Tag Archives: Portugal

Day 32 – Carminha to Vila Nova de Cerveira: Flat out easier

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Monday 28 September 2026 – Accuweather was still mentioning the possibility of thunderstorms in the morning, so we didn’t rush to leave, although of course we still needed to get our bags ready to be collected by 8am. The first struggle of the day was having a shower. Our hotel is called Design&Wine, and it has fallen down on both of those things: no white port (wine); and the bloody shower in our bathrooom (design). The whole point of design, surely, is to make something easily usable, and whoever designed the shower fitment needs a good talking-to on that point.

It really shouldn’t be necessary to include instructions for something that needs to be used with  a good degree of precision first thing in the morning.

Ridiculous!

Anyway, we managed to get ourselves showered and dressed and down for breakfast, which was a good meal, and then we relaxed for a while before setting out at about 10.30. We actually discovered that we had a choice of route. Our destination, like our start, bordered the river Minho. The formal Caminho route, as shown on our online map, led steeply up away from the river at a place called Lanhelas and followed a very wiggly path to Vila Nova de Cerveira: total distance, 15km. Looking at the map that Garmin Connect uses to plot its routes, and cross-checking with the Brierley book, showed us that there was a newish path that had been created that led all the way along the river bank between the towns – 13km and no steep uphill! Unsurprisingly, we opted for the latter.

As we departed, the weather looked rather grey

and we hoped, as we went along, that the weather that would be arriving 

would be more from the right hand side of the picture than the left. Spoiler alert: it was. 

We were part of a small knot of pilgrims making a start, and one of them had arranged her stuff in a way that  would have driven me mad if I’d had to carry it.

Look, I know it’s none of my business, but muttering about fellow pilgrims is part of the Camino experience. I mean, another thing: performative use of walking poles, like we saw in Vila Praia de Âncora:

four people, all able-bodied, on perfectly flat level ground, using walking poles. Apart from poncily announcing to the world, “Look! I am a Pilgrim!”, I can’t see any reason why those people were clicking their way along the prom.

Anyhoo…

We passed a chapel, Nossa Senhora da Ajuda

and crossed the railway at a level crossing, literally as the alarm sounded and the barriers came down, separating us from the group of pilgrims just behind us.

The train that came by was one of just two trains that passed in the four hours we were walking today; it’s not a busy line.

To start with, our route was simply along the road

which was not too bad, as the margin for pedestrians was quite wide. It took us to and through a neighbouring town, Seixas, which had several things to recommend it, not least of which was an interesting pastelaria called Dona Rabanada.

This turned out to be rather lovely; rabanada is basically the Portuguese name for French toast, and this pastelaria did a huge variety.

There were many points of interest in the town: a church dedicated to São Bento

with lovely painted ceilings above nave and altar;

something that looked a bit castley,

up on a terrace that gave us a decent view over the area;

a naked espigueiro;

a wind rose;

an extraordinary building, a palacete from 1911 and now a hotel, the Villa Idalina;

an unusually pointy parish church;

our very own tunnel under the railway to get back towards the river;

some attractive corners;

and the first of many pleasant riparian scenes.

In front of us was a pilgrim who obligingly gave me something more to mutter about.

Again, none of my bloody business, but I’m of the generation who think of tattoos as being the hallmarks of sailors and thugs.

Seixas gave way to Lanhelas and the Diverging Of The Ways:

off to the right – the formal Coastal route of the Caminho Português (and a steep uphill section); straight on, along the river, the “ecopista”. This is a smooth, well-constructed path, which leads past various facilities that have been set up, such as bicycle stands and picnic areas

exercise parks and fishermen’s storage cabins,

and more scenes of riparian delight.

There was a section which took us temporarily back along the road, but basically the path wound alongside the river all the way to our destination.

We got flagged down by one owner of a cabin who flattered Jane into accepting a selo from him, and who was then mightily impressed by the fact that we had started in Lisbon and had the stamps to prove it,

and we saw a farmer harvesting corn,

which gave us a bit of an insight into how it’s done.

Just outside Vila Nova de Cerveira is the rather aspirationally-named Mota Beach.

We spent a bit of time blundering about the outskirts of the town exploring whether a bar there was open (it wasn’t: closed Mondays) and then made our way past a couple of bizarre artworks,

a mural which likely has some local significance but is a closed book for visitors,

and the remains of a 17th-century fortress.

