Camino Portugues

September 2014

On a warm hazy afternoon, we met our French friends, Jean and Marie-José, on the steps of the Lisbon Cathedral, procured our pilgrim credentials and set out to walk the Camino Portugues.

This is our third Camino. In 2005 we walked the 750 km Camino Françes from St Jean Pied du Port on the French side of the Pyrenees, across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Three years later we walked the Via de la Plata, a 1,000 km journey from Seville in the south of Spain to Santiago de Compostela. It was on this walk that we met and fell in with Jean and Marie-José, our affection for each other and ‘the way’ triumphing over our limited grasp of French. We last saw them in 2010 when we spent a few idyllic days in their village of Saint-Thomè in the wild and beautiful Ardèche. Now we are together again, to walk the 650 km Camino Portugues from Lisbon, through Portugal and into northern Spain, hugging the coastline where we can and avoiding the more travelled inland route.

Lisbon → Villa Franca de Xira (35 km)

A last night of fado, Lisboa blues, drifting down the street and into our dreams. An early morning metro train to the harbour. In the way of explorers, we pass under the great Vasco da Gama bridge and walk out of Lisbon, almost nothing stirring in our wake. As we clear the city we come upon a flock of tinkling sheep, the occasional farmer and a group of Sunday hunters out with their dogs.

The guidebook that is our French friends’ bible describes day one as a 25 km walk. It is 10 km further than that. There is no easing gently into the Camino Portugues. By way of solace, the Rio Tejo is a constant for much of the day. The green beauty of its wetlands provides shade from the heat and the melody of its flowing water a soothing backbeat to our footfall.

For a time we walk on a dirt track alongside a tributary of the river, past rough fields and ruins of once-great agricultural enterprises. The first village we come to is shuttered and silent on this dazzlingly bright summer Sunday. Suddenly there is the screeching of brakes and the blaring of a horn. A woman alights from a van and in a carrying voice lets the villagers know that the mobile fruit market has arrived. Open cafes are scarce but we eventually stumble upon an after-mass bar serving food. Chorizo rolls, coffee and pastel de nata (the famous Portuguese tart) satiate our hunger.

After lunch, we follow a meandering riverside trail lively with Sunday afternoon strollers. A welcome cold cerveza at a riverside bar at Alhandra restores our equilibrium and makes the last few kilometres to Vilafranca a pleasure. Past eel fishing hamlets, across an iron rail bridge and on towards an impressive bullring. Vilafranca has a running of the bulls in July, during the Festa do Colete Encarnado (the ‘red waistcoat’ fiesta) and again in October, during the Feira do Outubro. High, sturdy wooden railing fences in the centre of town mark the route of the bulls and make it safer for onlookers to cheer on the testosterone-fueled runners.

We find accommodation at the pilgrim-friendly Pensáo Ribatejana although the only other pilgrim we meet on day one is a cyclist who wishes us ‘Buen Camino’ as he rides past on his way to Santiago.

Vilafranca de Xira → Azambuja (20 km)

Red sky in the morning, walkers’ warning. Supposedly. But it’s a beautiful morning on the Camino Portugues. The river silken in the half-light of the rising sun, grey herons and white egrets etched against the sky, eel fishermen preparing their boats for the day’s work. The monumental metal sculptures that celebrate the lives of the communities who live off the river gleaming.

Away from the water, mist softens the industrial landscape of power stations and tomato processing plants. Later on, it’s all hills, rice fields and market gardens. Quinces and figs are ripening on the trees by the roadside. Old men wearing black berets sit idly in front of small-town bars. So close to Lisbon still, but already a world away.

We walk past estates where roads are laid and street lights installed but nothing else built due to ‘la crisis’, the economic collapse of 2008. Its repercussions are still being played out all over Europe, with Portugal one of the countries most visibly impacted.

