Our Walk Along the Camino Portuguese

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, What if I had never seen this before?” Rachel Carson   Learning to Notice What Is Already There   By the spring of 2019, we had begun to understand that one of the gifts of long-distance walking was not simply the opportunity to travel through beautiful landscapes, but the chance to become more attentive to whatever was around us. Three years earlier, when we first stepped onto the Camino Francés, birds, flowers, lizards, weather, and changing habitats had often appeared almost unexpectedly within a pilgrimage we still thought of primarily in historical, cultural and personal terms. Walking the Via Podiensis across France the following spring deepened that awareness. The seasons, agricultural countryside, forests and wildlife became increasingly inseparable from our memories of the route itself.   When we returned to the Camino in 2019 to walk north from Lisbon on the Camino Portugués Central, something had shifted again. ...

“Traveller, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk.” Antonio Machado, “Traveller, your footprints.” Beyond the Way   And so, another pilgrimage has come to an end.   After setting out from Lisbon, walking north through Portugal to Porto, continuing onward into Spain, and arriving once again in Santiago de Compostela , we have completed our time on the Camino Portugués. From there, as we had hoped, we continued beyond Santiago to the Atlantic coast, walking onward to Muxia and Fisterra before finally bringing this chapter of the journey to a close.   It is a strange feeling to finish another Camino and another pilgrimage. In 2016, when we first arrived in Santiago after walking the Camino Francés , we were overwhelmed by the experience and unsure if we would ever return. Yet only a few months later, the Way called us back, and we found ourselves in France walking the Via Podiensis / GR65 toward St. Jean-Pied-de-Port . Now, in 2019, we have again followed...

Camino Portuguese Tips, Advice and Information Camino Pilgrimage  While the Camino Portugués bears many similarities to the Camino Francés and other routes on the Way of St. James (shells, yellow arrows, signage, and albergues), it is also profoundly different. For example, while pilgrims on the Camino Francés are familiar with many of the key landmarks (geographic, cultural, historical, and religious), such as crossing the Pyrenees, the monument of the Pilgrims on the Sierra de Perdón, crossing the Meseta, visiting the site of the Cruz de Ferro, admiring the Burgos Cathedral, and climbing O'Cebreiro.  By comparison, while the Camino Portugués crosses many beautiful historical, cultural and religious landmarks, the trail seems more defined by the major urban areas along the route such as Lisbon, Santarém, Tomar, Coimbra,  Porto, and Valenca/Tui on the Spanish border.   Perhaps the largest difference most people notice when planning and setting out on ...