Tag Archives: Tourism

Day 14 – from Condeixa to Coimbra: a full-on day

2 Replies

Thursday 10 September 2026 – Long Post Alert!!!

Our destination today was the University city of Coimbra, some 20km away – about 5 hours’ walk. As before, we decided to leave very early so that we would mostly be walking before the worst heat of the day. As before, we got out of the hotel at around 0625 when, as before, they turned the streets lights off with a click at 0630, which meant photographing this statue gave rise to a less than satisfactory result.

Before we left for Portugal, I (as so many others) had been re-reading The Odyssey by Homer, with its frankly tedious repetitions about rosy fingered dawn. But you kind of get the idea when you see it for yourself.

We walked along the road out of Condeixa, past this house with its neat kitchen garden,

this impressively-tiled shrine,

and a goat

before reaching the outskirts of the small town of Cernache, where we passed a very engaging alojamento catering for pilgrims on their way either to Fatima or Santiago – Casa Amazonia. We first noticed the ducks  and geese

and then the place itself, which is remarkably architected.

One assumes it’s run by person or persons from South America, probably Brazil. Uniquely decorated, it was.

As we headed into the village, it seemed that the trail was going in every direction except the one we needed it to, which is, of course, northwards. At one stage we were squinting into the rising sun; at others it was behind us

and providing views across a countryside over which the sun had yet to burn away the overnight mist.

Walking into Cernache, we passed several instances where the scale of things seemed to have got out of kilter: a picnic table set up that would seat an entire banquet;

and a row of houses with enormously tall and thin doors.

We got to the town’s main drag

with a plan that said we would get coffee at a bar at the far end of the street. As we walked along, we saw a few people in yellow hi-vis tabards and Jane thought she saw the word “Fatima” written on the back of them. There were a couple outside our coffee stop

but that, it turns out, was because there wasn’t room inside for them because of all the other buggers in yellow hi-vis.

Bloody pilgrims, eh?

In the face of this queue we backtracked through the town to where I thought we’d seen another place open, and had coffee there, though their selection of pastry was limited. Even after we got going again, the town was still crawling with yellow hi-vis;

how they’re going to get on as a pilgrimage group that large is anybody’s guess, but good luck to them. I suppose.

After the town, our track went off the road

and on to a forestry track, which we followed for quite some distance. We passed a mystery object

which (if Google Lens is to be believed) is an air release valve, part of a water supply system that allows air that has built up in water pipes to be released to avoid blockage (just like bleeding a radiator). One area was lined with notices

announcing an area reserved for the training of hunting dogs. Apparently (according to ChatGPt, anyway) hunting is likely for anything from songbirds through wild rabbits to boar and deer, though I can’t see dogs being much help for hunting songbirds.

We followed an undulating path, occasionally rough underfoot,

and, as we got high in the hills, passed a lonely goatherd.

As we walked along, we could hear an unearthly grinding and squealing, which got louder and louder; but we could see no machinery that might be making such a noise. Eventually we sussed the source;

the anemometers on top of the pylon. I’ve never come across this before.

Emerging from the track onto the road, we had one of those inevitable Caminho-type route characteristics; if there’s a choice of route, the Caminho always goes uphill.

We toiled up the hill – one of several non-trivial and rather unexpected uphill pulls on the day – to get a nice view in the general direction of, but not including, Coim9bra’s centre.

We had been quite high up and therefore now had to go down again (under, not on, the motorway, I’m glad to say) and we saw that there had once been an aqueduct, the Macomboa Aqueduct.

It seemed to me to be a commentary on modern life that The Powers That Be had prioritised the flow of traffic over the flow of water, but actually it never worked because of design errors, and was anyway partially destroyed by Napoleon’s troops, so cutting a road through it didn’t cause any ructions.  We walked close enough to get quite a good look at it.

before heading into the area called Santa Clara, where, after another couple of kilometres, we got our first clear view of the centre of Coimbra.

