Matosinhos to Vila do Conde (Littoral)

The temperature stayed at about 24C overnight, resulting in a broken night’s sleep.
By about 6am, some of my hostel-mates were preparing to depart and not doing so quietly!

I got up at 7.30 after the initial rush, packed and left the hostel just before 8am. The forecast was for another hot day and so I probably should have got underway earlier in order to make the most of the cooler morning.

After a brief stop for breakfast in a nearby bar, I headed toward the Ponte móvel de Leça, a large bridge across the Rio Leça and the port of Leixões, Portugal’s second largest artificial port. The bridge is said to be the fourth largest opening bridge in world 92m wide and with 10m clearance with the bridge closed. Until a few weeks ago, the bridge was closed for maintenance, with a shuttle bus to the next bridge upstream, but it has fortunately reopened, although the works continue.

Once across the bridge the familiar scallop shell signs and arrows appeared, interspersed with yellow arrows painted on the road or pavement. This time, they were for the Senda Littoral, my path for one more day.

Initially, the path followed the wide promenade along the sea front of Leça de Palmeira, as far as the Boa Nova lighthouse, where the first boardwalk began.

This is a wooden walkway raised a little above the dunes and vegetation. These boardwalks formed the majority of today’s journey, enabling fairly quick progress as the wooden slats often had a little flex and so at points I was almost bouncing along, to the extent that my fitness tracker thought I was on an elliptical trainer!

There were quite a few pilgrims on the road, and I caught up with several from last night’s hostel.

As the sun grew hotter and hotter, there was at least a pleasant offshore breeze. But there was little shade most of the time and so I stopped at a convenient bar at Cabo do Mundo (Cape of the World), where a group of 8 Korean (?) pilgrims were also taking a break. This group stayed at my hostel last night and I suspected were those who weren’t the quietest first thing this morning.

After about 11am, this suddenly changed to a much cooler onshore breeze, which was refreshing.

I pushed on, aiming to stop for lunch at roughly the halfway point for today. I ended up overshooting this a little, and stopped in the pretty village of Vila Chã.

Just before the village was a memorial commemorating the emergency landing of a British Lancaster bomber on the beach in 1943, with all the crew rescued by local fishermen. The bomber had been on a raid in southeast France, before being damaged by antiaircraft fire and then got lost in bad weather, to discover they were over Spain and so they headed for neutral Portugal to try and land somewhere.

I found a busy looking bar in Vila Chã, and got chatting to 4 South African pilgrims (2 brothers and their wives). We chatted rugby and football (they knew far more than me an about Coventry City’s promotion to the Premier League! I then discovered that this bar wasn’t serving food today and so I decided to carry on and I shortly found a cafe a little further through the village.

I thought I’d try a Francesinha, which means a ‘little French’. It is said that this is the Portuguese version of a croque monsieur, except that the sandwich contains ham, steak and a spicy sausage cut lengthways, with melted mozzarella on top and the whole thing sits in a bowl of tomatoey sauce. It was very tasty but not quite what I expected (especially in terms of size!)

It was then time to continue. On the next stretch of boardwalk, elevated across the back of a small beach, a section of walkway had collapsed and was replaced by a wooden staircase down to the beach, and another stairway back up to the walkway on a little further across the beach.

I stoped again for cold drinks and a break at another bar at Cabreiro. And then I had just a couple more kilometres to Vila do Conde, tonight’s destination.

I paused briefly in a tiny roadside chapel, with a friendly man who stamped my credencial and warmly wished me a ‘Bom Caminho’.

The path crossed a large modern bridge over the Rio Ave and led into the centre of Vila do Conde. My accommodation for tonight ended up being further out of town than I had anticipated and was actually in the next town along the coast, Caxinas. With the heat and repeated breaks, time was short before they were due to close. I therefore jumped in a taxi and made it just in time.

I was delighted to see that my request for a lower bunk had been granted. And this hostel also had a sea view from the room!Read more