We meet a pilgrim walking in the opposite direction, on his way back from Santiago de la Compostela. And Ruth, the solo German pilgrim we heard stories of in the cafe by the bullring. She is walking the Camino Portugués rather than the Camino Frances because she does not want to be amongst the multitude of Germans walking that route. We pay a visit to the bullring museum to find out more about Ana Maria, one of the most famous of all female matadores, but unfortunately, it is closed.

A relatively short day of 20 kilometres today, but after a long first day yesterday and six kilometres of walking alongside a busy motorway in humid conditions today, we are pleased to find lodgings at Flor da Primavera and call it a day at lunchtime. We wander and read and spot our first storks of the Camino, high up in a nest on an old brick tower near the station at Azambuja.

Azambuja → Santarém (32.5 km)

It is dark when we set off from Azambuja, small bats still out hunting for food. A fog lies low over the land and the reflection of an almost full moon floats on the river. Church bells, the chatter of farmworkers and birdsong become the soundtrack of our early morning walk.

The air warms and becomes heady with the scent of mint, wild fennel and pimento. We walk through vineyards and tomatoes and capsicums growing abundantly in the rich alluvial soil of the Tejo. The first grapes of the season are being harvested, some of the picking still being done by hand. In one field, workers till the soil with hand-held hoes. It looks like backbreaking work and our endeavour probably strikes them as ludicrous; walking long distances for pleasure is something only people who don’t earn their living from hard physical labour would contemplate.

We stop for a morning coffee at the pretty riverside village of Valada. Nearby is an open-air public washhouse, still in use by villagers with no running water in their houses. Out along the levee bank, built to protect the village from the high water flooding of the river, and then on to an unsealed back road in the building heat of the day. The dust stirred up by trucks and heavy machinery using the road as a shortcut to a nearby agricultural field day makes the going tough. The heat intensifies and the 15-kilometre trek from Valada to Viaducto is without respite; no villages, no shade, just a fierce sun beating down on us. The rumour of a bar at an aero club beyond Viaducto keeps us going. Our pace quickens as we near the club but to our dismay, the airport is deserted and the bar is closed.

There is shade though and, even better, a swimming pool, which we dive deep into. After floating on its cool surface for a time and then resting in the shade, the four-kilometre climb into the hill town of Santarém is less of an effort than we feared. We find accommodation in the sparse, soothing surrounds of Santa Casa da Misericórdia which we share with another pilgrim, André, from Brazil. As is the case with most Brazilians, his five Caminos have been inspired by the Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho, who writes on the spirituality of pilgrimages in general, and the Camino de Santiago in particular. We are now six; two French, two Australians, one German and one Brazilian, all walking towards Santiago.

Santarém is a charmingly urban town. It was a Roman regional administrative centre, then a stronghold of the Moors until, in 1149, it was recaptured by the Portuguese and has remained Portuguese ever since. In the early evening, we stroll up to the Portas do Sol, the former Moorish citadel. The views out across the Rio Tejo, its floodplain and the hills that lay beyond are magical.

Santarém → Golegã (32 km)

A murmur of swallows and bats flying out ahead of us as we leave Santarém by the medieval Porta de Santiago gate before sunrise. A 12th-century church stranded in a maize field. A steady, gentle 12-kilometre walk then a break for coffee at a bar at Vale da Figueira. Thunder comes from nowhere and tears the sky asunder. The black-clad proprietor of the bar rushes to close doors and shutter windows against the tempest. The women in the bar shudder with fright. In the way of pilgrims, we leave the disquiet behind and head out into the wild, warm storm.

It rains and rains and rains. Undeterred, we continue walking the narrow Roman roads busy with farmers and farm machinery and feasting on foraged figs, grapes and wild berries. Past eucalyptus plantations with their strong scent of home and cork oak trees rooted in Portuguese farming tradition. We come to Azinhaga, the birthplace of José Saramago, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and activist. ‘As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved – it’s the citizen who changes things.’

We retreat to a lively worker’s cafe for a hearty meal and a jug of vino. Just as we finish our lunch, the rain stops. We walk on towards Golegaâ, horse capital of Portugal and once a stop on the royal way from Lisbon to Porto. Palomino horses, golden and graceful in the fields. A 12th-century church with a beautifully tiled interior and an impressive 16th-century Manueline (Portuguese late gothic) door, carved with representations of the discoveries of the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral.

