Tag Archives: Tourism

Day 3 – Vila Franca de Xira to Azambuja: cool, then hot

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Sunday 30 August 2026 – Today’s distance: 17.84km. Total so far: 59.27km

Today’s walk was never likely to be one for great inspiration, consisting largely, as it did, of following the railway north on a variety of walking surfaces. Jane was feeling somewhat better than yesterday, although not yet fully recovered, so we set out for another day, headed for Azambja, about 18km away. However, there was one departure from the norm of the previous days: it was cloudy and cool!

Indeed, we felt some drops of light rain on our faces as we walked, and there was reason to think that it had rained a bit recently.

We rejoined the Caminho

and carried on following the copious, variously staged and helpful waymarks that we passed on the way.

As I’ve mentioned before, our route runs concurrently, for the moment at least, with the Caminho de Fatima, which had some formal milestones dedicated to it,

but we also saw some guerilla activity from the Santiago camp, which made us grin.

The daubed yellow arrow is a significant presence on the other Caminos we’ve travelled as well as the formal markers; it was good to see it here, too.

The route was fairly dull – simple trudging along the various roads and paths – and the surroundings, by and large, were fairly industrial still.

We passed under a bridge which had a couple of mysteries attached to it: a simple cross, with the Portuguese for “faith” scribbled at its base;

and a stencilled sign next to it.

We didn’t realise it at the time, but it translates as “Pilgrims of the wheel bend but do not break”, a reference to those who undertake the Caminho on two wheels instead of two feet. In a strong (albeit at the time undetected) morphic resonance, just a short while before we saw this emblem, we’d been passed by a large bunch of cyclists

who lifted our spirits by, almost to a man, greeting us with “Bom Caminho”, having, I suppose, spotted our cockleshells. It was a lovely moment, and the sign of a slowly increasing recognition of the Caminho and us peregrinos.

The industrial landscape included what seems to be a storage yard for stackable container-based site offices

and a bus graveyard.

but in the spaces between stations on the railway, we began to see increasing signs that we were moving into a more rural environment. For example, there were aestivating snails in the roadside grasses

some actual livestock, the first, I think, that we’ve seen since departing Lisbon,

and, on the outskirts of a village, some allotments.

The village in question bade us welcome

and gave us hope that we might get a bit of secular uplift in the form of a coffee somewhere. No such luck, however – at 1030 on a Sunday morning, everything was closed and there weren’t any of local population to meet (bar one lass out running who greeted us cheerfully enough). What we did see, though, was another group of pilgrims, who were gathering themselves having, one assumes, taken some rest.  We were also in need of rest by this stage, and the town at least obligingly provided a convenient place for that,

although the view from it was not particularly bucolic.

Whilst we were there, the other pelegrino group came by and we established that they had started on the same day as we had, and were headed, like us, for Azambuja today. The chap we spoke to was Australian and was wearing a kilt, which could well be a very practical choice, given the warm weather.

As we exited the Vila Franca area, the landscape took another step towards the rural, and one could definitely get a sense of moving out into “the countryside”.

The next town also provided a place for us to take a bit of a rest.

Whilst we were there, another group of hikers came in and took their rest at a neighbouring table. I think they were a family group – four of them, likely parents and their two daughters – but they were kitted out with heavier gear than we were, so may well have been taking all their stuff with them. They weren’t Anglophone, so we didn’t get into conversation, but exchanged a cheery “Bom Caminho” as we left; another piece of evidence for increasing presence of peregrinos.

The town we were in, Vila Nova da Rainha, was pretty substantial,

but, like Vala do Carregado before it, was dead quiet. I was quite surprised that somewhere as substantial boasted just the one café, and that was closed, so we simply made our way through it. It clearly had a significant wartime miltary history, as shown by various exhibits as we passed.

