Tag Archives: Walking

Day 5 – Walking again: Porto de Muge to Santarém. Tomatoes!

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Tuesday 1 September 2026 – Today’s distance: 19.3km. Total so far: 78.57km

Of course, the total so far is no longer any kind of accurate assessment of the total distance of the Caminho we’re walking, since we rode some of yesterday’s route rather than walking it. So the total so far will simply reflect what walking we’ve actually done. It will drift further away from a total Caminho distance over the coming days, and possibly weeks, as the weather dictates whether (see what I did there?) we should walk on any given day.

This morning was a good example of weather dictating. We knew, or at least were persuaded by reading the Accuweather website, that the forecast temperature for our destination today, Santarém, would be 30°C. Bearing in mind that the last part of the route is an uphill pull – the first of this Caminho – we wanted to avoid having to face this in the heat. So we decided that we should start early, as soon after 7am as we could.

The lovely chef at the Quinta da Marchanta made sure we had some breakfast ready at 7. It was a touch rudimentary, but nonetheless we appreciated her efforts to make sure we had some food, unlock the reception so we could leave our bags and provide us with a selo – we wouldn’t want to have passed a lovely place such as this without marking it in our pilgrim’s passports.

Before 0730, then, we were on the road, on a trail which would basically run parallel with the River Tagus all the way to our destination. Before too long, the path led us up on to a levée

which we walked along for quite a way, whilst it was a good path. We guessed that the levée must be a bulwark against river floods, hence there being boats apparently high and dry on the river (right-hand in the photo) side.

I was a bit puzzled by the presence of some dwellings on the same side as the boats; if it’s going to flood, aren’t they at risk? Anyway, we carried on as long as the path on top of the levée would let us. We got a good view of the fields on the left-hand (non-river) side as we walked, and the crops there included grape vines

and (later) peppers

and squash.

After a while the path descended back to the road, but for practically the whole of our walk the levée was a feature on our right-hand side. At first, it provided some welcome shade, which gradually dimished as the sun rose

but actually the first two-thirds of our walk were often in some kind of shade and certainly in cool temperatures. Every so often, we went up on the bank to see what was on the other side; in one case it was horses, who clearly thought I’d gone there to feed them.

Another interesting feature on the bank was a pilgims’ swing.

It was lovely to see it there, although there was no clue as to who had provided it. Around about the same time, we caught our first glimpse in the distance of today’s destination, Santarém, a hilltop city.

The main thing that provided interest and distraction for us was the agriculture happening on the left-hand side as we walked. The main crop was tomatoes. This is hardly surprising, as Sentarém is the heart of the Ribatejo region and the historical epicenter of Portugal’s massive industrial processed tomato industry*. We’d seen some evidence of this in the massive Sugal plant we’d passed on the way into Azambuja and the fields we’d glimpsed from our ride to Quinta da Marchanta. But for the majority of the rest of our walk, it was impossible to ignore the vast scale of what was going on. We were lucky to get some insight, as we went, into how things work, as it was clearly Tomato Harvesting Season.

Many fields had already been stripped of their crop

leaving a few uncollected specimens at the edges of fields. Many fields were ripening, pending being harvested.

Anyone who is interested in growing tomatoes in the UK will immediately notice several critical differences between the typical UK crop that’s tenderly nurtured, often in greenhouses, as it climbs and ripens, delivering fruit progressively over several weeks – if the buggers ever ripen in our pathetic sunshine, that is – and what we see here. The crop growing here stays low to the ground, ripens all at the same time and is easy, nay designed to be easy, to harvest in bulk. The resulting fruit are sweeter, have thicker skins (so that they can survive being close to the ground) and are destined exclusively for mass exploitation for industrial processing to pastes and concentrates used in, again, principally industrial, cooking.

Over the course of our walk, we saw several different facets of what is a critical part of the economy of the area. In a way, it’s massively centralised, with major processors, such as Sugal, producing the final products, whilst also being distributed, in a highly choreographed way, among smaller concerns who are taking their own individual harvests to feed into the maw of the big companies.

We’d seen harvested fields as well as those yet to be cropped. And we saw a couple of harvests actually going on. There seems to be a tomato-specific version of the Combine Harvester, which hoiks up the plants (and any fruit lying loose), shakes them around and spits the tomatoes (only the red ones, though) into a trailer pulled by an accompanying tractor.

These guys were making slow progress, but slightly further on was an operation that seemed to be going much more smoothly.

One trailer was nearly full, and behind it was another, waiting to become part of the process.

In some fields, we could clearly see the irrigation pipes that had been laid when the plants were plugged into the fields, back between March and May (staggered, to ensure a steady flow of ripe fruit). The plants are laid as plugs (rather than seeds) and the (miles and miles of) piping laid at the same time.

Like Combine Havesters, the harvesting machines seem not to be able to reach right to the edge of the fields, so there’s a manual process of picking edge growth and slinging it into the path of the machines that will come.

The track we were on became busier and busier with lorries taking the filled trailers off to be processed.