That evening, a quartet of pilgrims emerge from the darkness; two Canadians and two Londoners late finishing their day’s walk. They are intently moving slowly and meditatively along the Camino Portugues.

Golegâ → Tomar (30 km)

A breeze stirring the trees, the tinkling of sheep bells and the rush of water under a bridge at Quinta Cardiga. It was once a castle, then a royal palace, a monastery, a nobleman’s house and now is more or less abandoned. It still has a fine avenue of trees and statues, the gold of its icons catching the early morning sun. Captivated by the allure of its fading grandeur we sit dreamily for a time while somewhere in the woods close by a shepherd sings a strange, lilting song.

A long stretch on a hilly track through eucalyptus plantations. They say in these parts that the eucalyptus vapours are good for respiration but the trees are disastrous for the earth. We stop to get water from a fuente (fountain) on the outskirts of Asseiceira and are surprised to find several urbane-looking people filling up large, plastic containers from what must be the town’s only safe source of drinking water.

A late morning coffee in a tiny bar in town with just one other customer, an elegant older woman reading the newspaper over coffee. Later on, in search of lunch and with storm clouds gathering, Marie José persuades a bar owner to cook up a saucepan of snails for us. They come, a great mound of tiny, pale snails, fragrant with butter and fennel and good washed down with a cold beer. Between outbursts of torrential rain so intense it obliterates the landscape, we scurry towards Tomar where after five days and 150 kilometres of walking a rest day awaits us.

Tomar: A day exploring the home of the Knights Templar

Tomar is a medieval town, one of Portugal’s jewels. Parks painted green and silver with olive, pine and fig trees. A 16th-century aqueduct, a medieval synagogue, checkered-patterned tiled squares and streets. And the crowning glory, the glittering hilltop Convento de Christo, cradle of the Templar Order in Portugal and a world heritage site. Deep within the Convento is the breathtakingly beautiful Charola, an octagonal chapel, romanesque in style, with magnificent sculptures and paintings and a profound air of sacredness.

Bodies clean and clothes washed we wander about, enjoying the sunshine and the opportunity to while away time in cafes. Our instant favourite is Café Paraíso, an atmospheric art deco bar with a rich history of people coming here daily to read, tell stories or just sit and watch the day unfolding in the world beyond the plate glass windows of the cafe. Excitedly for us, our nephew Luke, his partner Megan and her parents have made a detour to join us for lunch and, later in the day, a cold beer, before they set off to resume their Portuguese road trip. After dark the town explodes with music, spearheaded by a brass band that parades the streets, gathering people and momentum as it goes.

Tomar → Alvaiázere (31.5 km)

Church bells, the crowing of roosters and then silence as we walk out of Tomar and into fog. As the day warms, the wild herbs smell as sacred and as fragrant as benediction. There is a scarcity of bars/cafes en route but the earth provides figs, apples, grapes, walnuts and water. We walk on cobblestones and earth tracks through cork oak forests and olive groves. A scattering of small hamlets is strung out along the ridgeline, some semi-abandoned, some with grand mansions owned and still occasionally occupied by the descendants of Portuguese nobility.

Ruins of centuries of human endeavour are evident all around us; from half-built houses that the banks foreclosed on in the global financial crisis to medieval stone grain silos and the remnants of 4th-century Roman farms. A day of walking. So much so that we are spent when we arrive in Alvaiázere (one of several Moorish place names that persist in this part of the country). We book into an Albergue on the main square, expecting liveliness in the plaza on a Saturday evening. However, after mass, attended by people of all ages, the townsfolk retreat to their homes and the night settles into stillness.

Alvaiázere → Rabaçal (32.5 km)

An owl calls as we climb high up into the Sierra. A lovely day’s walking in wild hilly country, ignoring the blue arrows that waymark the route to Fatima and paying heed only to the yellow arrows that will guide us along the Camino Portugues to Santiago.