On our route down into Coimbra centre, we passed one of the City’s significant buildings that we particularly wanted to explore, the Mosteiro de Santa Clara-a-Nova, the new monastery of Santa Clara (to which the ill-fated aqueduct had originally been intended to supply water).

The old monastery had been founded in the early 14th century near the river Mondego by Queen Isabel of Portugal, wife of King Dinis I. The queen was greatly admired during and after her life for her pious and generous nature, and was canonised in the 17th century. Queen/Saint Isabel was a great admirer of Santa Clara (who was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and who founded the “Poor Clares”, a mendicant order of nuns who lived in extreme poverty and almost complete isolation), and hence dedicated the monastery to Santa Clara. Unfortunately the monastery was prone to flooding, being too near the river; a new monastery was built in the 17th and 18th Century to replace the old one, and all the nuns as well as the Gothic tombs of Queen Elizabeth and other royal princesses were transferred to the new monastery, therefore called “Santa Clara-a-Nova”.

All this history was vouchsafed to us by a nice young man who gave us a short, erm, briefing about the place once we’d bought tickets. Inside, the place is very impressive, albeit not well lit.

At the altar end is a statue of Santa Clara and the silver tomb constructed for Queen Isabel.

The silver tomb contains her “uncorrupted” body, transferred from her original stone tomb, which is also housed in the building.

Along the side of the tomb we see above are representations of kings and queens; on the other, of Poor Clares. There’s a reliquary containing various pieces, including a pendant

which contains a hair from the Queen.

The monastery also has a very fine cloister.

Moving on from the new monastery towards the city centre, we passed the ruins of the old one.

Ironically, the crane you can see apparently poking out of its roof is actually on the site of the new monastery.

To get to the city centre, one crosses the river Mondego, and this gives a very fine view of the university hill.

We would get to the university later in the day, but first we had to get to our hotel, via a few Things To See.

We passed many handsome buildings as we headed for our hotel,

a couple of significant murals,

and the church of Santiago,

which, despite its imposing façade, is very plain inside.

Another very imposing building is the Santa Cruz monastery.

inside which is some very impressive tiling

and an even more impressive organ. No sniggering at the back there!

In the main chapel at the far end

lie the tombs of the first two kings of Portugal. One can get close to them by paying €5 and entering via the Sacristy, which now does service as an art gallery.

Out the back is another very fine cloister.

whose walls feature some lovely tiling.

Having spent time in these fine buildings, we hied ourselves to our hotel in time for the Assignation I mentioned in my previous entry. This was with a lady, Jessica, with whom I worked in my days as a Tech PR flack, and who has now moved to live in Portugal. It was lovely to meet her again and catch up, and also to be the beneficiaries of her special powers: she knows where to buy Twinings finest Earl Grey tea, something that has been beyond us ever since we arrived in Portugal. The lovely lady brought many, many teabags with her, possibly even enough to see us out for the rest of our time in the Iberian peninsula. A wonderful side-effect of a very pleasant re-encounter.

Jessica sadly had to leave us after only an hour or so, but our time in Coimbra was not done, oh dear me no. We still had to go and explore the University, which has a significant history.

Coimbra is one of Portugal’s oldest cities. It was an important Roman settlement (Aeminium), later became a Moorish stronghold, and after the Christian Reconquest in 1064 grew into a major medieval city – it even served as Portugal’s capital in the 12th–13th centuries.
Its university was founded in 1290 as the Estudo Geral (“General Study”), by royal charter of King Dinis – initially based in Lisbon, not Coimbra. Over the next two centuries it shuttled back and forth between the two cities four times (the name stayed the same throughout; only its location changed) before finally settling permanently in Coimbra in 1537, based in the old royal palace on the hill above the city. It became the country’s only university for centuries and a center of Portuguese intellectual and legal life, with a distinctive academic culture (black capes, fado de Coimbra, and its own traditions separate from Lisbon’s). The historic campus and library (the ornate Joanina Library) were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

Operative words in that description are “hill” and “above”, so we steeled ourselves for something of a climb. And, I have to say, it’s a bugger. You toil a way up a steep street, and then have to climb 114 really very chunky steps. Then, oh goodness me, a little more walking up a steep street and

another 77 of the bloody things. We had to get to the top of these by 6pm, as this was our timed entry into the hallowed halls of The Library, which is the only part of the university which imposes this restriction. We waited a few minutes outside, and then were allowed inside to… wait a little more. The rooms we waited in were part of the University Prison – at one time it ran its own judiciary. Then we were let into the Intermediate Floor which features – surprise! – a lot of books.

