Tag Archives: Walking

Day 19 – Oliveira de Azeméis to Malaposta: Hat trick

2 Replies

Tuesday 15 September 2026 – As mentioned yesterday, the relatively short distance (17km) to Malaposta and the relatively low (27°C) temperature forecast meant that we felt we could risk a relatively late start. The alarm still went off at 0600, which is relatively late, but still absolutely early in my book. The hotel provided a substantial breakfast and gave me a chance to take a photo of the magnificent azulejo on the wall.

We departed at around 0745, which gave us an insight into how come the main streets are so nice and clean,

but also reminded us that it’s difficult at times to distinguish between street art and general decay, although, in this case, I think we saw both.

It being around 8am, the roads were busy with both cars and people as the working day started. We passed one place where folk in blue overalls were exiting as well as apparently waiting to be be let in – a change of shift, I infer.

Our track led us downhill and across an unmarked level crossing, which we treated with our usual insouciance, only to hear, seconds after we’d crossed, a train go through;

so the line isn’t as deserted as I’d thought. Emerging onto the main street of the next village, Santiago de Riba-Ul, I was able to showcase another entry in my occasional catalogue of “times when marketing has failed to get the international consequences of a name right”.

The village features a Santiago Church

so we looked in,

noted the romanticised visualisation of the saint on the wall by the altar

but got a selo anyway. Almost next door to the church is the Santiago pastelaria,

so we looked in there as well, for a swift coffee.

It was quite noisy and busy with what looked like grandmothers looking after grandkids, presumably while mum went out to work; a nice cheerful atmosphere, albeit a high decibel count.

The Caminho trail took us off the tarmac onto a cobbled track

leading under an arch through which we could see an espigueiro.

Shortly after, we walked past a house with interesting architecture in the roof;

It almost looked as if, at the press of a button, the top level would quietly fold down into the lower level, leaving just a faint outline in the tiles.

The path led past an unusual plantation.

Jane identified this as Paulownia, or foxglove tree, which has attractive blue/lilac flowers. It would appear that this is being grown systematically, though on the other side of the path the eucalyptus seemed to be growing wild.

We crossed the railway again, at another informal crossing near Salgueiro.

At first blush, I identified the sign as being the body count of pelegrinos on the crossing; it is, rather, advice to cross in small groups rather than a single mass of people.

We were, at this point, on the Rua Ponte Medieval, so guess what happened next?

It’s more than just a restored medieval bridge, though. There’s a cockleshell shrine on the wall leading to the bridge,

and other small shrines built on or in the wall.

Our pilgrim, he of the authentic experience a few days ago, called them alminhas, which means “little souls”. These small monuments, found on roads, rural paths and in villages throughout Portugal, serve as places for prayers to the souls in purgatory and for the protection of pilgrims. Some alminhas feature images of saints, religious paintings, or crosses, while others are empty, with space to light candles and leave alms.

Nearby the river was a strange installation.

At first, I thought it was some kind of water pumping station, but all it appeared to be doing was to use an Archimedes Screw to lift water which then promptly fell back down again. In the end, by scrutinising the notices on it, we think that it was part of a sewage processing plant – of a design I’d never come across before.

On a hillside, we saw a large monastery, which is linked to the Igreja de São Martinho de Cucujães, and which overlooks the valley of the river we’d just crossed.

Quite soon, we came to realise that we ourselves would be climbing out of the valley;

another of the myriad occasions where, at a fork in the road, the Caminho always leads uphill. And it really was pretty steep: in the interests of keeping you accurately informed, dear reader, I used my phone’s protractor app to measure the road,

doing which I think came as a bit of a surprise to the lady walking her dog up the hill behind me. When we got to the top, we could then see directly across to the monastery church,

and could see the emblem on the side marking 2025 as a Holy Year (when St. James’s Day falls on a Sunday).

Almost all of the rest of the walk was through successive conurbations – we’re getting close to the big city of Porto, and it’s no surprise that population density rises as one approaches.