There was one quiet moment when we passed one chap who had climbed on to his trailer and appeared to be jettisoning unripe tomatoes.

Presumably the optical sorting of the harvester, designed to select only red tomatoes, had let him down.

The track we’d walked through all of this was a single strada bianca, something that we’d found really dull when we had to trudge along them in Italy. Today’s 13km of walking along similar dirt roads was very interesting and engaging as we tried to work out what was going on, and what the story was with fields like this

or this.

These, it seems, are harvested fields which have been cleared and prepared for sowing of cover crops for the winter, typically rye or legumes, to maintain the soil quality ahead of the next year’s crop rotation (maybe to corn or rice). The photo above appeared to be some kind of brassica.

Eventually we emerged onto a tarmac road on the outskirts of Santarém. We found a Mystery Object there.

Closer examination

showed that it was a historical flood marker, which explains the importance of the levée whose shade we had enjoyed for so much of our walk. There were clues that we were close to a major river.

By this stage – 13km – we were theoretically just three or four kilometres from our hotel, which was this side of the centre of Santarém. Google suggested a route (from which we could actually see our hotel)

which we followed and which turned out to be the same sort of fantasy as the exit it had suggested from the Santa Iria boardwalk. We didn’t know this at the time, so started along it, only to find this.

Channelling my inner contrarian, I decided we should ignore that, as Google asserted that it was only a few hundred feet to a road that would take us to our hotel.

Hah!

It was a bit of a climb, and then….

That was a message from the developers for the land (who appear to be building a hospital) to say “We don’t give a bugger about your contrariness: You. Shall. Not. Pass.”

So we meekly went back down and joined a (longer) road route. We were passed by a couple of peregrinos

who were doing the Fatima route and appeared to be worried that they’d missed a turn; we were able to reassure them that they were on the right route. Photographs don’t easily show gradient, but we were walking up a reasonably stiff incline and the temperature had risen perceptibly, so when we passed a lavadoiro which offered a seat in the shade

we stopped for a bit of a rest. We’d done 17.5km without a break by this stage, quite a lot of which was in the cooler part of the day, but this seemed a satisfactory distance to have covered without so much as a coffee or a pastel de nata, particularly as Jane was still recovering (nicely, as she does these things) from her cough. (Fingers crossed, I might have escaped catching this cold.)

We completed the drag up the hill to the town, past a statue celebrating the local version of bulfighting, which appears to involve unarmed men trying to grab the bull, literally, by the horns as part of subduing it,

and arrived at our hotel

slightly before our bags did.

The walk, therefore, had involved the first uphill work of any pith or moment of our Caminho so far

(spot the little bump where we’d hiked up the Google Fantasy track) and we were glad to have been able to cope with it in temperatures approaching 30°C.

The nice chap on reception found us a vacant room, despite us being a couple of hours before their official check-in time and we settled in to a spacious room, albeit one without a kettle. Luckily, the hotel could spare one, and it and our bags were available simultaneously within minutes, so we were able to have a nice cup of tea and a rest. Because we’d set out early, we’d arrived while the hotel was still serving lunch, so we took advantage of this before relaxing for the rest of the day.

Under normal circumstances, we’d have (obviously) gone out for a walk round the town, particularly as Santarém has a few Things To See. But the weather has stepped in to change the way we’re going to approach the next few days. The earler forecasts of a brutal 41°C peak have given way to one of just 37°, but even so; one of our days would be a long walk – 27km – and that kind of heat for that kind of walk could pose serious problems. So we’re going to spend the morning tomorrow exploring the town, move on by train, Uber, hook or crook to our next destination, Azinhaga, and similarly thence to the one after that, and so on whilst this heat wave passes. So the “total distance” travelled will, as I said earlier, drift away from an official Caminho distance. Come back in due course to find out more about the joys of Santarém and the Portuguese public transport infrastructure.

* This is something that has happened in our lifetimes, and not by accident. In 1957, the Portuguese government, seeking ways to address its balance of payments problems, wanted to exploit Portugal’s natural answer to California’s Central Valley. A small conglomerate of entrepreneurs drove a pivot from piecemeal production of traditional tomato variants into the massive, mechanised industry we see today – Europe’s third largest and the world’s fourth largest producer of processed tomato products.

Day 4 – Azambuja and Porto de Muge: From the ridiculous to the sublime

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Monday August 31 – The observant among you will note the lack of a running total of our distance travelled on this Caminho. This is because we didn’t walk today; Jane may be a trooper but she’s not stoopid, and was worried that her cough was developing into a chest infection. We both thought it was worth checking in at a local pharmacy rather than risking finding out during a walk – in 30°C heat and constant sunshine – that we’d taken on too much. So, much as we relished the prospect of leaving the fairly ghastly Hotel Ouro, we hung fire so that we could visit a pharmacy. (To be fair to the hotel, the old-fashioned bathroom did deliver a decent shower once one had stepped into the bath, and the towels were of a decent size and fluffiness.)

