- Time of past OR future Camino
- Too many to count!
How fabulous! I never knew of any place, where the preserved Roman roads were so long!
I love castles, so this sounds like a Camino I need to put on my bucket list!
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How fabulous! I never knew of any place, where the preserved Roman roads were so long!over 7km with most of that section being on a Roman road - the longest stretch of Roman road I’ve walked on apart from possibly the Via Appia in Rome. It was also a mountain switchback road, unlike the straight, flat roads we tend to associate with the Roman Empire.
I love castles, so this sounds like a Camino I need to put on my bucket list!Another descent, a short ascent and another descent later, Celorico da Beira and its castle were in view. I did a rough count and figured we have seen 13 castles on this camino with another one coming tomorrow!
Castles + cherries = book it for next spring!I love castles, so this sounds like a Camino I need to put on my bucket list!
Oh wow, that’s great! Someone else contacted me today who is starting next week so maybe we can all put this camino on the map!Each post, Nick, amps up my excitement as I begin planning for a September Nascente. Thanks again for these wonderful descriptions.
Wow 36 days seem to have flown by, thank you for you lovely descriptive accounts of your Caminho.Caminho Nascente Day 36: Celorico da Beira to Trancoso (~19km).
We set out in a reflective mood on our last day on the Nascente and walked in overcast conditions for most of the stage. There was a necropolis featuring rock-cut tombs early in the walk, but nothing especially noteworthy after that, with a little bit of elevation change but not as much as in some of the previous stages. As always on this camino, it was very rural and very scenic and the mountain views of recent days continued. I’m not a cat person by any stretch of the imagination (I’m mildly allergic), but this was a very picturesque scene on the trail:
View attachment 101671
We arrived in Trancoso by lunchtime, and by the time we went out to explore the town a few hours later, it had turned into a beautiful afternoon. Trancoso is one of the ‘historical villages’ of this region and is very deserving of that moniker as it contains city walls and towers, a good castle and a well-preserved historic core. Overall, it was a really worthy end to this camino.
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So that’s it - sort of. After 36 days, we have finished the 650km of the Caminho Nascente, from the sea views of the Algarve to the overgrown grasslands of the Alentejo to the highest mountain range in Portugal, the Serra da Estrela. And what a camino it is! I’ll have more to say and write about it when we get home (whenever that may be), but for now we are thrilled to have chosen this path and taken a step into the unknown. Thank you to everyone who has followed along for your support!
Tomorrow we turn northwest and join the Camino Torres midstream as we continue our slow journey to Santiago. We know almost nothing about this camino but I’m sure more adventures await!
I love the shot with the cat!Caminho Nascente Day 36: Celorico da Beira to Trancoso (~19km).
We set out in a reflective mood on our last day on the Nascente and walked in overcast conditions for most of the stage. There was a necropolis featuring rock-cut tombs early in the walk, but nothing especially noteworthy after that, with a little bit of elevation change but not as much as in some of the previous stages. As always on this camino, it was very rural and very scenic and the mountain views of recent days continued. I’m not a cat person by any stretch of the imagination (I’m mildly allergic), but this was a very picturesque scene on the trail:
View attachment 101671
We arrived in Trancoso by lunchtime, and by the time we went out to explore the town a few hours later, it had turned into a beautiful afternoon. Trancoso is one of the ‘historical villages’ of this region and is very deserving of that moniker as it contains city walls and towers, a good castle and a well-preserved historic core. Overall, it was a really worthy end to this camino.
View attachment 101670
So that’s it - sort of. After 36 days, we have finished the 650km of the Caminho Nascente, from the sea views of the Algarve to the overgrown grasslands of the Alentejo to the highest mountain range in Portugal, the Serra da Estrela. And what a camino it is! I’ll have more to say and write about it when we get home (whenever that may be), but for now we are thrilled to have chosen this path and taken a step into the unknown. Thank you to everyone who has followed along for your support!
Tomorrow we turn northwest and join the Camino Torres midstream as we continue our slow journey to Santiago. We know almost nothing about this camino but I’m sure more adventures await!
I am constantly amazed at the extent of your Portuguese travels! Yes I do like Sernancelhe and I posted a picture of the church in the new Torres thread.And p.s. I have been to Sernacelhe and I bet you will like it!
Has it been that long? Thank you for the wonderful posts, Nick! I'm looking forward to continuing with you on the Torres and beyond.After 36 days, we have finished the 650km of the Caminho Nascente
Sample size of one, but that's certainly the case for me. It looks wonderful! If you didn't have time for the entire Caminho, where whould you recommend to start roughly midway?I think that this thread may be singlehandedly responsible for awakening public interest in this Caminho
Thanks for following and supporting us and I’m glad that we lifted your spirits! I feel for you regarding the Australia travel ban as it has also affected me going the other way. Hopefully it will end earlier than the current mid-2022 thinking.Apart from filling me with envy your posts and pictures have lifted my spirit no end. It’s great to follow your path, even if it is from a distance. If they ever let us out of this place .........