We were approaching the town of São João da Madeira, and passed some fancy houses, often adorned with some kind of art.

The pavements were not easy to walk on; they were rough and every so often there was a small pile of the tiles used in the mosaic footpaths here.

Since many of these little piles were by a rough patch where a new pipe was emerging, I guess that they’re awaiting replacement now that the pipe has been fitted; and it gave us to wonder: what’s the story with these Portuguese paths? Where do the pieces come from? How are they made? And how are the pavements laid?

Paging Google Gemini….

“Portugal’s iconic pavements with their designs using black and white stones (calçada portuguesa artistica) are a national, artisanal product sourced primarily from the limestone-rich Serras de Aire e Candeeiros region (the white ones) and volcanic basalt quarries in the islands (the black ones). The production is a hybrid process: while heavy machinery extracts and slices the raw rock, the individual 5-to-7 cm cubes are historically split by hand, and the intricate geometric mosaics are strictly laid by hand by master artisans called calceteiros. Because it takes 200 to 400 individual cubes to pave just one square meter, Portugal produces an estimated 150 million to 200 million stones annually from hundreds of thousands of tons of limestone. However, production is heavily bottlenecked by a critical shortage of labour. Due to the grueling nature of the trade, the number of active master pavers has plummeted, forcing cities to reserve this handcrafted tradition mostly for historic restoration and high-profile public squares.

“The ubiquitous, plain white sidewalks (calçada simples as opposed to artistica) found throughout every Portuguese town are made of the same domestic limestone and laid using the same manual methods as the artistic versions. The main difference lies in the sourcing of the stones: because they are strictly functional, these monochrome cubes are mass-produced and split using mechanical hydraulic presses at the quarries rather than split by hand. The installation, though, remains entirely manual. Today, this everyday white paving faces a major national backlash. Municipalities are struggling to maintain them due to the severe shortage of skilled labour. Consequently, many towns are replacing these basic white sidewalks with modern concrete or flat stone slabs, preserving hand-laid calçada exclusively for historic centres.”

So there.

São João da Madeira is a city and we spent the next several kilometres walking through it. It has an English School

and a handsome Mother Church

which we looked inside for a few seconds

but left quickly, as we thought there might be an Adoration going on. Opposite is a striking building

which I think is just a residence; but it’s nicely appointed.

We stopped in the town centre for a coffee and to watch the fountain, which is one of these which has various patterns playing across it.

It was amusing to watch the pigeons using it as a jacuzzi.

São João is also noted for having a most unusual thing: a Hat Museum.

In the 19th century, São João da Madeira grew very strongly, due in major part to the development of the hat industry there. J. Gomes de Pinho was the first empressario to establish a hat factory in 1802, but it was António José de Oliveira Júnior who would drive the local industry with his establishment in 1892 of the first fur hat factory. It would eventually become one of the major symbols of São João da Madeira’s new economy, the Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria Lda. Totally mechanized by the early 19th century, it would become the largest factory in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the 19th century.

In the early years of the 20th century the felt industry grew in Portugal, and during the 1940s the production of fur and felt production was centralized in the factories of the area, with the establishment of the Cortadoria Nacional do Pêlo, which was nationalized in 1945. In 1946, 1775 people worked in the hat-making industry in Portugal, with 1212 located in São João da Madeira.

Since we were not in a rush to beat the heat, we looked in to what we thought might be quite an intriguing place.

The receptionist, a charming lady, charged us the princely sum of €1.50 each for entry, and gave us a quick introduction to the museum. It spreads across three floors and goes through all the machinery and processes used in the creation of hats. It’s a surprisingly violent processes, requiring steam, acids, other poisonous substances and a load of pummeling to get from fur or wool to something robust that you can wear on your head. At first, the processes were manual but it became hugely mechanised and there’s a display of the many sorts of machinery that was used for the various hat-making processes.