The breakfast arrangement was to pick up a voucher at the reception which gave us a meal at the snack bar next door. It was not a generous selection, but there was some fruit, some pastries and a coffee machine, which set us the poser: did we want milk with coffee (bottom left), or coffee with milk (top right)?

Milk with coffee appeared to deliver the nearest to a flat white; ChatGPT tells me that “garoto” is an understood Portuguese term for a small coffee with milk. The sooner this country gets to grips with the idea of a flat white, the better, I say. That and Earl Grey tea.

After the rudimentary breakfast, we went for a walk into town, and discovered that Azambuja is rather a nice place – by and large well-maintained and apparently interested in making a favourable impression on visitors. There are two pharmacies, and the first one – Da Silva, a large, modern and impressive place – dispensed something to help Jane with the cough she’s been struggling with.

To get to the main street, one passes the bull ring

which is still actively in use, having (according to ChatGPT) hosted a Corrida as recently as May this year. (They don’t kill the bull in the ring, but that doesn’t mean that the outcome is usually in the bull’s best interests, by the way.)

The main drag is handsome

and there are some attractive buildings,

as well as some clearly with both a history and charm.

but our interest (pharmacy aside) was principally the church, which rated not only an icon on our personalised online map, but also a mention in Brierley. The exterior is plain enough

and features a pillory outside. Inside, it’s quite sumptuous

with a very ornate altar piece built around a mulit-tiered Eucharistic throne which, as any fule kno, is an Iberian Baroque special – an elevated platform on which the monstrance is displayed for public adoration.

The walls are extravagantly and completely tiled

with panels featuring the Stations of the Cross.

There wasn’t however, anywhere we could see that offered us a selo – a stamp for our pilgrim passports. Outside the church was an azulejo

which is very much in line with the town’s pedigree, if that’s the word, in bull fighting and horse riding. Generally, efforts have been made to keep the place looking cheerful

although some pieces are beginning to suffer.

As midday approached, we checked out of the hotel, whose receptionist told us about the taxi rank outside the station, so we hied ourselves thither – to see the sole taxi drive away as we approached. We had arranged with today’s accommodation that we would get there between 12.30 and 1pm, so we needed transport. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I whistled up my Uber app and found that there was a driver just six minutes away who was prepared to take us on to Porto de Muge. (You see, Guy – we can do the Uber thing, just choose not to almost all of the time 😉.)

I’m typically oblivious of anything in my surroundings not of immediate and practical concern to me, but Jane had noticed, over the preceding couple of days, that there were a lot of tomatoes strewn around the streets, like this, for example.

As we made our way to the station, we noticed several large lorries go by

presumably headed for the Sugal tomato paste factory down the road. And as we rode towards Porto de Muge in our Uber, we saw the extent of the tomato crops around here, which is huge – stretching to the horizon on both sides of the road in places, and (strangely to our eyes) being grown without supports. Apparently they are specific thicker-skinned varieties which grow to a certain size, ripen at roughly the same time, and can be mechanically harvested.

So, Marcio Emanuel delivered us to the door of the Quinta da Marchanta, whose staff had been very proactively in contact already during the day. A more extreme contrast between two places couldn’t easily be found – in the Ouro Hotel, the receptionist could hardly be bothered to put down her pastry to check us in, but here, we were greeted and shown round by the lovely Kim. Although the restaurant here is normally closed on a Monday, they had arranged for us to take a pilgrim’s lunch laid on specially for us, and provided us with a sandwich for supper; because we are planning to leave very early tomorrow to try to avoid the worst of the heat of the day they will provide an early breakfast for us; and, best of all, there’s a dedicated tea station, with kettle and

Twinings finest Earl Grey tea! There couldn’t be a better demonstration of the pedigree of this excellent place as far as I’m concerned (Ouro Hotel’s breakfast couldn’t even muster English Breakfast tea – pah!).

After our lunch, as we were walking round and admiring the place, who should turn up but the three Aussie (Tasmanian) peregrinos we’d seen en route to Azambuja. Jerry is the chap’s name; he’s there with his missus and friend.

The Quinta is well worth looking round; very attractively laid out, both outside

and in.

Our room has an extensive balcony overlooking the complex and we were able to completely relax for the rest of the day. This is the sort of place that makes us wish we had more than one night here. But, sadly, we don’t. We have to get to Santarém tomorrow, which is (we are told) about 16km away, and the forecast temperature is once again likely to climb to 30°C in the afternoon, hence our desire to leave betimes. We are hopeful that Jane’s cold and cough will have improved to the point where four or five hours walking (unrelieved, sad to say, by any coffee stops) can be contemplated; also that what I fear is a burgeoning cold that I’m now developing won’t pose a problem. We’ll see. Beyond tomorrow, the temperatures forecast are brutal, rising to 41°C (that’s 106°F in old money) and continuing in the thirties thereafter. When we walked the Camino Francés, we managed to cope with such temperatures by starting very early, and maybe we’ll be able to do so again. Or maybe we will continue with the Uber strategy. Stay tuned over the next days to find out.

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.