Orchids and thyme and the first autumn crocus flowers. Olive groves with gnarled, ancient trees and cork oaks inscribed with the year of their last harvest. Sap being collected from pine trees in funnel-shaped vessels. When the economic crisis hit hard and unemployment in the cities escalated, rural villages that had been in decline for decades were buoyed by people returning to their roots to make a humble but certain living in laborious enterprises like pine resin harvesting. The resin is in demand by the pharmaceutical industry, its naturalness of value in a world concerned by synthetic substitutes.

We hear the occasional gunshot boom of Sunday hunters and stop for a mid-morning coffee at the market town of Ansiăo, quiet when we arrive but soon bustling as the streets and cafes fill with the after-mass crowd dressed in their Sunday best (making us in our worn, grubby, walking clothes look even shabbier). Later on, at a bar in Alvorge, we chat to a table of English expatriates, retired and enjoying a lifestyle here that would be out of their reach in England.

We arrive in Rabaçal early enough to join a walking tour of a 4th-century Roman farm, excavated only in 1984. Afterwards, we take in the town’s Museo Romano and talk to its resident archaeologist, not only about the Roman history of the area but also the socio-political issues impacting modern-day Portugal. According to her, during Salazar’s regime, the people who fled Portugal were farm and factory workers. Now, she says, Portugal is losing its brightest and best young people. They are highly educated by the state and then, with the blessing of the current government and to the despair of concerned Portuguese, they leave en masse for professional careers in England.

Rabaçal → Coimbra (29.5 km)

A warm breeze and an early start on this our wedding anniversary. Through Fonte Coberta, a historic pilgrim hamlet where the stories of pilgrim-significant buildings and events are told on colourfully illustrated ceramic tiles.

On to Poço where there are women out harvesting windfall figs and apples while others scrub clothes at the public laundry; all dressed alike in their blue gingham pinafores that protect their day clothes. We are too early to visit the extensive ruins at Conimbriga, the largest and best-preserved Roman settlement in Portugal, inhabited by the Romans in 139 BCE after they displaced and enslaved the Celts who previously lived here. Fortunately, we were able to wander around the perimeter fence and see much of what lies inside, including the impressive mosaic floors.

Along country lanes, past vineyards, olive groves and pine forests, up a steep, hot rocky track and onto a cobblestoned road to the high point of Alto de Santa Clara. A very welcome cold beer at a hilltop bar, its owner insisting on stamping our pilgrim credential with her inked fingerprint. Then, downhill, with a skip in our step, past the Roman aqueduct, a section of which has been sacrilegiously sliced out to make way for a freeway. On towards ancient Coimbra, once a Roman town and the capital of Portugal, now a university city and world heritage site. A 12th-century monastery and church, a Romanesque cathedral and the Arco de Almedina, the original main gate in the medieval defensive wall still intact and the main entrance to the old city. We sit on a sunny terrace and enjoy a late afternoon chilled white port. All around us formally dressed university students celebrate the beginning of the academic year in very informal ways.

Later that evening we feast on leitões, the spit-roasted pig that is the speciality of the region. You can eat well in Portugal for very little (relative to much of Europe); ten euros for dinner including bread and vino, three euros for lunch and never more than four euros for morning tea for four people. We hear there is free fado music at the enchanting Santa Cruz cafe but we are exhausted and in bed before the music starts. Coimbra fado is said to be very similar to Lisboa fado, but with more scholarly lyrics, coming as it does out of a 700-year-old university culture.

Coimbra → Mealhada (22.5 km)

So as not to have to wake the night porter, and because it is a short day’s walk, we leave Coimbra an hour later than our normal starting time of 6 am. Through small and not-so-small villages, following paths through the forest and past small landholdings where women and men work the fields, sometimes standing from their backbreaking work to shout a friendly ‘Bom Dia’ (good day), ask if we are on our way to Santiago and wish up ‘Boa Viagem’ (good journey). One wise farmer says we should walk slowly and calmly; that is the best way to Santiago he advises. In the small village of Sargento Mor, we stop to take a photo of a purse left outside a house for the travelling baker. A woman comes over and says ‘Ah, I’ve just worked it out. You’ve taken that photo because you wouldn’t see a purse left like that in your country.’

