The Portuguese Camino has two main variants: the inland Central Route from Lisbon, and the Coastal Route that hugs the Atlantic from Porto to Caminha and then turns inland through Tui, Pontevedra, and on to Santiago de Compostela. I walked the Coastal Route over eight days in May 2025. This is what those days were.

If you're curious about how I ended up in Porto in the first place, that story is in Before the Camino. This post starts on the morning I left.

Day 1 — Porto to Póvoa de Varzim

On Friday, still carried away by the Double Life of Véronique music I had heard at the cathedral the day before, I began walking at 8:00 am, heading towards the Sé Cathedral (about 1.7 km from my hostel). It was such a relief to leave that noisy, cramped place behind. The moment I stepped into Porto’s historic streets, I felt a rush of anticipation — the true beginning of my Portuguese Camino.

I was standing in front of the cathedral, looking at the sign showing the directions for the Camino, when a young man with a backpack arrived. His name was Havel, and he was from the Czech Republic. We exchanged a few words and then, as though it had been planned, we started our Camino together. It was nice to have company at the start, though I worried he might slow me down. My plan was to reach Santiago in seven days — a decision which I later regretted.

After 45 minutes, he stopped in front of a church, saying he needed to buy his Camino passport. But it was too early; the church was closed. I told him I had already purchased mine at the cathedral a couple of days ago.

He asked whether I would go back to the cathedral with him. I explained that my goal was to reach Santiago in seven days, so I had to carry on. We said goodbye, unaware that on Day 3 I would meet another companion — one I would walk with for nearly half the journey.

I continued north through Matosinhos and Vila do Conde, following the Atlantic coast. The path was long — about 44 km in the end — and too much of it was on the road. After a long, rewarding day, I reached Póvoa de Varzim at around 10:00 pm and checked into The ONE Grand Hotel.

It might have been better to start walking along the Douro and then up the coast in shorter stages. But starting where I started, walking the distance I walked, is what made it a Camino.

Day 2 — Póvoa de Varzim to Esposende

After the previous evening's drama — arriving at Póvoa at 5:45 pm and not finding a place to stay until 10:30 pm — Day 2 was deliberately short. About three hours of walking, no more. I needed it.

The route followed the Atlantic, with gentle sea breezes and fishing villages scattered along the way. After the punishment of Day 1, this stretch was almost meditative. I let the rhythm settle. The Camino is supposed to teach you something about pace; Day 1 had been a lesson in what happens when you try to do too much, and Day 2 was the correction.

I had booked Sleep & Go Esposende, but it wasn't really in Esposende at all. It was in Fão — across the Ponte Metálica de Fão, the long iron bridge over the river. The hostel itself was fine. The location wasn't. Fão was neither rural nor urban — a stretch of in-between where there was nothing much to see and nothing much to do. To get to a restaurant or to roam around, I had to walk back across the long iron bridge into Esposende, which was 25 minutes away, and then cross it again on the way back. For dinner I made do with sandwiches and coffee. By evening I was bored in a way I hadn't expected to be on a Camino. Lesson learned: check the actual location, not just the name, before booking.

Day 3 — Esposende to Carreço (and meeting Andrea)

I crossed the Ponte Metálica de Fão one more time the next morning and stopped in Esposende for breakfast. Even in the rain, the town had everything Fão had not: character, narrow pedestrian streets, historical monuments, life. People were already moving through it. The bakery I stopped at served me the best breakfast I'd had since leaving Porto — a small thing, but after a night of sandwiches it felt restorative. I left town wishing I had stayed in Esposende the night before, and walked north along the coast in much better spirits than I had arrived in.

Day 3 blended sandy coastal stretches with cobbled village lanes and quiet forest tracks — the best of Portugal’s northern coast in one day. I walked alone the whole way, and the solitude was easy.

I stayed at Casa do Sardão in Carreço, a beautifully kept guesthouse overlooking the countryside. I arrived in the late afternoon, sweaty and ready for a shower.

In the common area, a woman looked up and asked, "Would you like a glass of wine?"

I smiled and said, "Sure."

That was Andrea. We talked for a while. She was walking the Camino too, also solo, also on the Coastal Route. Tomorrow we'd be heading in the same direction. The conversation drifted in the easy way it does when two strangers realise they have nothing to prove to each other. By the end of the evening it was understood, without anyone saying it, that we'd walk Day 4 together.

The Camino does this. You walk alone for days — sometimes for the whole route — and then a stranger offers you a glass of wine, and the rest of your walk has a different shape.

Day 4 — Carreço to Valença

We left Carreço together the next morning. Andrea was easy company. Walking with someone changes the rhythm completely — you talk in bursts and then fall silent, you point things out, you stop more often.

The route blended coastal stretches, forest paths, and rural lanes. We crossed through several small villages, past old churches, through countryside that hadn't changed much in a century. By late afternoon we reached Valença, the last Portuguese town before the Spanish border, and checked into Hostel Bulwark just steps from the bridge over the Minho River.

