Tag Archives: Santiago

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

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.

Camino Finisterre Day 13: Walkin’ back to Santiago, whoop-ah, oh yeah, yeah*

8 Replies

Tuesday 14 May 2024 – Whilst we had a reasonably comfortable stay, the Hotel Millan is not a place I would recommend; any better days it might once have seen are many, many days ago. So we weren’t tempted to linger after breakfast, and in any case the weather forecast made a prompt start seem a good idea; cloudy and showers were the order of the morning, with the prospect of rain in the afternoon.

We set off just after 0830 in light rain, retracing our steps to Santiago whence we started on May 2nd. We passed sights that I don’t remember from that walk, such as this dovecote

and some that I do, such as the impressive gates to the Pazo de Albariña,

which is some kind of a historical landmark.

The weather stayed gloomy, with occasional light showers, so when we walked through Ponte Maceira I was glad that we had seen it at its best on the way out to Finisterre. Nonetheless, I took a couple of photos, because it is a lovely village.

After Ponte Maceira, there is a longish climb up to Carballo, which is the high point of the day’s walk. (Coming the other way, you’ll remember, it’s also the high point after The Steep Bit, a decent example of the sort of mandatory component that makes Day One of any walk a bastard.) On the return leg back to Santiago it’s not so steep, and the ascent not so much, but it still tested my energy levels and, frankly, found them wanting. So I used photography to give me the excuse for some short rests on the way up. For example, there was a beautifully red horreo to be admired,

and some decent scenery

which held out the tantalising possibility that the rain would stop.

In Trasmonte, we had the courage to walk past the tempting Casa Pancho, as we hadn’t quite done the qualifying distance after which a coffee stop is permissible. I looked in at Trasmonte’s intriguing Fisterra Bovine World, where I got a chance at a better shot at one of their sheds.

This is apparently a two-year project whereby thirteen different bovine breeds from all over the world will be fed and raised under the Galician livestock system, using feed typical of the area based on native corn, to measure the effect of the Galician System on each breed. Crikey.

Trasmonte features some photogenic corners,

and just beyond the village we passed the high point, which is more or less marked by a fonte.

The path then goes down, as is not uncommon after high points, and, in the case of this path, it goes down quite steeply (had I already mentioned this, maybe?).

It’s interesting that Google describes this path as “mainly flat”. I’d hate to take on something that it describes as “a bit of a hill”. Whatever, as the sun was now shining more or less reliably, it made for some attractive scenes on the way down. It is a damp environment, as can be seen from the vast amounts of moss which adorn, well, pretty much everything.

At the bottom is a café called Bar O km 79, where we stopped for refreshments. I think its name stems from the distance from the bar to Finisterre. Whatever, a coffee was a welcome thing, and it meant that we were under shelter as a small spattering of rain swept through.

We pressed on

and it became clear that we were running into a stream of peregrinos who had set out that morning from Santiago.

It never became crowded with pilgrims, but the oncoming flow was steady and constant for several kilometres.

We passed another unusual horreo as we walked on.

It’s been noticeable that, starting around Negreira, the principal construction of the horreos has gone from entirely stone-built to stone-and-wood. This is a stone-and-wood one, as you can see, but the unusual thing about it is its base; typical horreos are mounted on stone “toadstools”, which serve to keep the rats at bay; this one simply has stone pillars, but of course there’s the ledge in place to make it impossible for rats to get at the riches within.

After a few more kilometres we came to our second stop, a bar called Os Arcos. Whilst we got ourselves outside beer and pizza, an amusing little cabaret played out before us, involving the delivery of large gas cylinders. With a huge din, this van pulled up.

Its mission was to deliver two full cylinders and take away two empties. It would have been cruel and ill-mannered to video the troubles the driver had in unshipping the bars which hold the cylinders in place, but it was funny to watch – and very noisy. It involved a lot of hitting things with spanners and other bits of metal before he could get the cylinders out. He correspondingly had trouble getting the bars back into place as well before he drove off. This video (if played with sound up) will give you some idea of the cacophony which surrounded this little vignette.

After resuming our journey, we passed a tulip tree in full bloom (something Jane tells me I’ve seen before, but not that I remember)

and the sun came out enough to make the scenery worth taking photos of.

The last of those is taken from the ascending path just a few kilometres from Santiago. Once again, I found it really hard work, even though it wasn’t all that steep; but we were rewarded at the top with our first sight of the iconic towers of Santiago Cathedral.

Slightly further on, one gets an even better view

and I was pleased to be able to see it whilst the sun was shining, something it wasn’t doing on our outbound walk.

The cathedral continued to dominate local streets as we made our way through the outskirts

and soon enough we were in the Plaza del Obradoiro

and shortly thereafter back at our hotel, the massive San Martin Pinero monastery building.

We’d walked the complete final stage today, covered 21km, and arrived in the sunshine, which was a nice way to finish our Camino Finisterre. It’s not been a classic achievement for us like completing the Camino Francés was last year – the weather and my digestive issues had intervened to make it a bit of a disjointed experience – but we still had a quiet sense of satisfaction.

What do I think of this Camino? I think it’s worth doing for anyone who has not visited Muxia and/or Cape Finisterre, which are both attractive, charismatic places, but probably less so for people who have visited these before. We found the endless eucalyptus plantations, and their aftermath (blasted earth and chewed-up trails) a bit tedious and depressing; it’s a shame that people’s livings depend on planting and harvesting this invasive species. The poor weather we had in places took some of the gilt off the gingerbread, for sure, although there’s a case to say that this is our fault for not having industrial-strength waterproofs with us.