(Parenthetical note: I thought it might be interesting to fly the drone over the fortess to see what it looked like from the air. I consulted my Portuguese drone map and, guess what?

the Castela is just inside a restricted area which our accommodation is just outside. Rats!)

Anyhoo: we found the way to our accommodation, the Quinta de São Roque.

We have plenty of experience of turning up at overnight accommodation places to find them locked and deserted. This one, however, was different: it was open – and deserted. We could see our bags had arrived, which is always a comfort, so we dropped off our backpacks and found the nearest place that could offer us sustenance, a pastelaria just down the road. The variety of snacks on offer was fairly scant, but they had coffee, beer and friendly service, so we settled down to wait. We fell to chatting with a couple of Californian ladies also at the pastelaria, and it turned out that they were also waiting to check in at the same place. We went back some time after the official check-in time to find it still deserted, but eventually a lass called Ana turned up and checked us – and the two other couples waiting – in and showed us our room. The Quinta is a large place, full of charisma and traditional furnishings (but a bit short of plug-in points, you know how these things go).

Our room is lovely, old-fashioned and has the most wonderful mosaic in the bathroom floor.

There’s a sizeable garden with an espigueiro to match

and, as Jane found out, some persimmon trees with ripe fruit waiting to be picked and eaten.

If we want to take advantage of the breakfast here, we will have another relatively late departure. The temperature of the day is not a matter of concern, but there are impending wind and rain warnings which are; we hope we’ll be able to get to our destination before things get too blustery. We will head to Valença, where we have a rest day. Again, we could walk the formal Caminho route, with hills, or walk by the river – slightly longer, but a lot flatter. Guess which one we’ll take…..

 

 

Day 31 – Vila Praia de Âcora to Caminha: Short and sweet

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Sunday 27 September 2026 – Today’s walk was a short one because yesterday’s was shorter than it might have been. The “official” – Brierley – stage runs from Viana do Castelo to Caminha, which Brierley says is 27km but which according to my calculations would be 31km. I’m not saying we can’t cope with 31km in a day; I am saying that I’m not going to if there’s an alternative which allows us a little more time to take in the surroundings rather than just yomping the distance. That’s why we only had 21km to cover yesterday, which got us to Vila Praia de Âncora, and why we had only 10km to cover today to get us to Caminha, basically by walking along the coast.

Our weather prospects today were a little less pleasing than the low-20s and sunshine that we’ve enjoyed for the previous few days; there was actual rain forecast. Although we didn’t expect it to be anything more than a few drops, we still made sure that rain jackets were easily to hand in our backpacks. As we left Vila Praia de  Âncora,

passing the Anchor Fort

and a fishermen’s monument

which reads ​”Tribute from the People of Vila Praia de Âncora to their fishermen and their families, to the hardships at sea and the waiting on land, to the tears of grief and to the bread brought back with every return”, the weather was, indeed rather grey,

but the rain obligingly held off for our walk, bar a couple of drops. Vila Praia de Âncora is very much a seasidey holiday sort of place, and there are various leisure activities promoted near the shore; pétanque,

watching the tide roll in,

or walking the path by the shore, when all you have to do is dodge the cyclists, e-scooter maniacs and

pilgrims.

They even cater for swingers here.

Of course, there are the nods to the Caminho as well.

A short distance along the path is another of these chapels-with-a-front-porch (Romanesque style) that we’ve seen quite a few of over the last days.

This one is the The Santo Isidoro Chapel, from the 19th century. According to the info board outside it, the chapel holds, inter alia, a status of St. James, but Isidoor Open?

Nope. So we’ll never know. Jane peered through the keyhole

but couldn’t see any Santiago statue. The waymarking is a little confusing in places

which might result from the confluence at this point of the Litoral and Coastal routes. It makes no practical difference – whichever you choose basically parallels the coast all the way to Caminha. Looking north, one can see Spain.

There’s the small matter of the river Minho between us and that hill, and at Caminha it’s possible to take a ferry across; some pilgrims do that, but our route was going to keep us on the Portuguese side for a while yet. Looking to the headland to the left, one can make out a fort.

This one is on a pensinsula, Ponta da Ruiva, strategically placed to keep an eye on those Spanish bastards in case they try to invade again; presumably it’s another part of the chain of the fortifications including Âncora and Viana de Castelo.

About half way along the walk is the town of Moledo

and one can opt either to carry on the Litoral path, or to duck under the railway

and continue on the Coastal path. This is what we decided to do in the (vindicated) hope that there would be fewer pilgrims and the certainty that there would be fewer cyclists and scooterists.

