elements, heavily inspired by the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris. It boasts the largest rose windows on the Iberian peninsula.

It wasn’t immediately possible to take lots of photos inside because there was a service going on, so we passed the time looking at the fabulous views over the city from the height of the Basilica.

Eventually we were able to walk around inside and get an eyeful of the interior.

I was particularly taken with this altar,

not because of the detail of the carving, which is exquisite, but because of the light playing on it from one of the three rose windows.

After we got back to the city, we took an early dinner in the Republic Square, where we had our first taste of franceshina, an utterly over the top take on a cheese and ham toastie invented in Porto, with added beef and sausage and served in a pool of spicy sauce. It was delicious, but gave us some insight into why there are so many people of ample girth in this country. After eating we wanted to visit the Cathedral, but there was, would you believe it, a service going on, so we couldn’t see inside it. We went back later, but they’d closed early. Grrrr!

Maybe we can see the inside tomorrow. We have to get to Ancora, which is either 16km or 19km away depending on whom you believe. We have another pleasant, sunny day in prospect, so there’s no rush to get out too early and I’m looking forward to another enjoyable day’s walking.

 

 

Day 28 – Balugães to Ponte de Lima: A good “Camino” day

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Thursday 24 September 2026 – Although the forecast temperature wasn’t that high – 27° – we decided to make a really early start anyway, as this would get us the 19km or so to Ponte de Lima with time to spare to allow for some Things To Do. Accordingly we found ourselves outside Casas do Rio, breakfasted and ready to walk at – yup – 0625.

This means that we had the chance to create lots of glorious dawn images which I can now smugly share with you (we did wonder if the particularly intense colours might be a result of the smoke from the fire I mentioned yesterday, which is still apparently active, although does not seem to be getting worse…)

We were reminded before too long of the task in front of us

and we enjoyed watching the countryside come awake as we walked along.

Although it was, frankly, a bit chilly, the white covering of the fields is not frost. It’s a lime-based dressing intended to reduce the acidity of the soil after the (largely corn or maize) crops had been harvested.

The whole day had an even stronger Camino vibe to it than yesterday; plenty of other pilgrims (including this lady,

who had gone for the Camino branding big time), plenty of pilgrim-related statuary,

some nice waymarking,

coffee stops at comfortable intervals (including this one, which was full of locals having their breakfast caffeine injection),

pilgrim-related items by the wayside,

and, towards Ponte de Lima, the (allegedly) only open Santiago Chapel on the Caminho Português,

with, outside it, a lovely azulejo

about, and I quote, “D. Teresa passing trought Correlha, Ponte de Lima, on pilgrimage…”. Shame about the typo, but she was the mother of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, so it is actually a matter of both pith and moment that she undertook the Caminho.

Although it was definitely chilly to start with, the weather was a delight for almost all of the walk, and we saw some appealing scenes along the way.

The medieval Ponte da Senhora das Neves

An unsual sight on the Caminhos – given a choice of directions, the correct one is downhill, for a change

An astonishing profusion of sweet chestnut windfalls lining a long stretch of road

A very pleasant walk, then, right up to within a kilometre of Ponte de Lima; we took a diversionary turn for a couple of important items, which extended the walk somewhat. The first thing we had to do was to address a serious issue: the impending lack of Earl Grey tea. Courtesy of the lovely Jessica, we still had some of Twinings Finest Earl Grey, but we could see a time when we wouldn’t. Knowing that her supply came from the Auchan at Coimbra, Jane had carefully researched Auchans en route and there’s one on the outskirts of Ponte de Lima, so we diverted – up hill and down dale – for about a quarter of an hour.

The best laid plans….. Not only did they not stock any Twinings, they didn’t have any Earl Grey at all!

We personfully swallowed our disappointment, and started to head off to the other Thing To Do when I spotted that there was a large Continente nearby. Continente, you’ll remember, was the source of our first emergency transfusion of Earl Grey, so we approached this one with hope in our hearts and – some success! Not Twinings, but Liptons; not perfect, but perfectly decent.

So now we only had one more task, which was to visit another Bordalo II which Jane had found out about. Another ten minutes took us to it, and…

my goodness! What a thing!

It’s a shame that fencing didn’t allow an entirely unrestricted view, but it’s an impressive sight, and well worth the detour.

Ten more minutes got us to our hotel, the InLima Hotel and Spa. We were early and our room wouldn’t be available for a couple of hours, so we left our backpacks at the hotel and walked the short distance to the river bank, where I got my first view of the bridge that gives the town its name.

We walked along towards the bridge and took lunch at one of the many restaurants that border the river. Then we went for a walk. Obviously.

There are a couple of sculptures by the river bank – local folk traditions

and a celebration of agricultural life.

The Torre de San Paolo is part of the original defensive walls of the city, here displaying a banner for a festival which we’ve just missed.

It also sports an azulejo

depicting the Legend of Cabração, a misunderstanding by Afonso Henrique’s troops who mistook a cloud of dust for oncoming enemy troops when actually it was caused by a herd of goats. Beside the azulejo is a more sober thing

flood markings, showing the level of flooding in the river and the year it happened.

We reached the bridge

and walked across it. From the bridge, one can see a couple of odd things, on left and right banks:

On one bank, a line of metal Roman soldiers stands at attention as if waiting to be called.
Across the river on the opposite bank, a statue depicts General Decimus Junius Brutus astride his horse, facing his troops. These commemorate the 138 BC legend telling of how the General  convinced his terrified legionaries to cross the Lima River, which they feared was the mythical River Lethe (the river of forgetfulness), by riding his horse across to the opposite bank safely. He then called out to his men individually by their first names to prove that his memory was completely intact, giving them the courage to cross. This legend is also commemorated by an azulejo on one of the town buildings.

The church on the other side of the bridge is the church of Santo Antonio.

Beside the church are various items of religious and Camino-y pith and moment, not the least of which is this bust of St. James himself.

Inside the church is (yet) another Eucharistic Throne;

we keep coming across them, despite their alleged banning by the Papacy.

Back over in the town, there are two churches of note. The Misericordia church was hosting the build up to a funeral, so we couldn’t look in, but the parish church

with its very elaborate portal

was open.

In the square by the church is a statue of a bull.

This honours the famous local Vaca das Cordas tradition, an open-air running of the bull that dates back to 1646 and takes place annually on the eve of Corpus Christi.

By the time we’d lunched and obviously walked, it was 3pm so we could get into our hotel room. The walk back took us along the Avenida dos Platanos,

a very pleasant stretch of riverside walk flanked by (Jane counted them) 88 glorious old London Plane trees, mostly planted in 1901 (we noticed a couple of young trees, obviously replacements). While Jane relaxed, I took the drone back to the bridge and whizzed it up for a couple of photos and a video.

The light was right for a couple of pictures of the town from the bridge, too – it’s an attractive place.

Jane had heard that the bridge was illuminated at night, so after dark we walked out to take a look. Indeed it was, although we both think that it should be possible to do a better job somehow.

We also noted that the parish church was lit up like a Christmas tree, presumably for the Feiras Novas just past.

10/10 for effort, but lower marks for artistic merit, we think. The plane trees looked good, though.

So, that was Ponte de Lima, a handsome town at the end of a good day’s walking. On the morrow, we plan to head back to the Coastal trail for the final days to the Spanish border and on to Santiago. I’ll regale you with all that in due course.

Day 27 – Barcelos to Balugães: Plan and reality coincide

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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.

A mobile fish shop (with a loud siren!)

A UK Government outpost?

Interestingly topiaried olive trees, which turned out to be an advert for a landscape gardening firm

Even at 10am, still some mist in the valleys

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.