Colouring the hats was akin to an art

and finishing them – shaping the crown and the rim – was an act of master craftmanship.

The industry had significant political clout, too. Between the late 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, workers in the hat-making industry were at the heart of a vast movement of collective organisation. They set up trade associations, workers’ newspapers,
cooperatives and mutual support networks. They took part in strikes, demonstrations and other forms of struggle, seeking better wages, fairer working hours and more dignified living conditions. Their history thus intersects with the very formation of the Portuguese labour movement.

In the main part of the building, there was a lovely display of hundreds of hats.

Seeing it made me feel like I’d walked into a painting by Magritte or similar. Across the way is a section of the museum dedicated to modern craftmanship; it was displaying work by a Dutch artist, Saar Snoek, who (a) would only work with fibre that had been sheared (rather than from an animal which was killed and skinned) and (b) treated the making of hats as art rather than couture, as you can see from the sort of remarkable creations she’d made.

Walking on from São João da Madeira took us through Arrifana (the destination for the longer stage than we were prepared to do from Albergaria, you’ll no doubt remember). It has a Mother Church (Igreja Matriz),

several handsome buildings and decorative flourishes,

(some of which had a courageous architect)

some decidedly unfancy buildings

and someone setting up in business who I believe must have come from England;

surely a local couldn’t have perpetrated this?

After Arrifana, the conurbations continued to run together into a seamless whole.

The area lacks, one might say, rural charm; but that’s what you get in the vicinity of cities, and it didn’t detract from the pleasure of walking in the knowledge that we’re making progress. Indeed, that progress was underlined as we reached Godinha and got a distance update for the remainder of our Caminho.

There’s an Interesting Church here, too.

We had toiled up a couple of reasonably substantial hills by this stage, and all we had to do was to rejoin the N1 for the last couple of kilometres to Malaposta. If you remember, I’d wondered if Malaposta was the opposite of Bemposta, through which we’d walked yesterday. On researching this, I find the answer is “no”. Bemposta translates as “Well-placed” and is not uncommon as a place name across Portugal, apparently; and Malaposta was to do with the mail service – it was the name associated with the old postal coaching system and comes from the French malle-poste.

Walking the N1 is not the most romantic part of the Caminho, I must say, although the road leads past some very abundant patches of pampas grass.

But it also runs by sights such as this burnt-out building

and something that I feel is in some ways symptomatic of what one sees in Portugal;

lots of new building going on, but things are not maintained properly and end up looking very scruffy.

Before too long, we reached our hotel,

the Pedra Bela, which is OK as a staging post on our way into Porto. The receptionist was extremely not Anglophone, and the restaurant is closed on Tuesdays, but the room seems comfortable enough and our bags had arrived OK. We drank tea and ate some of our snacks until the time that the nearest restaurant, A Roda da Lage, opened and then walked the seven minutes or so to it.

 

It was a good meal in slightly bizarre circumstances. It wasn’t quite clear which was the entrance; we were the only customers and so there was a lot of hovering by the nice lass who was looking after us; and a lot of food was being put on plates and taken somewhere else. But it was a good value meal and they had both G&T and Port & Tonic, which is Jane’s fave at the moment. So, inner persons fed, we tottered back to the hotel and rested up for the remainder of the day.

We have an even shorter walk tomorrow – less than 15km, to get to Grijo, our final overnight before reaching Porto, where we have a couple of rest days. The day should be warm but not unbearably so, and thus we expect to take a hotel breakfast and get under way once again in daylight rather than stumbling around in the dark. I’ll let you know how we got on in due course.

Day 18 – Albergaria-a-Velha to Oliveira de Azeméis: Nice to be walking again

5 Replies

Monday 14 September 2026 – With just 20km to do today, and the temperature not forecast to go over 30°C until midday, an early start seemed to be a good way to get the best out of the walk. I set the alarm for 0500, but luckily woke up anyway at exactly 0500, as some technical hitch with my phone had rendered its alarm silent; it was doing its best, poor thing, but it was the other side of the bedroom and behind a curtain so I can’t blame it for not waking me. (Or, spookily, perhaps it did; perhaps my symbiosis with my phone is more powerful than I realise?)