The final stage of this rather po-faced exercise was to let us in – ten minutes only! – to the Noble Floor, with a strict verboten on taking photos or video. Absolutely not, you inderstand?

It’s very opulently appointed (although badly lit, hence the poor quality of the photos above) and I suppose is quite impressive, although I couldn’t, obvs, spend time with carefully composed shots to show you. The stricture on taking photos really annoyed me, as I could see no good reason for it – our time slot was for only a small group so it’s not as if there would be a forest of selfie sticks and mobile phones. That’s why I thought “sod ’em” and took a couple of illicit shots – and I was not the only one doing this, by the way.

Apparently bats live in some hidden nook or other on this floor and are welcome, as they control insects which would otherwise damage the books. Before the bats come out at night, cloth has to be laid on all the tables for their protection. The tables, not the bats.

One exits from the Library visit on to the main square.

and thence you can visit other parts of the University, if you have bought entry tickets, which, of course, Jane had ensured we had with us. The first room we visited was St. Michael’s Chapel, which one enters by knocking on the door and waiting to be let in. But it’s worth it.

There’s another stupendous organ (hush, now!) and a remarkable Eucharistic Throne.

It’s also possible to step inside the Royal Palace to see rooms such as the Armoury

and the Great Hall of Acts

which used to be the throne room of the Royal Palace and is now the scene for a variety of high academic processes. Its ceiling, like so many we’ve seen today, is astonishing.

The route back down from the Royal Palace to the main square takes one past a handy view of the city’s fortress cathedral

which time didn’t permit us to see inside; but we reackon we’d given the major buildings of the city centre a pretty good showing, so hightailed it back to the hotel…

… in time to go straight to bed, because we needed to make another early start the next day to, once again, beat the heat. But I’ve taken up quite enough of your time for the moment, so I’ll tell you all about the next leg of our Caminho some other time.

 

 

Day 13 – From Zambujal to Condeixa: Roman in the gloamin’

4 Replies

Wednesday 9 September 2026 – Despite the weather forecasts, I was in for a bit of a surprise as we opened our door to go round to the house for breakfast. It was drizzling! The Met Office had opined that any drizzle should have stopped by then, and Accuweather stoutly maintained that there was 0% chance of precipitation. Anyway, the reality was low cloud and a light drizzle to greet us. Lara had laid out breakfast for us, with the usual fodder – yoghurt, granola, bread – and also some blueberry jam that had been made by her father, who apparently spends a lot of time making jam and sends a lot of it over to her from his home in northern Portugal. In general conversation, the subject of Marmite came up and, to my delight, she actually had some! She confessed that she didn’t know how to use it, so we were able to do a bit of cross-cultural information exchange, and got Marmite on toast out of it, which was a good start to the day.

We only had a dozen or so kilometres to cover today, so were able to start out relatively late, meaning in daylight, albeit in the remnants of the drizzle and low cloud.

The Caminho led us along the Rua de Santiago

past the church which had been the souce of the carillon we’d been regaled with the previous day.

Was that an image of Sant Iago himself to the left of the cross?

Nope. To our delight, it “struck” 8 as we passed by (despite the clock showing seven minutes past twelve), so we could listen once more, spellbound, to the tune that was belted out of the loudspeaker you can see in the photo above.

The road soon became track, leading past olive groves

and other crops, which in some cases appear to have been abandoned.