Thanks!
Thank you and maybe you should wait a bit longer to see what the Geira is like after Braga!Well luckily I haven’t finalised my flight to Portugal just yet. After your wonderful tantalising posts and suggestions for rest days, I’m thinking of extending my trip and also continuing to Braga.
thanks Wendy and Nick.
Thank you! Yes, we were a bit slow. We took three rest days and some other days were quite short, so you could do it in a week less without much difficulty.Has it been that long? Thank you for the wonderful posts, Nick! I'm looking forward to continuing with you on the Torres and beyond.
Évora would be an obvious choice as it’s the biggest city on the caminho and easy to get to from Lisbon. It’s before halfway but it would give you about equal time in the Alentejo and Beiras (18-20 days total). With a bit less time, Estremoz, three stages after Évora. But then you’d miss Évoramonte! Going back through our stages, the three after Estremoz weren’t among the most interesting in terms of end-of-stage places but you could do longer stages here to get to Alter do Chão more quickly.Sample size of one, but that's certainly the case for me. It looks wonderful! If you didn't have time for the entire Caminho, where whould you recommend to start roughly midway?
In retrospect, what stands out the most, Nick?so to look back on it and form an overall picture of the entire camino has been really worthwhile.
I think just the adventure of it all. We felt as though we were virtually the first people who had ever walked this route (not true but not that far off!). We knew essentially nothing about it when we started and there were surprises every day. Many times the path was so overgrown that we had to hack our way through it - once an arrow pointed to the trail and we literally could not see the path because it was so overgrown, and we went the wrong way and round in circles for a while until we finally figured out that the path was right where the arrow had been pointing the whole time (FYI @gracethepilgrim, that's a right turn somewhere between Alcoutim and Mesquita!). Some days we came across wild cattle and had to be careful and had to climb fences. Other days we would come to a town we had barely heard of 48 hours earlier and suddenly be climbing castle towers and making other discoveries.In retrospect, what stands out the most, Nick?
I don't know how I missed your post, Nick; a very nice reflection of your thoughts in answering VN's question.Many times the path was so overgrown that we had to hack our way through it - once an arrow pointed to the trail and we literally could not see the path because it was so overgrown
Thanks, Nick, you never let me down when I ask a question, whether it is important, or not.
I’m watching Álvaro Lazaga’s most recent camino videos on the Nascente, which is one of my 2025 options (never too early to start thinking!). The stage I just looked at was from Alcoutim to Mesquita and he says repeatedly that there is no restaurant in the village. What do you make of that? He was just there a month or so ago.We are now in an albergue (yes, really) in a tiny village called Mesquita. In the last two years, the villagers have done a remarkable job transforming the village into a camino destination. Apart from the four-bed albergue, there’s also a restaurant
The way marker we spoke to yesterday said his colleague in charge of this section tried to divert the camino from the road, but needed permission from five property owners to do so and while four gave permission, one did not and that meant the alternative path couldn’t be created.
Wow, those are much shorter days than I remembered! But I loved this part of the Nascente. The five-day stretch Beja-Cuba-Alvito-Viana-Évora is one of my favourite memories of that caminho and sums up walking in the Alentejo brilliantly: each day seemed so rural and remote and yet at the end of the day there was a fantastic historic town waiting for us. From these stages I began to perceive the north-south defensive line that has existed for centuries to guard against Spanish invasion from the east, with towns and castles conveniently set one day's walk apart.Nick and Wendy walked Cuba to Alvito (15 km) and Alvito to Viana (12 km) on two days.
That was already 36km Viana to Évora with no way to break it up three years ago (and trust me, we looked into it!). Did he walk the 41km or find somewhere to stay?The route to Évora from Viana has been taken off the highway. Looks like the permission has been granted, but it also looks like the off-road camino goes through a lot of very soggy marshy areas and has a lot of river crossings. An improvement, no doubt, but maybe pretty challenging at certain times of year.
Álvaro says it adds about 5 kms
I hesitated when I heard him say that he added 5 kms to his day by taking the new squishy marshy route. Because his tracks say that this new route is “only” 37.66 kms. So it looks like the new route doesn’t add much at all.That was already 36km Viana to Évora with no way to break it up three years ago (and trust me, we looked into it!). Did he walk the 41km or find somewhere to stay?
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