Our route from there to our final destination lay clear before us – a strada bianca!, 

and the sun had come out by this stage so it was beginning to get quite hot. The forecast was for the temperature to be in the upper 20s, but we were out in the open and it felt somewhat hotter than that. We trudged on to the next station along the line, and decided that we should take a rest in the shade. The only seats in the shade were on the central platform and for a moment it looked like we were going to have to clamber up a non-trivial number of steps to get across, and then away from, that central platform; by this stage, that seemed like it would be sodding hard work. However, mirabile dictu, the station’s lifts were operational! (This is the exception from all the station lifts we’ve tried so far for the last couple of days). So we gladly availed ourselves of this unexpected benison and had a few more minutes of rest in the shade before carrying on.

Rather than go back on the rather dull dirt road we’d been on, we decided to cut over to the main road that led directly to the hotel, in the hope that there might be a shady side. There wasn’t, but at least it was a different kind of dull as we completed the last few kilometres to our hotel. One significant – and very noisy – piece of industrial kit we passed (belonging to Sugal, the producers of tomato concentrate and paste)

with its gleaming pipework and immaculate towers, made me wonder: do they employ someone with a mop and bucket to keep the pipework and all the other bits tidy? Because if they don’t, this is how they end up.

Anyway, this sort of philosophical musing almost overcame the dullness of toiling along the main road, until we caught sight of our hotel in the distance.

It’s the Ouro Hotel part of the “Black Bear” service station setup, behind the actual pumps

and its signage, as far as we are concerned, was inaccurate, as the restaurant was closed. Werl, it’s Sunday, innit? Our reception was somewhat lacklustre – it seems a shame to intrude on the privacy of these places – but our bags had arrived and our (spacious but basic) room was available, provided we didn’t mind hoiking our bags up a couple of flights of stairs. It’s an odd place, basically an overnight stop for business travellers I suppose, rather like the ones we’ve stayed at on previous nights, only without the mod cons and nowhere near so nice (luckily we’d packed a travel kettle). The reception décor is a bit bizarre

(that crystal lump in the corner is real!) and there’s a zero gravity massage chair

with a sign saying “for management use only”.

I had a comedy moment when I went into the snack bar and asked the lady behind the counter for some milk (which we needed for a cup of tea, of course). It took quite a while and lots of sign language to get across the idea that I wanted just cold milk; no, not hot; no, not with coffee. Anyway, I came away with enough for several cups of tea, and, apart from venturing back to the snack bar for erm, a snack, we retired for the rest of the day to plan for the forthcoming hikes.

While the weather has been really quite warm for the last couple of days, the area is shortly due for a heatwave, with temperatures forecast to rise as far as the 35-39°C range. With a couple of exceptions, we haven’t got any serious uphill work to do during the hot weather, but will still have to plan our days carefully, with very early starts – and if necessary, make use of a taxi or a train. We’re not proud – we want to enjoy ourselves, not kill ourselves. On that basis, it’s worth your while to keep an eye on these pages to see how we got on, particularly if schadenfreude is your thing. If the posts suddenly stop, then the weather will have got the better of me. But until then, I’ll do my best to keep you updated.

Day 2 – Santa Iria to Vila Franca de Xira. Another hot one.

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Saturday 29 August 2026 – Today’s distance: 21.90. Total so far: 41.43km

After her sterling efforts to walk from Lisbon despite her heavy cold, Jane had immediately fallen asleep after our arrival in Santa Iria yesterday, and continued to sleep reasonably well through the night. So we were both well rested in the morning, and Jane, although not yet well, felt sufficiently recovered to decide to take on the day’s walk. We took breakfast at the hotel – a decent spread – and set out at around 0840 into a day of bright sunshine, with temperatures of around 28°C forecast. We retraced our steps to the entrance to the boardwalk we’d walked on yesterday

and the fact that it was a weekend became very clear, with many people walking and cycling along in an “I’m taking exercise” kind of a way, rather than a “I’m walking to work” way.

As yesterday, the inland side of the boardwalk was an area of considerable industrial exploitation

but one feels well isolated. It’s a pleasant walk, and more so because the temperature hadn’t really climbed by this stage. We came to the end of the boardwalk, and entered a different park, one which stretched all the way to and past our destination for the day, Vila Franca de Xira.