Anyhoo…

I had expected to have some kind of faux-cheery interaction with one or more of the other guests of the place, but when we got down to the lounge at quarter to six, it was silent and everyone seemed to have taken their breakfasts already. So we ate what we fancied of our breakfast pack, left as promised, and were on the road at, oh goodness me, 0625. Being able to appreciate the dawn colours seems to be becoming a bit of a habit.

Before long, the road gave way to a track

and we carried on, past a Memorial to Nossa Senhora do Socorro

and on to another forestry track, where Eucalyptus once again figured strongly, although not, as far as we could tell, in a programmatic way.

The track led us eventually back on to the major N1 road at Albergaria’s new town, Albergaria-a-Nova, where we passed an albergue which gave us a useful status check on our walk.

So: we’re over half way there, then!

The N1 is not a rewarding road to walk on, as it features a lot of heavy traffic, but we trudged along, passing the occasional attractive tile work

(I hesitate to call it an azulejo, as it hasn’t much blue in it); an attractive modern church

at which Jane scored us another selo; a modern-looking lavodouro

and a place which said it was “from pilgrims for pilgrims”

but which was closed, so not much use for us pilgrims, then. For the last couple of these photos, we’d actually diverged from the N1 onto a parallel minor road. We thought we saw another misty morning scene

until the drifting smell told us that this was smoke from a fire, which, of course, we hoped was intentional. By this stage we’d done about 10km, i.e. half the day’s walking and so it was jolly well time for a coffee. There was a place back on the N1 so we cut back to it.

It was a bit transport caff-y, but we got a decent hot coffee and a chocolate salami each, which I hoped would boost my somewhat flagging energy levels (it seemed to work, by the way). Then we carried on along the N1 and rejoined the Caminho a bit further up, crossing the railway at a level crossing to do so, and then walking alongside the actual railway track for a while.

I have to say that I’m rather glad it’s a very, very minor rail route, as a passing train might have meant us making an undignified dive down the bank to avoid being flattened.

Most of the rest of the walk was on quiet roads: past an attractively decorated school in Curval;

seeing a very substantial mansion in the middle distance;

passing another, seemingly less well-used lavadouro;

and a distinctive church, the Igreja Matriz do Pinheiro da Bemposta.

Although we didn’t pass this church directly, we did walk through Pinheiro de Bemposta, which has some handsome buildings

and then reached a bridge crossing the N1.

The peregrina you can see on the bridge is actually the 86-year old Louise from Pennsylvania, who had started out very early this morning and was walking at her own steady pace. We had a quick chat with her as she rested in the outskirts of the old village of Bemposta. She would be walking a longer distance than us, a 30km stage to Arrifana; clearly made of sterner stuff than us.

The old village of Bemposta has a considerable history of which the village is proud; the handsome buildings in the short stretch of its main street are described in info boards which give a description of the distinctive characteristics of each of the buildings.

The 15th Century Casa de Bemposta

The ‘Paços do Concelho’ building used to be the headquarters of the administrative and judicial power, probably built in the 18th Century. I hasten to add that we bypassed the beer truck, even though it was open; a beer at 10am didn’t seem somehow right

The Casa do Arco. It looks disused, but houses a dwelling

The last photo is unidentified by info board, but I thought it was a handsome one.

Exiting Bemposta through the arch gave us a good view of the distant countryside

though actually a less uplifting one of the nearer landscape.

The rest of our walk was through various conurbations before got to our destination.  We went down through Besteiros, with more pointy roof features

some attractive tilework

and this handsome place

with its symbolic guard cat on the lych gate.

Our track took us back perilously close to the railway again,

and down a pleasant cobbled path

where we got our first view of Oliveira de Azeméis at the top of the hill we would eventually have to climb.