That said, we’ve stayed in some great places – As Pias in Olveiroa, Casa de Balea in Corcubión and the excellent Hotel Semaforo at Cape Finisterre come immediately to mind – and the trip has got us walking again after a period where it was too difficult to get out and about. Assuming that Vueling don’t cock things up and ruin our journey home, we’ve had a pleasant couple of weeks, which of course included visiting A Coruña and Lugo; and We Will Be Back – our plans include taking on the Camino Portugues. As and when we undertake this journey – and all the others, of course – you can rest assured that I’ll be writing about our travels in these pages.

Hasta la próxima!

* Sorry about the title. Anyone younger than me will probably never have heard of Helen Shapiro, a teen star in the early 60s with a big voice and a big hit called “Walkin’ Back To Happiness”, which I, of course, had on my brain for the whole of today’s walk.

Santiago, Chile – cue queues

2 Replies

11th March 2018

We arrived in Santiago on schedule, after a relatively crash-free flight. BA acquitted themselves pretty well on punctuality, food and service, and they didn’t even mind that we were very nearly late because we forgot to get our foreign currency until absolutely the last moment.

During the flight I became concerned about potential problems clearing customs because the customs form instructs one to declare anything other than “normal baggage”, by which they mean (agricultural produce aside):

One video camera
One other camera
One tablet or PC
One “sound and image recorder and reproducer”, by which I assume they mean “iPod”

Since I had four cameras with me, I was worried that I might not emerge into the arrivals hall with all of them still in my possession. (By the way, I had deliberately and reluctantly decided to leave the drone at home exactly because of this possibility.)

So, we landed and queued:

to be able to leave the aeroplane (swanky sods in first class go first);
at passport control;
at the baggage carousel to collect bags;
and then, surprisingly, to clear customs, for which the queue was probably longer than for passport control, because every bag was X-rayed.

However, there were many people on hand to speed the queue and……the contents of my bags were completely ignored and we were free to go.

It actually took just an hour from landing to walking out into the arrivals area to find a complete absence of drivers waving a card with our name on it. But José turned up shortly and so we were smoothly transferred to our hotel, the Cumbres Lastarria, which, this being 11am, didn’t have a room ready for us. So, with four hours to kill, the obvious thing to do was to blunder about Santiago. The weather was conducive to this idea, being sunny, blue skies and mid-twenties. Tourism has its own rewards, sometimes.

This enabled us to find our final set of queues for the day, as we decided to visit Cerro San Cristóbal (a nearby and substantial hill recommended by a neighbour). It turned out that we were not the only people to have this idea, and so barely an hour later we were on a funicular railway creaking and clanking our way to the top. As we went up, it became increasingly clear that we would have a pretty spectacular view over the city:

And, while the view from the top was pretty spectacular,

being British, we had to hasten to join the next queue, for the gondola ride across and down the far side. To be honest, although the view from this cable car was pretty nice, I’m not entirely sure that it is worth the extra money. But you do get a view of Chile’s highest building, the Costanera centre (also, we’re told, worth a visit, as the view from the top is good – it’s 74 stories tall)

Whilst up the hill, the searing Chilean heat persuaded us that we should try a traditional drink, called Mote. Since this is nearer a meal than a drink, I can only hope that people don’t give me too much stick for publishing a photo of one. I suffer for my art:

On the subject of food, we indulged ourselves in some local dishes at El Galeón, a restaurant near the central market in Santiago. Reineta a la plancha is a grilled offering of Chilean sea bream, and Pastel de Choclo is not a chocolate tart, but a very nourishing (i.e. substantial) offering based on sweetcorn (which is called choclo around these parts) and chicken.

Our final set of queues came about the next day, as we endured the torturous city traffic with a very nice guide called Ronald Aylwin Lyon (Chilean, but of British heritage five generations before, and an occasional guide, since he has an alternate life as a pianist, composer, teacher and jazz musician). However, the day before had seen a new President, Sebastián Piñera, taking office, and the official celebrations meant the closing of several key roads in the city, and the ramifications mainly took the form of huge traffic jams. Eventually we abandoned motorised transport and walked about on foot, which enabled us to see the lovely architecture in the city’s Concha y Toro neighbourhood (yes, it’s named after the family who make the wine).

(I love the anachronism between the 18th-century Italian architecture and the cabling under the balconies)

although it’s clear that the local tendency for earthquakes means that those buildings which survive need bracing.

Uniquely, among all the various places we’re visiting on this junket (stay tuned, now), Santiago is the home of the brother of a neighbour. We went to visit him and had a very pleasant evening drinking wine (Chilean, of course) and talking about the country; this also afforded us the chance to explore how to use the local metro, which is very cheap and quite easy to use. The best thing to do is to get a “bip” card, a smart card which you can charge with money so that it allows you through the barriers with a cheerful “bip”.

As you walk about the city, among the humdrum graffiti (of which there is plenty, some of it with artistic merit), you can stumble across hugely colourful murals and other striking wall paintings.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016)

And we also walked around the downtown area where there was palpable excitement about the possibility of the new President passing a parade of many military bands, who had gathered for the occasion.

Around our hotel, in the Lastarria neighbourhood, there is some lovely mural art and architecture.

And that’s about it for the first instalment of our holiday adventure. I hope it gives you a flavour of how much we’ve enjoyed our short stay here, and stay tuned as we plunge south to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.