Notably, the notice showed the first waymark we’d seen for a long while to the Caminho de Santiago (which is concurrent with another, the Caminho de Fatima, all the way to Santarém. The Camino de Fatima is a network of pilgrimage routes to the Sanctuary of Fatima, a sacred and popular pilgrimage place in Portugal, a small town 130 km north of Lisbon and 200 km south of Porto). From here on in, we saw regular and reliable waymarks for the Caminho de Santiago.

We also saw a less formal waymark – a cockleshell hanging on a bridge.

The shell – Coquille St, Jacques in French – is a symbol of the Apostle we British, courtesy of the translators of the Authorized Version, call St. James. You remember, from reading our first Camino blog, of course you do, that his name in Hebrew is nearer Jacob; Iago is the Spanish equivalent of of Jacob, so Santiago = St. James.

Anyhoo…

Ever since we left the industrial outskirts of central Lisbon, we’ve been benefiting from the development work of the riparian land beside the Tagus: Parque das Nações → Parque Papa Francisco → Ciclopedonal bridge over the Trancão → Percurso Ribeirinho de Loures, the long boardwalk over marshland. Now we entered the Parque Linear Ribeirinho do Estuário do Tejo; similar idea, but different underfoot (or bicycle tyre).

Delightfully, as well as yet more flamingoes, we saw a couple of Spoonbills.

Although not feverish, Jane was not feeling her best, and so we took a rest stop as soon as it presented itself after about 4km, at a place called Porto de Abrigo.

They didn’t seem particularly glad to see us but still took some money off us for a cold drink and a lukewarm coffee. We pressed on after a while, and the day began to warm up.

This was a stretch of the dreaded strada bianca, which is potentially very dull to walk along in the heat of the sun. However, in Italy, we were basically walking south, so had the sun in our faces; here we were walking north, with the sun behind us, which made it less oppressive.

And so we entered the Parque Linear Ribeirinho do Estuário do Tejo, which was another of the series of parks stretching north beside he Tagus from Lisbon. At first it was not so attractive, as it went past a wasteland.

Next on our walk was this.

The Baden-Powell Square. The reason for the name became clear soon, as this was right by the headquarters of the local scout group. There was another curio beside our route.

This is the mould they use for creating those tetrapod concrete constructions one sees, typically on beaches, as something to make the lives of any invaders just that bit more tricky. Then we were back on boardwalk,

This included a place for people to be able to sit and watch the local birdlife, of which there was plenty, including more flamingoes.

To folow the Caminho trail, we left the boardwalk to join a more conventional dirt track

with the inviting possibility of a coffee stop dangled in front of us.

The track led eventually to what looked like it might be the local jet fighter dealership,

but was actually the Aviation Museum at the next town, Alverca.

Apparently, Alverca has strong links to the aviation industry and this museum is part of a network of museums across the country dedicated to Portugal’s aviation history.

By this stage, Jane was flagging somewhat and so we needed to find a coffee stop. We flirted with the café at the station, but eventually settled for one in the town.

While Jane rested, I went off to a large Continente supermarket just down the road, in search for Earl Grey Tea. ChatGPT told me that this chain stocked it, and I had high hopes of finding Twinings finest Earl Grey there. Actually, what they had was Liptons. but, you know, any port in a storm and all that. So I bought rather too many boxes of it and we spent some jovial moments back in the café trying to find places to stuff these teabags. Then we carried on.

Alverca is a pleasant enough town, with places under trees for people to sit in the shade

and we saw that the fashion for patterns in the pavements is not limited to Lisbon.

We’d taken something of a detour from the official Caminho track in order to find the coffee stop, so our route onwards, to rejoin is a little further along, was along the main roads. At one stage, if you’d asked how it was going, I’d have replied

“OK so far”.

The walk along the road wasn’t particularly pleasant, but we didn’t actually get run over by any of the traffic, and we did pass an amazingly long pipeline going uphill

or possibly downhill, to a very industrial-looking cement works.

