Day 1: A pre-dawn departure from Porto and it’s exciting to be back on the camino and to walk through a virtually empty city after it was bursting at the seams with tourists yesterday afternoon.
I take the alternative river exit and I’m glad I did, even though the absence of arrows at the outset of a camino is slightly disconcerting — not for wayfinding, because that’s quite obvious, but because it doesn’t help you land on the right side of ‘Does this feel like a camino?’ when there are no arrows. But soon I pass three Italian pilgrims and we exchange ‘bom caminhos’, and a camino it is.
Where the river meets the ocean at Foz do Douro is my favourite part of the stage, because there are lighthouses and fishermen and a surprisingly interesting fort to explore all to myself (not to mention the fabulously-named Instituto de Socorros a Náufragos — something like the ‘Shipwreck Rescue Institute’). Foz feels like a real place, unlike Matosinhos, which comes soon enough and is quite the shock.
There are beaches by now and it’s August so they’re jam-packed with holiday-makers, even though the beaches aren’t especially nice and are surrounded by industrial cranes and silos and ugly modern buildings. The beaches and umbrellas and people and development seem to go on forever, and by 9:15am I’ve already seen two Pizza Huts and this isn’t the Portugal I know. But there are arrows and a Lidl in Matosinhos so I take those little wins, stock up, and move on.
Then the boardwalks begin and the rhythm for the rest of the stage is set. Walking a camino on wooden planks is new for me and not my preferred surface but it’s still pretty easy walking because it’s not hot and you can’t exactly get lost on boardwalks. As I approach São Paio the holiday crowds start thinning out a bit and it seems more low key and there’s a nice estuary full of bird life, all of which is more to my liking.
Before I know it, I reach my destination, the fishing village of Vila Chã, and it’s not even 2pm yet and if that was really 26km, it was as much of a breeze as the one coming off the ocean.
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