Roman roads, a warm wind and a storm building all day. It breaks with a vengeance just as we arrive in the wine-growing town of Mealhada. We marvel at its wildness from the haven of our Albergue.

Mealhada → Águeda (25.5 km)

Following the path of the Cértima river valley, we meet an unkempt, evangelical pilgrim, walking from Santiago to Fatima. He shows us his ten pilgrim passports. Documented in stamps are all his earlier journeys to Santiago, to Rome, and back again to a home in Portugal that is no longer his. He relies on the goodwill of pilgrims and local congregations for food and a place to sleep, his pilgrimages providing him with a refuge from homelessness, people tolerant of him in a way they would not be if he was a beggar on the streets of their town.

Later in the day, at an Albergue full of European pilgrims, tensions mount between a Berliner and a Parisian when the talk turns to WWII. It is as if the war happened yesterday. Still, we’ve seen people come to blows over a perceived act of treachery committed by one European ruler against another five hundred years ago.

Águeda → Oliveira de Azeméis (36.5 km)

Stars burning in the dark sky and a bright crescent moon. Up into wooded hills on quiet tracks, through pine forests carpeted with pink and mauve flowers. Then up and down river valleys, crossing first a Roman bridge, then a medieval bridge and finally a very modern steel bridge across the Rio Marnel.

A long day’s walk ahead of us, we try for lunch at a bar we were forewarned has no kitchen. However, the enterprising owner proves the doomsayers wrong. She orders in grilled meat and chips from the takeaway across the road and serves it to us with her bread and vino.

We walk along a rail line for a time, then on Roman roads. Past once grand and now derelict emigre mansions, built in the 19th century by wealthy Portuguese returning home from the new world. From high up on a hill we can make out the Atlantic Ocean and the coastline we will follow into Spain in a few days.

The rain we evaded for three days catches up with us and claims the afternoon. The landscape and each other erased, we walk through the deluge in a state of calm solitude.

Oliveira de Azeméis → Grijó (28.5 km)

The stars in the dark sky cheer us, foretelling of a fine day. Moving with intent towards Porto we only stop to photograph the Roman road we walk upon, a Roman bridge and the distinctive stone and wooden hórreos of northern Portugal, raised from the ground on pillars and used as granaries to store corn and other crops.

A small cork oak forest, its tree trunks deep orange where they have been recently stripped of their bark. The monastery at Grijó and, nearby, a new Albergue, our shelter for the night. It’s a Friday and the town’s cemetery is abuzz with activity. Women, in the main, wash graves, place fresh flowers on them, and sit awhile, talking to their dead loved ones. Once a tradition all over Europe, Friday grave tending persists in less affluent countries like Portugal, especially in towns where the same families continue to live for generations. It’s a responsibility for the surviving family members and also a solace. Despite the absence of monks, the monastery chapel opens for Friday afternoon service. As old women kneel and murmur incantations, we wander discreetly around the church, admiring its medieval carvings and gold icons and recoiling a little at its dark saints, dressed in violet and pierced by arrows.

Grijó → Porto (15 km)

A surprisingly lovely walk into a city. On forest tracks, past a medieval granite irrigation system, along paved Roman roads and through a stone arch. We look up and there, shimmering before us, is Porto. The famous Douro River, the Meccano-like Eiffel bridge, dark wooden port barges, colourful terraced houses and, the crowning glory, the impressive 12th-century cathedral.

Porto marks the end of the first stage of the Camino Portugués. After 14 days and 370.5 km walking, we intend to spend a day moving languidly and soaking up the atmosphere of the city before setting out for Santiago de la Compostela.

