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Douro River trails

Jim Michie

New Member
Time of past OR future Camino
Frances 2015
Norte 2016
My wife and are planning on walking the Camino Portuguese, starting in Lisbon, this year and was trying to find information about a several day walk up the Douro River. I have searched the internet for information and can only find expensive guided and unguided professional tours. I have also not been able to find any guide books. Does anyone in the Forum know of source for information?

Jim Michie
 
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My wife and are planning on walking the Camino Portuguese, starting in Lisbon, this year and was trying to find information about a several day walk up the Douro River. I have searched the internet for information and can only find expensive guided and unguided professional tours. I have also not been able to find any guide books. Does anyone in the Forum know of source for information?

Jim Michie

Hi, Jim,
I don't know of any paths that go up and down the Douro. I know several people who have walked in the Douro area, and they follow paths that weave around but do not actually spend all their time along the Douro. If that is what you mean, I would start with wikiloc.com. They have millions of GPS tracks. Search for trails by putting in a town name or Douro or both and you will be surprised at what comes up. Are you planning to start from Porto or further east, say in Regua or Pinhao?

The other possibility for a trail in the Douro area, but one that goes in a northerly direction is the Camino Portugues Interior. There is a subforum on that camino in the forum. It goes from Viseu to Chaves and over the join the Vdlp in Verín. You will find several excellent posts by forum members descibing their walk. Definitely one I would love to walk.

And there is also the Portuguese branch of the Vdlp, which I think goes somewhere near Lamego and Mesao Frio but I am not completely clear on that.

Good luck with this search and keep us posted. Buen camino, Laurie
 
Last summer I spent 2 weeks in Portugal by car after finishing walking in Santiago. The Duoro river wine country is spectacular. If you are unable to find suitable trails, there are river cruises available out of Porto to look into.
 
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And if you are broadening your search to include other means of transportation than foot, I would HIGHLY recommend the little chug chug train that goes from Regua (but I would start it further east in Pinhao) to Pocinho. That is a portion of the Douro that is inaccessible by car and is about a 45 minute ride each way with a quick rest stop for the drive in Pocinho where there are two cafés, some people selling home made olive oil, honey, and some wine, and not much more.
 
Hi Jim,
Here are two links that might be helpful:
La Ruta del Duero
franky.mmh's Wikiloc tracks
On either site, the stages in Portugal are etapas 21-26.
As Laurie says above, Wikiloc is an excellent place to find tracks. In addition to searching by place name, you can search on a map. The more you zoom in, the more trails that appear. Sometimes you have to zoom in far more than you would have thought to make all the trails that start in a certain location appear. Also, when you are on the page for a track in the area you are interested in, other nearby tracks appear in a grey box on the right-hand side.
Elaine
 
Wow, that is absolutely terrific. This forum is just an incredible source of great information. I have visited Foz Coa and think it is really pretty desolate, not the Douro vineyard splendor you are likely to be thinking of, so I am not sure I would walk all that way from Porto.

And Elaine, where have you been all my life (or at least for the last two years since I figured out how to use wikiloc)? I had no idea you could do a map search! I don't have access to my computer right now, but you can be sure it will be the first thing I will try when I get back home. (And just to be forewarned, I am likely to have questions since I am not exactly a brilliant tech person). Many thanks, Laurie
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
Laurie, given all that I have learned from your posts and blogs over the years, the thought that I might be able to be helpful to you in some small way brought a big smile to my face. Re Wikiloc, it seems to slowly reveal its strengths the more you use it. It would be useful to anybody on this forum who would like to find trails that could add to their camino journeys, either to take day walks to nearby places of interest or to extend their time in Spain. Both Wikiloc and Gaia were invaluable to me recently for planning a 90-day walking trip we will start in February in the Serrania de Ronda.

One tip that might be useful to both you and Jim right now is that you can show more than one Wikiloc track on your screen at a time so you can compare them - seeing whether they coincide, intersect, extend each other, etc. When you have the map view search window open and have zoomed in to the part of the world that interests you, you will see a little symbol to the right of the track names in the left-hand panel. Click on that symbol, and the track will appear on the map. You can leave that track open and click on others to see their relationship. When you want to close a track, just click on the "eye" symbol again.

Have fun exploring!
Elaine
 
Last edited:
My wife and are planning on walking the Camino Portuguese, starting in Lisbon, this year and was trying to find information about a several day walk up the Douro River. I have searched the internet for information and can only find expensive guided and unguided professional tours. I have also not been able to find any guide books. Does anyone in the Forum know of source for information?

Jim Michie

IMG_20200311_214059.jpg
Hi, Jim,
In March 2018, a variant of the Camino Portuguese was launched, starting in Pinhao. You can check the "Way of St. James - Variant 'Heart of the Douro'" track on wikilock. https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/caminho-santiago-variante-coracao-do-douro-1a-etapa-34844833

Jorge Pinho
 

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