After about half an hour, we came to an arresting sight by the path,

which led not to an “authentic pilgrim experience” (to quote James Nesbitt’s character in the Camino film “The Way”), but to an experience with an authentic pilgrim. It turned out to be part of a pilgrim garden, Refúgio das Cabaças, the site where three pilgrims had made their permanent home and opened up the site for passing souls,

offering refreshments for a donativo.

On the site they had built a chapel, dedicated to Saint Jacinta,

and many other diverting pieces of decor

and an idea of what we still had to cover.

We treated ourselves to a coffee and a look round, and, when we went to say thank you and goodbye, one of the site’s pilgrims came out of his hut and read us some blessing text, which was sweet of him – and then said he would accompany us some way along the Caminho, as he needed to stretch his legs!

We had his company (and that of his dog) for the next half hour, as he pointed out various things beside the road as we walked: a shrine to Sant Iago

which he said was Spanish and inauthentic, as hats hadn’t been invented when the saint was around; the spiritual power of reversed numbers above lintels

to protect the inhabitants against evil spirits; an azulejo

bearing a reproduction of a picture painted by Pier Maria Baldi in 1669, marking the time members of the famous Medici family from Italy walked the Caminho.

He had been living at the site since 2019, having decided that he needed to step away from the snares and delusions of his previous life (we never found out exactly what that was – might he have been a corporate man?).

He greeted people as we went by, so was clearly a well-known presence. After a while it began to get a bit weird, as he started becoming more and more philosophical – and really in a calm way – about the errors of humanity and particularly Muslims. Jane, who has some knowledge of the Christian canon, did a marvellous job of engaging with him and indulging him in his more trenchant comments.

The trail left the road for a track which was quite narrow at times,

passed a litter of terminally cute puppies

and eventually led past a tiny hamlet, where he took his leave of us with another blessing.

A remarkable interlude.

By this stage we were only an hour or so away from Condeixa and so we carried on, along a forestry trail where it was clear that Eucalyptus were making a takeover bid.

It didn’t look like a planned planting, but there were plenty of the trees around, including some quite mature ones. Some of them had done that appealingly colourful peeling of the bark that we’d seen in Australia.

At one point we could see Condeixa

before plunging down a path that meant, of course, that we would have to, erm, plunge back up again.

This took us to the day’s main Thing To Do: explore the Roman ruins of Conimbriga, one of Portugal’s largest and most spectacularly preserved Roman settlements. Originally a Celtic hill-fort dating back to the 9th century BC, it was occupied by Roman troops in 139 BC and flourished under Emperor Augustus into a wealthy urban center complete with a forum, baths, an amphitheatre, and opulent aristocratic villas famous for their vibrant, intact mosaics. As the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the city built massive defensive walls, but it was ultimately ransacked by Germanic Suevi invaders in 468 AD, forcing its citizens to flee to nearby Aeminium (modern-day Coimbra). Archaeological interest began in 1873, and the site was declared a National Monument in 1910. Large-scale, systematic excavations launched in 1929, leading to the preservation of its world-class mosaics and the establishment of the on-site National Museum. Remarkably, despite over a century of study, only about 10 percent of Conímbriga has been excavated, leaving the vast majority of the ancient city still buried. Surrounding private land continues to be acquired by the state to broaden the search and launch new exploratory excavations.

We bought tickets – a bargain at €5 each for old people – and (after taking coffee at the handy site café, of course) walked around the site, which is quite extensive.

As you go in, at first blush it looks just like yer average Roman ruins,

but then you see your first mosaic and (if you have any soul) are captivated. The mosaics are phenomenal!

I don’t know the extent to which these have survived or been restored, but, whatever, the sight is amazing.

The buildings themselves are mere remnants of what there once was, like the forum

an aqueduct,

and the private houses. There are two striking examples. One is the house of Cantaber, an important aristocrat of Conímbriga in the 5th century, which is the biggest private residence in the city, with an area of 35090 square feet – 3260 square metres, about three-quarters of an acre, which is a substantial size for a house. It was built in the last quarter of the first century;

above is about the middle third of this huge house.

Another remarkable house is under cover, and is called the House of Fountains.

Again, the mosaics in this house are wonderful to see.