Porto: A change of clothes and no pack for a day

A wonder of Saturday markets, a seven-bridge river cruise, and harmonious blue-tiled cloisters. A cathedral rich with fine medieval sculptures and paintings and, behind glass, the gold, silver and precious jewels plundered from the new world and transformed into sacred objects of great beauty for the high priests of the old world. On a fine Porto morning, the sky lightens, caged chaffinches sing at the bird market and church bells ring out. Otherwise, all is quiet, the city deserted except for a straggle of Saturday night partygoers making their weary way home. Last night was a very different scene; every bar and cafe crowded and bands of wandering minstrels making music in the street.

As you do in Porto, we visit a Portugués port cave (cellar) and tour the underground vaults. They are dark with huge wooden barrels still used for ageing port. We taste a flight of luscious fortified wines from the Douro Valley and afterwards are fortunate enough to happen upon a guitar quartet playing sublime music in a medieval convent chapel. In the evening an intense electrical storm hits Porto. The forked lightning, thunder and flash flooding are a grand and dramatic finale to the European summer.

Porto Grijó → Póvoa de Varzim (36 kms)

We follow the Rio Douro out of Porto to the sea and then turn north to follow the Atlantic coast as far as Vigo where we’ll rejoin the main Camino Portugues route in a few days.

Waterbirds, fishermen readying their boats and the first, exhilarating scent of sea and salt. This part of the Camino Portugués is known as the black coast, not just because of its black rocks but also because of its dark history of shipwrecks, piracy, wild storms and lives lost at sea. After the early morning rain squalls, the sun shines and our spirits soar. 11th-century forts; a string of beaches, including the beach of memories; waves breaking on the shore; rocky headlands; lighthouses and stone windmills standing high on the cliff.

We arrive at the small fishing village of Angeiras just as the boats come in with the day’s catch. We are caught up in the frenzy of fish being weighed and sold, nets being reeled in and mended and salt of the sea fisher-women delivering fish in buckets to local bars and restaurants. The fishing boats are as colourful as the village characters and their brightly painted houses. After the activity subsides, the women return to their domestic chores, washing clothes by hand and hanging them out to dry on lines strung up along the beach. We take ourselves to a local cafe for lunch; a seafood feast cooked over coals and washed down with a very fine Albariño wine.

Stories persist of pirates who lit bonfires in the image of lighthouses to disorientate ships’ captains and lure them to the treacherous shore where their ships were wrecked and their cargo plundered. Even more ancient than such tales are the granite Roman fish salting tanks and the rocks deeply engraved with marks from tool sharpening. In the dunes, we meet a couple out exploring the coast. They are staying in the village at the invitation of a local they met while walking the Camino Frances. We discover that not only are they Australians but that they live two kilometres from our Melbourne home.

All day the ebb and flow of the sea. And at day’s end, Póvoa de Varzim, picturesque with blue and white striped beach huts, a cafe at the water’s edge and a spectacular sunset.

Póvoa de Varzim → Marinhas (20 km)

A short and varied day’s walk. Out along the coast, past coves, windswept dunes and seaweed gathered in stoops to dry. The lights of fishing boats glowing against the dark sea. Farmers out in the fields harvesting vegetables by hand. Tractors the main traffic on the road, driven by men in peaked caps with their headscarved women perched precariously behind them.

Walking through a national park for a time; the forest verdant green, the sun shining, the air warm. We visit a church in Esposende to see the rococo retable and then enjoy a vino verde at a cafe in Marinhas. There’s just us and a few old men playing cards and whiling away the slow afternoon.

Marinhas → Viana do Castelo (20 km)

Stepping out into the embrace of the dawn, as we do most mornings. Church bells, bird song and the tinkling of goat bells. Passing through stonewalled villages and up into pine forests carpeted with pink and mauve flowers. Across a stone slab bridge then higher into the hills. High enough to be able to look back southward along the coast and north to the wild, green hills of Galicia that lay ahead.