The track went over a small river. On the bridge was Senhor da Ponte, Our Lord of the Bridge.

We had to cross the railway again, via a very informal route

which was pretty much at the start of the final climb towards Oliveira de Azeméis. It was a 100m ascent in about 1.5km, so not desperately steep, but the weather was hot enough by now – around 30°C – that I for one was exceedingly glad when I finally tottered to the top. We then had a short walk through the town, which is a handsome place, nicely kept tidy, with some striking buildings

touches of prettification

and a generally refined air along the main street.

Fine houses such as those above were built at the end of the 19th century by former emigrants returning with new-found wealth from Brazil; they are known as casas dos brasileiros.

Our hotel, the Hotel Dighton,

had many things to recommend it, such as air-conditioning, a room they already had available for us and a restaurant that would serve lunch until 3pm. Our bags hadn’t yet arrived, but it was anyway lovely to be able to relax for a while before going for lunch. And it was a Nice Lunch; a Very Nice Lunch. It’s a very old school, quite posh restaurant, with proper service (they’d pour one’s wine for one, if one drank wine), linen napkins, 70s-tastic music, a splendid azulejo and a chef in charge of a great open-fire grill

who assiduously attended to his grill, fanning it to keep it Just So.

He produced a wonderful grouper steak for Jane and some very succulent lamb for me, and we really enjoyed it; for me, probably the best meal I’ve had so far in Portugal – and there have been some good ones.

After lunch (and the eventual arrival of our suitcases) we thought we’d take a short walk around the town. It has a huge variety of churches, but the Mother Church is a fine building

with an impressive azulejo-surrounded portal.

Inside

there is a very substantial Eucharistic Throne.

It’s slightly odd that we keep finding these thrones when they’re something that the Papacy banned centuries ago and which we’d thought were kept largely out of sight.

Near the church is a Roman momument,

the Marco Miliário da Milha XII (12th Mile Milestone), which marked Mile 12 of the ancient Roman military road that connected Coimbra to Gaia in eastern Portugal. It was originally erected between 23 AD and 24 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, and was originally discovered in the late 18th century in the nearby parish of Ul.

Having taken a swift coffee (OK, and pastries) at a lovely confeitaria, we finished our walk by visiting the fountain at the bottom of our hotel’s street.

and then headed back to the hotel to rest and recharge for the next day.

Tomorrow’s destination is Malaposta (the opposite, we suppose of the Bemposta we visited today?) which is just 16km away – a relatively short walk on a day which is forecast to be a positively frigid 27°C. This means we can even indulge ourselves in a hotel breakfast, which should be a solid start to the day. I’ll report on it in due course.

 

 

Day 15 – Coimbra to Pedrulha: another decent day’s walking

4 Replies

Friday 11 September 2026 – Our breakfast was Room Service, in the sense that Jane constructed a banana sandwich each for us from our foragings, and our travel kettle once again came in handy. This enabled another early start as we once again wanted to avoid the worst heat of the day. As we handed our bags over to be collected and transported later, the receptionist tried to persuade us to stay for the hotel breakfast which started at 7am, but we were more anxious to get on the road.

The road in question led us to the local equivalent of Spaghetti Junction, where we had to figure out how to carve a footpath through a major road intersection and significant roadworks,

but fortunately the traffic was light and so the couple of unofficial scamperings across major roads didn’t cause any accidents; and then we walked along what seemed like a recently created joint pavement and cycle path for a while as the sun came up.

Quite soon thereafter, we turned off on to a more minor road, and as we exited the sprawl of Coimbra, the landscape turned towards rural exploitation.

We had a Mystery Object Game along this stretch of road. It had no pavement and so we were walking in the margin, marked by a white line. I noticed that every so often there was a bolt in the road.

I made some humorous (no, really) comment about being glad that the road builders had bolted the surface down for us, but then we saw that these bolts happened regularly. The mystery deepened slightly when we came across one of these.

