• For 2024 Pilgrims: €50,- donation = 1 year with no ads on the forum + 90% off any 2024 Guide. More here.
    (Discount code sent to you by Private Message after your donation)
  • ⚠️ Emergency contact in Spain - Dial 112 and AlertCops app. More on this here.

Search 69,459 Camino Questions

Coastal route starting in Lisbon??

DjennyHeart

New Member
Time of past OR future Camino
Via De La Plata- March-May 2013
Via De La Plata- May 2017
I have seen that there is a coastal option from Porto onwards...
but is there the option of walking the coast from Lisbon to Porto?

I really love the coast of Portugal and would love to see it again by foot if possible...
with a few scheduled bus/train trips inland to see some of the places I'd miss.

any info is greatly appreciated!
Cheers, Jenny.
 
Technical backpack for day trips with backpack cover and internal compartment for the hydration bladder. Ideal daypack for excursions where we need a medium capacity backpack. The back with Air Flow System creates large air channels that will keep our back as cool as possible.

€83,-
Hi Jenny

I also made enquiries about this but alas there appears to be no southern equivalent to the route north of Oporto. I am sure it would be possible to walk some stretches along the coast but the inconvenience of diverting from the main route might not be either possible or worth it. Perhaps Laurie can advise?

John
 
I am quick to look at any post involving Lisbon because I have walked from there and there aren't too many who do. But unfortunately, I have no information on a coastal possibility from Lisbon. I am virtually certain there is no signage, so it would be a matter of following secondary roads and occasional walks on the beach.

There are definitely coastal paths on the Atlantic coast west of Lisbon. From Cascais north, you can walk through Boca do Inferno and on to the seemingly endless Praia do Guincho. I know there are paths along the headlands, maybe starting at Cabo da Roca (the REAL westernmost point of the Iberian peninsula, sorry Finisterre :) ) and heading up through Praia das Macas. I've walked various times on these paths, but only as day trips from Lisbon. But I don't think there's any continuous path that goes from Cascais north to where the coastal path separates from the inland Caminho Portugues.

Sorry not to be of much help on this. Buen camino, Laurie
 
Down bag (90/10 duvet) of 700 fills with 180 g (6.34 ounces) of filling. Mummy-shaped structure, ideal when you are looking for lightness with great heating performance.

€149,-
Thanks to both of you!

I just thought I would put it out there to the universe...
I have ideas/ plans/dreams... for seemingly every camino route :D
But I have yet to be certain which one I will take..
As of now, I know I will be in Europe in March, plan to walk the
Jakobsweg in Germany from Kempten to Bodensee...
and then????
But I will be doing one of the routes to Santiago...

I will research a bit more about walking on the coast out of Lisbon...
If I have any breakthroughs I will keep you posted!

Buen Camino,
Jenny.
 
Historically there is a coastal route from Lisbon to Porto, but it is not signed yet. I read snippets in books over the years about a Portuguese Queen taking that route and there are many places to visit en route. We found statues of St. James and scallop shells and pilgrim chapels all along the coast. We started from Sintra (we were cycling and the Lisbon traffic is hell!) and followed tracks, lanes and roads all along the coast. We used the Turinta Coast of Lisbon map to start with, although i used googlemaps and others to check the terrain and zoom in on tracks to ensure we would get thru! I then highlighted the route on the map and then crossed my fingers! Mostly it worked. We then used the old military maps of Portugal - there do not seem to be anything else available! They are called 'Instituto Geografica E Cadastral and are available in map shops. We used numbers 22, 19,16 and 13 which take you from Pataias, south of Marinha Grande to Madalena below Porto. They are 1:100,000 so great for detail. They were printed in the 1960s i think, so if you find a newish road, you know why its not on the map! we then used Brierley's guide from Porto onwards. It is a stunningly beautiful route, much of it is of gentle undulation, but with a few ferocious hills. The flora is amazing, as were the people. It is easy to camp and most villages have a shop, or you can flag down the bread van. Being the coast there are areas that are touristy, but we found it a nice change to have more people around and campsites with facilities.
So go for it!!
 
good info hecate105 & peregrina2000
thanx
was planning to pretty much ramble north up the coast til oporto, then start looking for yellow arrows
my walking this time starts in may/jun, when i figure sleeping out is fine
walking portugal's south coast many years ago, meandering really, & sleeping rough, i followed interesting roads & tracks in a generally westerly direction. tomatoes cheese & bread to be had in little villages, water & wine. people to meet & talk to if i felt like it, a bed for the night, in one form or another, could usually be come by...
tho i do recall some chilly nights under the stars, what i remember most is just how beautiful it all was.
i am anticipating this leg of the camino portuguese to be similar.
with plenty of time to get into the peregrino routine once past oporto, in the absence of info overload about this leg of the journey i'm rather inclined to see this as a chance to see the country for what it is, unmodified & minus camino fever.
bonus
 
