Camino Portugues for a novice

[loristiff]

I am planning a Sept 2008 Camino Portugues walk and hear that there is a lot of road walking...I would love to hear from those who have walked this camino how that impairs or improves the walk. :?:

 

[Peter Robins]

I walked from the Portuguese border and was a bit disappointed in the amount of tarmac. But we are talking little lanes, not major roads, so apart from leading to a bit of footsoreness . . .

 

[Ian Holdsworth]

I walked from Oporto in September. The southern part did have a fair amount of road walking. This was not too much of a problem of itself. The main difficulty for me was that the road ( even the smallest county lane) are all garnite set cobbles. This has even less ' give' than tarmac. A very hard surface. On the plus side as the route is North, it means that there is a great deal more shade the the east west route. This for me made walking into the middle or late afternoon a pleasant experience.

 

[jprogers]

Hi there Im new to this site so I will start with a reply...we walked from Porto to Santiago in late May this year and the first day was on alot of tarmac with no footpaths -albeit "smaller"roads it feels uncomfortable. The second day also had narrow secondary roads with large trucks but from that time onwards any roads had safe verges to the road and then it is mostly on off road tracks and lanes. Its a lovely walk and not many steep hills. Take the advice of Brierly and get public transport out of Oporto if you want to avoid alot of street walking...take the Metro.
Cheers

 

[Javier Martin]

It's true, the Camino Portugues has two points to cross "faster than normal", better than say to avoid it. The first is the 9 km you have to walk to leave Porto, and the second one is the Industrial Polygon before arriving Porriño, "As Gandaras".

The ideal for the polygon is to cross it on sunday to avoid the trucks, cars and noises.

Buen Camino,

Javier Martin
Madrid, Spain.