Black, hard rubber or plastic – we weren’t sure what they were for. Then, after a couple of hundred metres, we found out what was going on.

I suppose the idea was that the posts should give motorists a clue about where the edge of the road was, and equally it appeared that, over the years, many motorists had been slow to take the hint. Anyway, traffic was light and we didn’t have to take evasive action as we were walking along.

As yesterday, there was a fair bit of mist around which took a while to burn off

and it was pleasant to be walking in the cool. When we’re on these Camino gigs, Jane and I operate a “minimum qualifying distance” when it comes to coffee stops: 5km. So, I was delighted that at 5.05km into the walk, we passed a place that Google insisted was called Bogani Café, but was actually called Kontra a’dor Kafé. This is a pun on the Portuguese for something like “coffee against the pain”.

where a very cheerful chap served us a meia de leite and pastel de nata each. I was amused (in an ignorant Brit tourist way) by his sugar sachets

which still had the Bogani branding and seemed to advertise desperate music. (Actually, this was part of a set, which all carried cheerful slogans: Café Bogani awakens the senses, or friendship or, in this case, music.) The owner wished us well and we went on our way.

Another mystery presented itself by the roadside.

At first it just seemed that the post carrying the cables had simply keeled over. But, looking closer

we could see that it had actually been cut down – very odd!

We passed a field of grazing sheep. Unusually, instead of there being just one bellwether wearing a bell, they all seemed have bells, and the overall effect was quite lovely.

The road took us through the village of Fornos, which has an attractive azulejo on its outskirts

depicting Coimbra and featuring its brand of Fado music. Like other villages we’d seen, Fornos appeared to be preparing for (or perhaps recovering from?) a fiesta,

quite seriously.

(For those who haven’t come across it before, Sagres is a brand of beer named for the Portuguese town which sits at the southwestern tip of mainland Europe.)  A poster showed the scale of the celebrations, so we were right in the middle of the events.

Fornos appears to be a cheery place, with gardens featuring Belladonna Lilies

and erm, a Danceteria….

The outskirts merged seamlessly into the next village, Trouxemil, where there was an attractive church of Santiago

with a statue of the saint outside

and a neatly decorated church bell.

Just outside the church, an enterprising lady had taken over one of the town benches and was using it as a shop counter.

We’d done nearly 10km by this stage, and there was the possibility of another coffee stop nearby; however, we decided to go for the one at the far end of the village, the Café Central, because that would definitely be over the 10km mark, and Google said it was open.

Sadly, Google was wrong. Maybe the owner had been fiesta-ing too hard. Whatever, we didn’t want to go back, so we pressed on. The next village, again, merging with Trouxemil, was called Sargento Mor, which I hope doesn’t mean “Sergeant Death”.

It had a café that swore it was popular;

not, however, popular enough to be actually open. We did find one establishment where we could take coffee and a short rest. It was a kind of general-purpose outlet – café, pastelaria and general store, so we could take coffee and a pastry.

The road took us past some railings which were being used by aestivating snails who clearly couldn’t find any long grass, and then we headed out into the countryside for a trek along a track. As we were drinking our coffee, we’d noted a handful of peregrinos walking by, one of whom was this oriental lady who was wafting along quite gently,

and we also encountered a couple of the girls who had overnighted at Quinta de Cortiça a few days ago, so they were obviously making about the same progress as we were. The track was a bit trying, to be honest, as it was quite sandy in places, which made it a little slippery underfoot; but we eventually emerged and got back onto tarmac just outside Vimieira, where there were signs that the fiesta was being observed here, too.

Vimieira had its share of pleasant houses, as well as some that were a bit more ramshackle.

As we found in the earlier part of our walk, villages closely bordered each other

so we were then in Casal Comba, whence we caught sight of our final destination, Pedrulha.