A selection of Camino Jewellery
Olá
As mentioned before when you look at the backside of your credential ,at the drawn map of Portugal, you'll see a roadmarking from Lisbon up to Oporto at the coastal side.
As navigation aid we will use an Ipad mini ( very light in weight) with the (paid ) app NAVMII of Portugal and a second one of Spain. This apps have up to date information among others for walkers ,working on GPS so no need for 3 or 4 G or wifi connection. The app shows all the (small) minor roads leading from Lisbon to Oporto so you can easily follow the coastal line as drawn on your credential . Good value !
Beside of navigation will use the Ipad mini also as a camera, wifi unit for our travelblog and for all other functions like email check out ,banking check out , E reader etc.

However back to the topic we will follow the Brierley path from Lisbon to Oporto, starting monday 6 th of May coming .
probably we will meet up some pelgrim fellows on our caminho from Sé Cathedral in Lisbon that day or somewhere else on route . Due to our touristical pace we don't go further than the Pousada Juventude in Moscavide at the outskirts of Lisbon that day and we will take our time walking no more than about 20 km's a day and keeping some rest days in Coimbra ,Oporto and Vigo so we hope to reach Santiago in about 40 days from our start on May 6 th. For sleeping facilities we will use John Brierleys information as well as we gathered unnumerous information of all kind from this forum
( many thanks to all !) and from webblogs we carefully read . For the coastal path from Oporto to Vigo up north we use another app too ( you need wifi for that or 3 G) named Airbnb aswhere you will find as many bed and breakfasts, rooms, appartments etc all over the world. We worked allready with this app ,booking a nice appartment just around the corner of Sé Cathedral in Lisbon the days before our "caminho take off" while exploring the beautiful Portugese capital.

Entāo, bom caminho ! E talvez até a vista !
 
Has anybody done it, in the end? =)
I'd like to do it too and i'd love to have some info and advices.
My plan would be to start in 2 weeks: will it be too cold, according to you?
how much money will i need? it would be my first Camino and i don't really know if would be better to get from Porto to Lisbon or form Lisbon to Porto, and actually follow the costal route or the most common one.

Can you help me?

Thanks =)

Luca
 
Technical backpack for day trips with backpack cover and internal compartment for the hydration bladder. Ideal daypack for excursions where we need a medium capacity backpack. The back with Air Flow System creates large air channels that will keep our back as cool as possible.

€83,-
Have walked from Lisbon to Oporto.
There is no "real" route.
You need good maps; often you have to cut inland.

I was quite an experience.

I you want my personal view, then look at my Blog:-
https://ensuitepilgrimblog.wordpress.com/

Scroll down...

Be happy to try to answer any queries.
I am planning to walk the coastal route from Lisbon next year. Has there been any updates on this route? I tried to look up Musicman blog but could not find the coastal route.
 
Am planing to start in Lisbon in July/August 2016, and walk as near to the coast as possible, then on to Santiago v Fisterra and Muxia, I just hope the weather is ok and not as hot as it was on the Camino frances this past July/August I wiil follow the Brierley path and get anymore info that I can before I go.
 
Thanks for the new information on the coastal route out of Lisbon. As someone who has done a fair amount of walking on the coast outside of Lisbon, I am wondering if the route is really going to follow the coast or if it will stay inland a bit. The coast near Cabo da Roca and Praia d'Adraga is a continual weaving back and forth that you can sometimes walk 2 km to advance only a few hundred meters (in other words the coast zig zags so much that staying next to the water is many many times longer than the straight line between two points if this makes sense). Looking at the map from Malveira da Serra to Praia Grande, for instance, I see that one of the options goes through Almocageme. That's several kms from the beach, so though you will be near the coast you won´t be on the coast. I don't say that as a criticism, but I think it is important that people know that the geology of the coast line near Lisbon is very different than the geology of the coastline people may be more familiar with if they've walked the coastal route from Porto. Bom caminho, Laurie
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
Hi Laurie
It's true what you affirm, for I saw some yellow arrows in the Serra de Sintra near the Capuchin Convent and the other in Sintra very close to the Palácio da Vila. I think the route to follow to Guincho beach, which leaves the national road and following the woods, passing near the village of Malveira da Serra and begins to climb the hill and not the encircling.
However you can always make your pilgrimage, almost always by the sea, only for asphalt.

http://www.gpsies.com/mapOnly.do;js...ileId=aoqcngtbjihdbxvp&isFullScreenLeave=true

AMSimoes
 
Dear all,

I wanted to post some information about the coastal path based on some wonderful days of walking near Lisbon. It's absolutely brilliant.