Eventually, we turned off the main road and entered another, quieter, town called Alhandra.

Jane, not in the best of moods, it must be said, was less than amused at my wondering where the famous Moorish palace was. Alhandra is a pleasant place

with some quirky bits that I didn’t fully understand

but mainly it led to a long shared pedestrian-and-bicycle track. This had various bits of artwork beside it

one of which I was intrigued to note included, in the background, some graffiti.

The reason for this became a little clearer when Jane pointed out the name of the artist

whose Insta name appears to be @vile_graffiti, which I find rather amusing.

At one stage the unrelenting sun gave way to a shady stretch, something we were both grateful for by this stage,

and I wondered what the little construction was on the right. It turned out to be a barbecue oven

which appeared to be being used by some guys fishing nearby,

presumably for their Saturday picnic.

We were passed by a couple of cyclists shortly thereafter, who greeted us with a cheery “Buen Camino” – the first people to have recognised what we’re doing since a chap outside the cathedral in Lisbon.

Looking more closely

I realised that one of them was sporting a cockleshell, as we were on our backpacks, and so she recognised us as being fellow peregrinos.

We reached the border of Vila Franca de Xira

at the same point as one got a view along the river to the town’s quite impressive bridge

but we still had a way to go to the town – and indeed thence a further couple of kilometres to our hotel. Jane told me that she was really in need of a rest somewhere in the shade, and so when we turned a corner to see

this rather pleasant little bar, it was a nice moment among the heat and toil of the day. It was very lively, with seemingly a number of the village locals all sitting round outside nattering to each other. I treated myself to a beer, which was so good I had to have another one, and then we moved off on our final push towards our hotel. First, we had to pass through the town’s municipal gardens, from which one could get a view of its rather lovely train station.


We could see our hotel in the distance from the road,

so when we eventually reached it

it was a great relief. Our room featured a kettle so we immediately got a chance to test the Liptons Earl Grey. I can report that it’s perfectly fine – not Twinings, but not bad. Jane was supposed to have sampled it, too, but she was too busy being asleep to do that. It had really been another tough day for her, poor love, and we can only hope that the worst of this cold has passed by the morrow.

She did recover enough for us to go down to the restaurant for a bite to eat; it was a buffet supper, and quite decent food, including the chance to have a decent salad with some vegetables, which our diet has been rather short of lately. And that was it for the day – we really weren’t up for explaoring the town, so headed back to our room to relax before bedtime.

The morrow holds more of the same – a trail that doesn’t stray too far from the banks of the Tagus and takes us to Azambjua. Garmin promises that it’s “only” 18.5km, but the sun will be shining and the temperature will be similar to today’s (I saw a thermometer outside the pharmacy in Alverca reading 31°C, but then it might just have been the pharmacists trying to drum up business by making people feel faint). So, we’ll take a checkpointon how Jane’s feeling and embark on the day accordingly. Check back later to see what we eventually got up to.

Day 1 – it begins: Lisbon to Santa Iria de Azoia

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Friday 28 August 2026 – And so our long trek starts. The official distance of the Caminho is 630km, and the chunk we addressed today was allegedly around the 18km mark. The alarm was set for 0600 so that we could take an early breakfast at the hotel. We managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, but it had become clear during yesterday that Jane was coming down with a cold, poor love. This didn’t help her night’s sleep, but anyway we got on with our morning routine as best we could, got our bags down to reception so that they could be collected and sent on to our destination today – Santa Iria de Azoia, a town up the Tagus River from Lisbon – and got some breakfast inside us. We had been burning through our stock of Twinings finest Earl Grey at an alarming rate and indeed had used half of it just in our time in Lisbon. My confidence in being able to find replacements in the shops had been entirely misplaced thus far – frankly, you’re lucky to find even English Breakfast in the supermarkets of Lisbon. Carlos, bless him, had given us some supplies, which were keeping us going; I just hope we can find some before too long.