There is also a museum on site, which has a vast array of implements and accoutrements that have come to light in the excavation. It also has a model which shows how astonishing the Forum and its associated Basilica would have been.

I’ve attempted to put together a video which gives an idea of the sweep of the place and the extent of the mosaics.

We spent well over an hour on the site, and it was time well spent. When we left, we discovered that the grey skies and low cloud had cleared, the sun was shining – and it was beginning to get quite warm. All we then had to do was to get ourselves the relatively short distance to our hotel, which we managed with only one minor Map-Reality disconnect. We walked into Condeixa past the town hall

with its Manueline pillory.

Next door is a church, the Igreja de Santa Cristina

which has some decorative tiling on its spire

and in its calm interior

a low-key Eucharistic Throne?

We soon arrived at our hotel, the very posh Conimbriga Hotel do Paço,

where our room wasn’t yet available, but a Nice Lunch in the restaurant was. After lunch we ensconced ourselves in our room for the rest of the day to relax, gather ourselves and plan for the morrow.

Tomorrow’s destination is Coimbra, “the Oxford of Portugal”, which has an impressive University presence among its other attractions. It’s going to be a busy day, and a hot one, so we will probably set out early to cover as much of the ground as we can as early as we can. We also have An Assignation, but you’ll have to read the next entry to find out about that.

 

 

Day 12 – Walking again (!). From Ansião to Zambujal: Another good day

3 Replies

Tuesday 8 September 2026 – Although the forecast for today was cooler than yesterday, and with less direct sunshine, we took no chances and laid plans to leave early. Because Ansiturismo’s earliest breakfast offering was 0730, perforce we had to make our own arrangements. We had walked to a supermarket yesterday evening (a big one, but still no Earl Grey!) and purchased some yoghurt, bread and fruit, so Jane prepared banana-and-honey rolls to follow our yoghurt.

Thus fortified, we started out at 0625 (again!).

It got a lot darker at 0630 when all the street lamps went off with a click, so I was glad we had a torch with us, but by about 0645 it was light enough to see where we were going. Tarmac road soon gave way to a track

which was the first, again, of many different surfaces we walked on today, sometimes tarmac, sometimes the dreaded strada bianca, sometimes tricky surfaces underfoot.

At the outskirts of Ansião, we could see, in the distance, the undulating countryside we’d be crossing in the 20-odd kilometres to our next accommodation, Casa das Raposas, in Zambujal (I’m having difficulty typing that name – it keeps coming out as Zumba gal). We had been trying to find out actually what this was – Google Maps opines that it’s a four-star hotel, but we had our doubts, particularly since the only meal they offered us was a vegetarian dinner. Anyway, undulating coutryside….

The walking was pleasant, but there was little out of the ordinary about the countryside. The first town we reached was Netos, some 50 minutes later. In many of the villages we’ve passed, it’s actually been difficult to detect signs of life – impossible to tell whether it’s deserted or disused.  Netos had clear signs of inhabitation, though,

with lots of cars parked around. Despite the evidence of inhabitation, it was very, very quiet, and we walked through without seeing a soul.  What we did see, though, was this fascinating object.

At first I thought this was a model of an aeroplane, but it’s a sewing machine, of course. And lovingly executed, with great attention to detail.

The plaque in front of it, translated, reads

“This piece, which paraded through the village of Ansião in 2018 as part of the People’s Allegorical Parade, represents a traditional sewing machine and pays homage to the seamstresses of this region.

“It was placed in this location on May 22, 2022.”

After Netos we entered woodland, which showed signs of being exploited for Eucalyptus

It’s nowhere (yet!) near the extent of the exploitation we saw on the Camino Finisterre. Since it’s an invasive species, we can only hope that lessons are learned from the Spanish experience.

The outskirts of the next village, Casais da Granja, made it look, frankly, abandoned

but as we passed through, we could see that the centre of the village was inhabited; why there is that area of desolation, we don’t know. One house demanded to be photographed.