Unsurprisingly, given the density of pilgrimage going by, there are entrepreneurial pop-ups;

this one, shoreline side, offered a variety of tat jewellery and other creations and one could get a selo here, too; and there was one on the road side, also.

We stopped for a coffee (OK, yes, pastries, too) in Moledo, and walking the road side took us past a few vignettes,

including this rather fine mansion, which is typically Portuguese in that it’s utterly impossible to tell whether it’s lived in or abandoned. Eventually road side and shoreline side coincide (see what I did there?) and there’s just a long straight road into Caminha.

Caminha, then. It might seem that its name is related to Caminho, similar to the Touguinha/Touginho we came across some days ago. But it isn’t. The place name Caminha is centuries older than its association with the pilgrim route. Caminha/Caminho have different etymological origins and the similarity is entirely coincidental. The Romans had a military presence here, and the settlement grew as a fishing village before King Afonso III built a new castle and fortifications around it in the 13th century. Caminha later prospered as a trading and shipbuilding town, and its old walled centre still shows that medieval layout. A place with history, then. It’s quite handsome as you walk in

though there is the usual sprinkling of scruffiness which may or may not indicate an abandoned building. This building was certainly not abandoned

A statue pays tribute to its fishing history.

I captured the photo below as a grab shot as we walked along;

I’m not sure if the lady is a peregrina walking her pony, or whether she’s just dressed like one. You decide.

The historic centre is small but well-formed

To the left in the photo above, the Clock Tower (Torre do Relógio) is the last remaining structure of the 13th-century town walls, built under Afonso III. Originally a defensive gate-tower guarding the southern entrance to the citadel, it only became known as the “clock tower” after a clock was installed in 1673. It stands guard over a square with plenty of opportunities for rest, relaxation and refreshment.

We looked in at our hotel, the invitingly-named Design and Wine Hotel, but we were a couple of hours too early for them to have a room available, so we wandered the town for a bit and then had lunch at the hotel.

Walking through the arch in the clockhouse takes one into the main historic street.

You can tell it’s historic because it’s very grey. Off to the side we saw a vintage, rather than historic sight;

an old Riley 4/72, a car from the ’60s.  This one had left-hand drive and so was clearly a naturalised automotive citizen, but as we’d walked in we’d been passed by a MG Midget in a fetching shade of blue which was a right-hand drive (i.e. UK spec) car. Coincidence? Or maybe there’s something of a collector living around these here parts?

At the bottom of this old street is the main church, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Assunção, and it’s a very impressive piece of masonry.

It stands inside the old walls where a smaller Romanesque chapel once stood. It was built between 1488 and 1556 entirely of local granite, with the typical northern-Portuguese three-nave plan, and wonderful 16th-century polychrome tiles above the arcades of the central nave.

The elaborately carved main portal, with Manueline stonework, is one of its highlights.

The cars parked outside it demonstrated that there was a mass going on, but it ended as we watched and so we were able to go inside for a short while after it had emptied.

The ceiling of the main nave is an impressive piece of carving,

and a side chapel is dedicated to seafarers

as you can tell from the ships suspended in it.

We were politely ushered out after a few minutes of our gawping, and so we headed back towards the hotel and lunch, via another church, the Igreja da Misericórdia,

which has – oh, goodness me! – a Eucharistic Throne!

The ceiling over the altar is very striking,

and the organ has some horizontal pipes,

and, I think, a pigeon nesting in it.

We had a decent lunch at the hotel, though, rather disappointingly for a hotel bearing its name, it didn’t have any white port in stock, so Jane had to make do with a tawny port & tonic, which was OK but not as good as the real thing. The food was good but it became clear that there were staff pressures; our waitress had to deal single-handedly with an entire dining room and the receptionist appeared to be rather harrassed. We eventually got into our room, which looks spiffy but closer examination shows it to be rather fading and in need of tarting up a bit. We’d seen all the things that were (a) worth seeing and (b) open, so relaxed for the rest of the day. As the afternoon came to a close, it was lovely to see and hear the sparrows and other small birds as they came and went and twittered about in the creeper festooning the walls of the hotel which face an inner garden. They were swooping right outside our window, presumably making preparations for roosting for the night.

We have a shortish – 15km – walk to do tomorrow, and Accuweather is making rumbling noises about thunderstorms in the morning. So we will probably make a later departure, once again with rain jackets close at hand. Come back in due course to find out if we got struck by lightning.

 

 

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.