Tomorrow we'd cross into Spain.

Day 5 — Valença to Redondela (crossing into Spain)

We walked across the bridge into Tui on the Spanish side. There's something quietly significant about crossing a border on foot. No queue. No checkpoint. Just a river under your feet, and then a different country, a different language, a different rhythm of village names.

Tui itself is small but full of history. We stopped to admire the Concello de Tui — a striking neo-Gothic town hall — and the Catedral de Santa María, a Romanesque-Gothic cathedral dating from the 12th century. After Portugal's coastal openness, Tui felt denser, older, more inward-looking.

The afternoon stretch from Tui to Redondela was long. The landscape gradually shifted from coastal plains to rolling inland hills — Galicia properly beginning. We arrived in Redondela tired but content. It had been our first full day in Spain, and our second day walking together.

Day 6 — Redondela to Pontevedra (and meeting Hani)

In Redondela, a third walker joined us: Hani. Andrea and I had met her briefly the night before, and the next morning the three of us walked out of town together. She fitted in instantly — warm, sharp, an easy laugher.

The Day 6 route moves inland through forested hills and quiet hamlets, with occasional glimpses of the Ría de Vigo — the estuary opening to the Atlantic — below. The conversation flowed easily for hours. Stories, laughter, the rhythm of three pairs of footsteps blending into the Galician countryside.

"If we lived in the same city," Hani said at one point, "we'd be best friends — we'd hike and train together."

That night I stayed at Albergue Aloxa Hostel in Pontevedra. Voices in the kitchen carried on past midnight. I didn't sleep well, but I woke up at 5:30 am ready for the long day ahead.

Day 7 — Pontevedra to Padrón

The forecast promised non-stop rain, and it kept its word.

We had roughly 40 km ahead — a first for both Andrea and Hani at that distance. My plan was simple: start at 7 am, split the day into two 20 km halves, take it 10 km at a time.

Hani joked, "Then we should split the 10 km further too!"

I laughed. "That would make it last forever."

We left Pontevedra just after dawn, rain already steady. I let Andrea and Hani take the lead. Though they'd only met the day before in Redondela, their friendship now felt effortless. Every so often I'd pass them, then slow again.

"We're holding you back," Andrea said once. "Go ahead."

"No," I told her. "I need to be slowed down."

And I meant it. By this stage I had already begun to feel what was true: I had compressed eight days of walking into too few. The Camino would have been richer at 10 to 16 km per day. Walking slowly, in the rain, with two friends I hadn't known a week ago, was the version of the Camino I should have planned from the start.

We reached Padrón around 6:30 pm — soaked, sore, and smiling. Padrón itself was more industrial than picturesque, but it didn't matter. Andrea and Hani had booked accommodation in town. I hadn't — my booking, Albergue La Calabaza del Peregrino, was another two hours' walk further, in a small place called O Faramello.

I said goodbye to Andrea and Hani in Padrón. We took a photo. There were promises to stay in touch.

Then I shouldered my pack and walked another six kilometres in the rain. By the time I reached O Faramello, it was dark, and I was very ready to be still.

Day 8 — O Faramello to Santiago

The last day rained too. Most of the walk was on busy roads, and a long stretch through the outskirts of Santiago before reaching the centre. Not the best part of the Camino.

I stopped at a café for lunch — coffee and a muffin — charged my phone, and got my final stamp. Then I walked on, still in my poncho, toward the address where I'd been told to end the Camino for my Compostela.

When I arrived, there was a crowd standing in front of a church. I climbed the steps, intending to ask one of the men there where the pilgrim office was. I opened my mouth to say "sorry" — and he lifted both hands and waved me off. Not a polite gesture. A clear, firm don't come near me.

I went back down the steps. The devil is everywhere, I thought.

I found the pilgrim office through other means and got my Compostela. After that, the priorities were practical: food, charge phone, find my hostel. I had a coffee and a sandwich at a café that let me charge my mobile. Outside, the rain hadn't let up, and the light was going.

My booking was a couple of hours' walk from the centre. The thought of doing that walk, in the rain, in the dark, after eight days of walking, was unbearable. I tried to find a room in Santiago instead. Everywhere was full. I considered sitting in a hostel lounge until morning.

Eventually I found a small backpacker and went in. I started talking to a young man I thought worked there — he was actually a guest, with limited English. His girlfriend came over and her English was better. She told me my best option was to call a taxi to my hostel.

She made the call. The hostel said I needed to arrive before 9 pm. The taxi turned out to be a limousine, which made me worry about the cost — but the driver was kind, chatted all the way, and charged me 15 euros. I made it before 9 pm.

That was how the Camino ended. Not at the cathedral, not with a triumphant arrival — but in the back of a limousine in the rain, getting to a bed by nine.

The reflections of what those eight days meant came the next day. That story is in Santiago & Reflections.

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