As we left the village, though, there was more evidence of abandonment;

polytunnels just left to rot. We moved on. Much of the countryside is given over to grape vines, and we saw some being worked on.

There doesn’t seem to be large-scale exploitation of vines, but several small parcels

and we saw several small olive groves as we went along, too.

A high point of our walk, both literally and figuratively, would be Alvorge. To get there, we went through another tiny village called Junqueira, which had a well.

It’s operational, in the sense that you can turn the handle and (amid a lot of squealing and grinding) see a pump going up and down; but we never discovered whether it was actually functional in the sense of actually delivering water of any kind. No matter. We walked on, past some junior Eucalyptus

and reached Alvorge, which has many points of charm: some attractive houses;

no fewer than two town names;

a pleasant church garden, with a nice, upright cross in it;

and the church to which it’s attached, which emphatically does not have a nice upright cross.

However, the thing we were particularly interested in was

a coffee stop, which was welcome for a rest and, frankly, to warm up a bit – it had been very cool, with a chilly breeze thus far in the day. We treated ourselves to a couple of cups of coffee each whilst seeing a bit of village life unfold before us. The large gentleman in the pink shirt with his back to us was clearly the Town Bore, and kept up a virtual monologue for almost the whole time we were there, in what was certainly a loud voice and quite often what sounded like a hectoring tone, too. Mind, it’s difficult to interpret other languages, and for me Portuguese is, among the Romance languages, the most difficult to decipher, since it sounds more like Russian than a southern European language. Jane exchanged a glance and a grin with one of the long-suffering ladies who were being subjected to this verbal onslaught as we left.

Mirabile dictu, we emerged into scattered warm sunshine! I’ve described the trail we had to follow as “undulating”, and for this, the first half of our walk, it had undulated much more up than down, leaving us over 100m higher than our start – and with a decent view over the surrounding countryside.

The route after undulated down again more than up, starting with a steep descent down an escarpment out of the village.

At the bottom, when we reached the road, we passed a decent-looking picnic area,

a spectacularly disused lavadouro,

and the ruins of the Torre da Ladeia

which were largely unremarkable, but had a very impressive coat of arms over what was presumably once the front door.

From there we could see back up to Alvorge

and if you look carefully you can make out the bent cross. One wonders how that happened….

Some of the olive groves we passed were being underplanted with other crops – in this case vines.

We walked on, across fairly rough tracks which led, as you can see in the distance, to another surprisingly tough uphill pull.

We noted various things as we passed: emerging asphodel flowers;

a stonechat, which obligingly held still for a portrait;

and many different ways of deterring birds from crops, from shiny things flapping in the breeze

to ingenious arrangements of sections of oil barrel, which banged and clanged about as the wind blew them around.

Then, after a relatively tedious stretch of strada bianca in increasingly hot sunshine, we caught sight of our destination, Zambujal.

Before long we were outside our accommodation, Casa das Raposas,

which was, of course, locked, as the owner was away and we were well in advance of the official check-in time. I looked for a way in on one side of the building without luck, but Jane found another entrance and a bell, which she rang. A friendly but emphatically not Anglophone cleaner answered and helped our cause by calling the owner and handing her mobile to Jane. It took a while, but eventually we had a few minutes in the garden before the cleaner finished preparing our room and showed us there. It’s a rather lovely room; large, comfortable and equipped with kettle and fridge – well, a complete kitchenette, actually.

Jane’s conversation with the owners was not helped by the church bells, which rang out the half hour while she was having difficulty with a less than perfect mobile signal.  Here’s how they sounded for the hour at 5pm.

The place is owned and run by Lara and Sergio, and Lara came to make us welcome when she arrived. She also provided a splendid dinner for us and we spent a good while chatting with her before she gave us the house special selo, which is the featured image for this entry.

We have only a short walk tomorrow – somewhere between 10 and 14 km depending on how we plan the day. We only have to get to Condeixa-a-Nova, but there are Things To See there of great pith and moment, so it will be good to have the luxury of extra time spent not walking. Exactly what we get up to, you’ll have to come back to these pages to find out.