We officially started our Caminho at 0845 in lovely sunny weather in front of the Cathedral

and cast about for a Caminho waymark which no less a source than John Brierley had told us was at the foot of some steps.  We eventually found it – just a small sticker on a lamppost, which is a bit anticlimactic.

We found another one not too far away

but these were the only waymarks we found for several kilometres. Had we been reliant on them to find our route, we would have been buggered; but of course we had our invaluable online map from Walk The Camino, so were never in danger of losing our way. Even with that we had to make a few ad hoc adjustments in the face of roadworks and other construction efforts going on.

One can understand why Porto is a more popular starting place than Lisbon for people doing a Caminho; the walk out through the capital’s largely industrial and almost entirely scruffy suburbs is not particularly uplifting to the spirit. This was pretty much in line with our expectations, so we simply got on with finding our way along our route, which bordered railway and port areas.

It wasn’t all grime and gloom. Among the tatty and grimy buildings there were a few things worth noting as we passed:  architectural touches;

an area where Fado was clearly a popular art form;

some large format street art;

Metropolitana – an artwork that shows the 18 municipalities of Lisbon coming together to create local symbolism. The yellow dress and cobalt blue lines are “gold on blue”, a Portuguese expression that defines the possibility of achieving an ideal situation. The earrings are the carnations of 25 of April, marking the Portuguese revolution

some buildings which were once handsome or might once again be;

The Tile Museum – labelled as “temporarily closed” but looking further downbeat than that

and generally an attempt to cheer things up a bit.

Our route took us past the very imposing Pantheon building

and also a particular artwork that Jane wanted to see (and make sure I’d seen, too).

The koala is one of several animals created aound Lisbon by Bordalo II, a  Portuguese street artist and self-described artivist. This installation is a great example of his typical work – large installations and murals made from recycled trash, with the intention of highlighting waste and over-consumption in our world today. It has a 3D element to it, as one can see when looking more from the side.

More of Bordalo later.

Other things we passed: a bizarre open shopfront;

a Romanesque arch leading counterintuitively to a view of gasometers;

and several imposing buildings which, despite appearances, are flourishing businesses.

We’d gone over 7km before we spotted our next Caminho waymark,

and it became clear at this point that we were moving out of the scruffy, industrialised suburbs, into an area of considerable redevelopment.

We were entering the Parque das Nações, the neighbourhood that emerged around the site, next to the River Tagus, where the 1998 World Expo was held. It was a complete change from the very industrial and rather shabby areas we’d been walking through thus far. Importantly, as we’d done 8km by this stage, there was a coffee stop, which suited us very nicely; I was feeling the need for a rest, and Jane, fighting her cold, was particularly ready to take a seat and some refreshment.

Coffee and pastries fortified us to carry on, and we headed for something that Jane, again, particularly wanted to see and to make sure I saw it, too. You approach it in a kind of “do you know what it is yet?” kind of a way

and eventually, it becomes clear that it’s another imposing piece by Bordalo II.

Isn’t it fabuous? An Iberian lynx, made entirely from rubbish and recycled materials – hard hats, lawn mowers, dustbin lids, you name it. An extraordinary piece of work.

There were other artworks on display around the Parque, such as this “paddling pool”,

and we came across another Caminho waymark – just the fourth since we started, and really not a very impressive attempt at one, either.

In the background one can see the Vasco de Gama Bridge, which at the time of its construction (just in time for the 1998 Expo) was the longest bridge in Europe at 17km.

We approached it along the waterfront, where the suspension part is most prominent.

(If you look carefully under the span on the left, you can see a small blue blob – that was pretty much our destination for the day, Santa Iria de Azoia.

Close to, the bridge is, unsusprisingly, pretty impressive

It’s officially some 17km long, if you include all the access roads, but the part that crosses the Tagus is about 10km long. From the river bank near the bridge, you can look back at another Expo landmark – the Vasco de Gama Tower.