A couple of years ago my wife and I walked from Lisbon up to Santiago, and then on St Jean. While some of the best days of walking were on the Camino Portuguese (north of Porto - in the Ponte de Lima area), also some of the worst days walking we have experienced were the three days heading out of Lisbon. On the classic route (by Villa Franca Xira and on to Santarem), we experienced,
- walking by the side of busy N-roads next to the trucks (rarely any pavements)
- a lot of time by chemicals factories, distributions centres, a power station, etc
- being followed by a dog under a motorway bridge
- long distances (30km plus) when you are just starting to get in shape
Frankly it's just an unpleasant slog that you have to get through to get to the better times.

We have come back to Lisbon and are living here for a couple of months, and have been out and about on some day hikes. And we discovered the most amazing thing. In Cascais, and Sintra, out to the west of Lisbon, we came across yellow arrows. Upon asking in the Cascais tourist office they gave us this map:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1X1RwlXnlfPhTScpVdT6b4poRVrQ&ll=39.45352475734819,-8.659402949218702&z=10

which if you open on your phone in the google maps app shows you exactly where you need to go turn by turn.

Day 1 - Lisbon to Cascais. Walk from the Se cathedral to Alcantara-Mar station, then follow the path next to the sea to Belem and on out to Cascais. Some of the sea views are stunning, there is always pavement, the area is safe and nice. (note the map above only starts in Estoril, but all the way until then there is a clear path, marked with red/white blazes). And once you get to Cascais, the signage with the yellow and blue arrows begins (yellow - Camino, blue - Fatima)

Day 2 - Cascais to Sintra. We walked this yesterday. Unbelievable scenery, actually probably the best we saw anywhere on the Camino Portugeuse or Frances. Leaving Cascais there is the Atlantic Ocean, then you are walking through eucalyptus forest, then through a country estate (Quinta das Sequoias) full of boulders and forest, and then into Sintra with the historic castles. The whole day is either on quiet roads or tracks through forest, and we barely met a soul

We haven't been north of Sintra, but from the map, it appears the route goes all the way to Fatima, where you can nip across and get back onto the standard Camino route by Tomar. We can only personally vouch for the first two days, but based on what we saw,

- amazing scenery
- safe (never on the road with dangerous traffic)
- Cascais and Sintra are both lovely places to stay (I still remember the Brierley book saying be careful the first day leaving Lisbon on the classic route at the only place to stay is a brothel!)
- manageable distances
- very clear signage (yellow and blue arrows very frequently)

As you can tell from this post this has been an amazing experience for us, and it changes the first days out of Lisbon from being some of the very worst, to some of the very best. Literally 10x more enjoyable.

Unfortunately we will not have the chance to get further north than Sintra, but if someone tries it, please do post a report on whether it continues to be so good all the way up to Fatima.

Best wishes

Tom
 
Join our full-service guided tour and let us convert you into a Pampered Pilgrim!
All,
I have been researching the coastal route from Lisbon for our trip in April 2024. I know this is an old thread but I thought I would share what I found. The route is officially called Trilho das Areias (Trail of the Sands). Most of the information is in Portuguese or German but most can be translated relatively easily using Google translate directly in the Google Chrome Browser for web pages or by uploading pdfs using google translate web page.

One of the best resources is here: https://trilho-das-areias.webnode.page/etapa-9-caldas-da-rainha-nazare-paredes-da-vitoria/

Also this pdf in french (easily translated by uploading to google translate) has maps and accommodation information: http://www.camminando.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/trilho-das-areias-de-lisbonne-à-porto-FR2016.pdf

There is also a facebook group for Trilho das Areias.
 

❓How to ask a question

How to post a new question on the Camino Forum.

Forum Rules

Forum Rules

Camino Updates on YouTube

Camino Conversations

Most downloaded Resources

This site is run by Ivar at

in Santiago de Compostela.
This site participates in the Amazon Affiliate program, designed to provide a means for Ivar to earn fees by linking to Amazon
Official Camino Passport (Credential) | 2024 Camino Guides
Back
Top