(The Caminho goes through Mealhada, to which Pedrulha is a neighbour, and our original plan had been to stay in a hotel in Mealhada actually on the Caminho; but a family emergency at that hotel had enforced a change of plan, so we had left the Caminho in Vimieira and will rejoin it tomorrow. Except we won’t. See later.)

Our accommodation for the night was the “Vinyl M Hotel”, and, rather like Casa das Raposas, was something of an unknown quantity. It appeared to be not quite in the middle of nowhere but not anywhere reassuring, like near shops or restaurants. It could, for example, provide snacks rather than having a restaurant. I had visions of a sort of motel-type place, and we decided that we should try for something to eat before we got there, in case getting food would be difficult later. Pedrulha appeared to offer a café called RSB, which we set as a target. We got to the village square past a nicely-decorated house,

and there was a café immediately on our left,

so we looked in.

The photo makes it look better than it seemed IRL, but they had coffee and beer and pastries, so we used sign language to negotiate a couple of savoury pastries and coffee and beer – not as substantial as we’d envisaged, but better than nothing – and settled down outside for a perfectly pleasant lunch and a bit of a rest. Jane spotted that the village’s pillory had been fiesta-ised

and the keen of vision will spot a café in the background of that photo. Whether our place was this RSB or that other place was, we’ll never know; but after half an hour or so (and an extra beer for me) we walked the final 20 minutes, past one place which was the result of several courageous architectural decisions,

to see what awaited us at this Vinyl M place.

It looked motellish enough as we approached past a barrier

and I heard a voice calling out “boa tarde” behind me (“good afternoon” in Portuguese). When I didn’t react (well, it might have been for someone else), the voice said “boa tarde” again, but somehow in a slightly more emphatic way, so we looked around and saw a tiny hatch by the barrier with behind it as much of a face as it could reveal. That was Reception. As Jane was doing the formalities, I noticed the price list on the wall behind me

and was puzzled by the difference between minimum and maximum prices – a factor of 4! Anyway, the lady behind reception checked us in and led us across the yard to our room, in which our bags had already safely been stowed.

My fears about it being a tacky motelly place evaporated – it was a vast room, with an even bigger bathroom. But the decor! Their schtick (unsurprisingly given the “vinyl” monicker) is rooms themed around jazz, rock, tango and samba music. Breakfast could be delivered at whatever time we wanted – even at 5am! – and checkout wasn’t until midday.

When we’d mentioned to Jessica, back in Coimbra, that we were going through Mealhada she told us with delight that it was “suckling pig central” and that we should make an effort to try some. At the time, thinking as I did that Vinyl M was out in the boondocks, I didn’t rate our chances. However, it turns out that next door to Vinyl M was a place called Burguezia do Leitão, a combined hotel, lounge bar and restaurant – and leitão means, you guessed it, suckling pig, which gave us something of a clue as to what we might find on the menu. So, after the mandatory settling-in cup of tea and a quick look through the reams of content generated from yesterday in Coimbra, we headed out there to sample their wares. It took a certain amount of sign language and patience but we ended up with their signature leitão sandwiches and G&Ts and all was well with the world.

There being nothing else worth leaving the hotel for, this left the evening free for writing up the fantastic but full-on day we’d had yesterday in Coimbra on the blog.

We were on the verge of yet another heat wave in the area, with temperatures in the upper 30s C for the next three days; the distance to our next accommodation in Águeda was somewhere around 28-30km – probably 8 hours’ walking. So even if we set out at 6am, we’d still be walking at 2pm in the peak temperature of the day, 37C.

Not. A. Chance.

I booked an Uber for midday the next day so we could have the morning at leisure (pace having to get the bags to reception by 0800) and travel in comfort to Águeda, which looks like a very interesting city that deserves time to look around and appreciate. So Jane and I have to work out a plan which gets us a decent look around Águeda and gets us beyond it, to Albergaria, without having to spend too much time in termperatures well over 30°C. I wonder if Uber will get more of our business?