The tower is 160m tall, and features the highest viewpoint in Portugal; the Myriad hotel is a later addition which opened in 2012. We actually ignored one possible attraction at the Parque, the gondola ride which runs long the waterfront towards the tower. But if we’d done that, we’d have missed the impact that the Lynx made, and so I think we made the correct decision not to ride it.

Vasco de Gama, as you probably already know, was a mariner, explorer and nobleman around the late 1400s and early 1500s. His discovery of the first direct maritime route between Europe and India via the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean from Malindi in Kenya to Kozhikode was to open up European exploration of, and commerce with, India, and is considered a landmark event and a turning point in world history. Carlos had given us to believe that he was a thug and not really an expert navigator, that his brother did all the hard work. It’s certainly true that he was capable of extreme violence if given the mandate for it; but he really was the master of a multi-vessel expedition fleet; yes, there were more experienced navigators in the fleet, but Vasco de Gama made some bold decisions which enabled his achievements and secured his place in history. His brother was involved with one of his expeditions, but wasn’t, as far as I can work out, the real navigation brains of the family.

Shortly after the bridge there’s a Caminho divergence point. The traditional route veers off left and goes a way inland, but recently a more direct route has opened up which stays beside the waters of the Tagus. Since doing the old route would add some 8km to our journey, we’d decided that we’d go for the riverside version. I’m glad we did, and not just for the shorter walk.

At first, I feared that we were in for another dose of the dreaded strada bianca which had made quite a lot of our Via Francigena route less than rewarding when we walked it in Italy a year ago

but when the path veered left, the new route took us over a new bridge, the Ponte Ciclopedonal do Trancão, which is a combined cycle and footbridge (you’ll have guessed that from the name, of course).

This leads to a boardwalk; I’d had a look at Google Maps and formed an impression of what this would be like that was entirely wrong. It’s not just a few planks laid down to make things easy for walkers (or even Walkers), but a significant piece of infrastructure called the Percurso Ribeirinho de Loures.

I might add that even though this is now recognised as a formal Caminho route, there’s no indication on any of the signage that this is so.

However, it’s a pleasant way of crossing the Tagus’s riparian marshland. Apart from anything else, there are occasional points where one can take a breather out of the worst of the direct sunshine, which Jane was particularly pleased to find.

The other thing (or things) we were particularly pleased to find were

flamingoes. Jane had heard that there were flamingoes by the river, but Carlos had rather given us to think we’d missed flamingo season.  He was emphatically wrong on that; there were hundreds of ’em

along with a host of other water-loving birds.

The walkway connects a number of parks along the banks of the Tagus, and is pleasant walking even in the heat of the direct sun; one feels out amidst nature, which is a Good Thing. There’s a lot of industrial stuff going on inland

(there’s that blue blob we first saw as we approached the bridge), but one feels somewhat isolated from it.

What was not such a Good Thing, though, was our uncertainty about exactly how to get off the blessed boardwalk. We knew that we had to cross a motorway and a railway to get to our hotel, but it was entirely not clear how we were supposed to do this. Google proposed a route that was sheer fantasy involving a bridge that simply isn’t there; Garmin proposed another one but that would add distance. In the end, and after only one fruitless excursion into the marshlands, we found the way out to the road network that led under the motorway and over the railway, and

there was our hotel! So we made haste and arrived there – just as the restaurant was closing for lunch. Never mind; after 19.5km, we were more interested in a mug of tea, which we managed to organise forthwith.

Jane was really ready to rest and relax at that point, but I took it upon myself to mount one more mission; the continuing search for stocks of Earl Grey. There was a Lidl next door to the hotel, so I confidently strode thither, sure that I would return with bags of teabags to replenish our store. I was in for a surprise; there was none! What is a man to do when an established store doesn’t have the right tea, eh? Never mind: the hunt goes on.

We return to the boardwalk for tomorrow’s route, which will take us further up the river to Vila Franca de Xira. Opinions differ about the length of the walk, which might be 17km or it might be 21. We don’t know right now. What does seem clear is that we will be largely without coffee stops, which is a shame, but I expect we’ll survive. Tune back in soon to find out, why don’t you?