The long history of the Camino held in a recently uncovered inscription tells of pilgrims passing this way since 900 AD. Waymarking becoming an art as we inch closer to Spain.
A bright, sunny day with a tempering breeze from the sea. A very lovely day for walking. Across the Eiffel Bridge and the Rio Lima into Viana do Castelo where we sit in the late afternoon sun in the medieval centre of town and bask in our good fortune.

Viana do Castelo → A Guarda (35 km)

The light is softening, persimmons are ripening and vines are turning deep scarlet. Colchiques, the purple flowers that foretell the coming of autumn, are thick on the ground. Moss-covered stonewalled paths, sinners burning in the eternal flames of hell painted in lurid colours on church portals, a still-functioning stone watermill, wooded glades, pine forests, then down again to the coast. A beach then on towards wilder shores. Green and rocky headlands, wild white horses and a shepherd with a flock of goats. All afternoon, a shimmering sea. With the assistance of Captain Mario, we cross the Rio Minho in a small boat and scramble ashore on a rising tide into Spain.

A Guarda is famous for its extensive and well-conserved remains of a Celtic hilltop settlement, originating from 500 BC and only discovered in 1913. There is a stone circle, a church and the remnants of a hundred or so huts inside an encircling wall. Unfortunately, we arrive in town too late and too spent to contemplate the long steep climb to Monte Santa Tecia, the site of the settlement.

A Guarda → A Ramalhosa (37 km)

The caretaker of the Carmelite monastery whose job it is to unlock the gates is late waking. Impatient to be on our way, we scale the high external wall and walk quickly through town, the earth’s shadow still visible in the sky above the ocean.

All day walking by the sea, a warm breeze from the land in the morning shifting to a cooling, salt-laden breeze in the afternoon. The Galician coastline is beautiful. Rocky offshore islands, sheltered coves and rock platforms, stone-walled fields of caldo (kale) running down to the sea, and, to the east, a backdrop of forested mountains. Mussel hunters, rock fishermen and a shepherd tending his sheep. Quirky beach shacks refashioned from boat cabins and a red and white striped lighthouse high up on the dramatically barren Cabo Silleiro. On through Baiona where on 1 March 1493 the sailing ship Carabela La Pinta arrived with news of the ‘discovery’ of America.

Acorn and chestnut gatherers are out and about. Past an infant school where a child waves tentatively to us. We reciprocate and the whole class waves excitedly to the passing pilgrims. Their teacher probably doesn’t appreciate the distraction.

We are frayed from the rigours of the day’s walking but any tension dissipates as soon as we arrive at the oasis of calm that is the convent of the Apostolic sisters in A Ramalhosa. It is a sanctuary of cool tiled cloisters and tended gardens. We sit in the late afternoon sun and allow the serenity to permeate deeply into our beings.

Rested, we wander down to the nearby plaza, lively with bars and people embracing the sweet relief of Friday evening and the anticipation of the lightness of Saturday morning.

A Ramalhosa → Redondela (35 km)

Walking high above the sea in the wild hills of Galicia. Moss-covered rocks and great, green pines and chestnuts and oaks. Heather blazing above the treeline. The Cies Islands rising poetically out of the sea and, later in the day, the River Lagares with its mussel beds and shipping lanes.

Only a minority of pilgrims walking the Camino Portugués start from Lisbon. A smaller number again take the coastal route. We’ve delighted in the wild beauty of the days and the stillness of the nights. However, at day’s end, the coastal route meets the more travelled inland route in Redondela and it’s something of a shock to find ourselves in an Albergue teeming with pilgrims. So much banter and jostling and good-naturedness. It’s like a sprawling scene out of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and fascinating for a night.

Redondela → Armenteira (40 km)

Just outside of Redondela, we come across two English pilgrims sitting as still as statues in the darkness and waiting, as they do every morning, for the sun to rise before walking on.

An epic day’s walk, high up in the wild green mountains of Galicia. Through the green forest, across a Roman bridge, past a stone watermill, then on to Pontevedra. We visit the beautiful 18th-century Santuario da Peregrina in the hope we find someone who can reliably confirm we can continue around the coast. We speak to two people and receive conflicting advice so, after marvelling at the baroque-style chapel built to a floor plan in the shape of a scallop shell, we fortify ourselves with a strong black coffee and walk on for a few anxious kilometres before coming to a sign indicating the way to the elusive ‘Variante Espiritual del Camino Portugués’.

Soon we find ourselves enthralled by medieval monasteries; quaint seaside villages; a peace park with stones inscribed with moving quotes by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Rigoberta Menchu; and the intriguing town of Combarro with its stone crosses, witches and sea-facing hórreos.

We climb for hours through pine, oak and chestnut forests without sight of a road or a dwelling and with no known conclusion to the day. And then, a Sunday hunter with his dogs, a sign to the Ruta del Viño, the sound of falling water, the remains of a Roman aqueduct and a river that we follow down to the village of Armenteira and its beautifully austere monastery. There are beds for pilgrims in the community centre, a gathering place for hunters at the close of day. Taken aback by each other at first, the hunters open their fridge to us and, relaxed by the beer and their friendliness, we wander down to the convivial Bar Comercio for dinner. We stay on till late, telling stories and toasting the day’s adventure.

Armenteira → Vilanova de Arousa (24 km)

We take the Ruta de Pedra y el Agua (Route of Stone and Water) out of Armenteira, following the river past old water mills to a sculpture park commemorating the people who once lived here and worked the mills. Then past the vineyards of the Rias Baixas where albariño and most of Galicia’s red wine grapes are grown. It is harvest season and the vineyards are full of the work and chatter of grape pickers, a group of whom pause their labours to give each of us a bunch of ripe albariño grapes. In the next village, we stop to chat to a family crushing grapes in a wooden press in a garage next to their house. Soon we are inside the garage, white bowls in our hands, tasting this season’s vintage and that of previous years.

Down through fragrant pine forests to the sea and along the beach to Vilanova de Arousa. The tide is out when we arrive. There are hundreds of brightly coloured boats stranded in the mud and a great wave of people combing the sand for pippies. As luck would have it, our path crosses that of the boat master who for a small fee carries pilgrims across the Arousa estuary and up the River Ulla along the Via Crucis (the way of the crosses), the same route said to have been taken by the devotees of St James the apostle when, ‘led by an angel and guided by a star’, they carried his remains to Santiago. We arrange to meet the boat master at the port at 8 am the next morning. The afternoon is ours. We take in the sun and steady ourselves for our last day on the Camino Portugués.

Vilanova de Arousa → Santiago de Compostela (25 km)

The early morning boat journey is thrilling; the estuary mysterious, the light magical, the river shrouded in mist. Sidling up alongside a mussel boat, we clamber on board and watch fishermen haul great ropes of mussels out of the salty water.

On past forested islands, waterbird sanctuaries and seventeen ancient stone crosses. Mary is carved on one side, always facing the land, and Jesus on the other, always facing the sea, the way to Santiago. Viking galleons; fish breaking the surface of the dark lustrous water; cormorants, herons and egrets on the hunt.

We disembark in Pontecesures for the final 25-kilometre walk to Santiago de la Compostela. Through villages where solitary, black-clad women walk slowly to the edge of town and back again. Anticipation mounting. Not wanting to let go of the walking, but knowing we have to. Breathing deeply. Taking in every detail; every leaf, every carving, every person we pass. And then the first sight of the cathedral and the emotional arrival; the elation and the gratitude. Feeling blessed to have walked together for 24 days and arrived with calm, clear minds in Santiago, a world heritage site and city of pilgrims.

We attend the midday pilgrims mass and are caught emotionally off guard when a nun with the sweetest bird-like voice sings and our hearts are blown open. Afterwards, we gather in the square and catch up with people we met on the journey. We hug and take photos and wish each other a good life. Our hope at the end of the Camino Portugues is that the generosity, warmth and kindness shown by pilgrims to each other will become more commonplace in this world.

If you enjoyed our adventure on the Camino Portugues,  you might like the Camino Frances, Camino Mozárabe, or the Tour du Mont Blanc.