Where to stay Coimbra - Porto

MiaT said:

Hi, can anyone suggest the best places to stay over/spend some time in between Coimbra and Porto? Based on distance I was thinking Curia, Mesa do Vouga and Sao Joao da Madeira, but not sure what these places are like. Wondered if anyone that had walked this before could suggest their favourites. Thanks

Click to expand...

When you say 'spend some time in' do you intend to take a rest day somewhere along this leg? I ask, because if you were not, and these are places you intend to walk to on successive days, you are setting a pretty challenging schedule, and I don't think you will see much of any of these places or anywhere in between. More, Curia and Mesa do Vouga appear to be a little way off the CP route, which will add even more to the challenge.

I walked this leg, but my target was 20 km/day. Yours seems in excess of 35 km/day if these are daily stops, which would be consistent with your previous postings about doing Lisbon to Santiago in 22 days. My own choices would be Agueda and Albergaria-a-Velha. Both are worth exploring, but I wouldn't have made either a rest day. There were other places, clearly, but they were unremarkable in the overall scheme of things.

My main recommendation is to make a short detour off the camino to stay at Albergue Moinho Garcia (the water mill place). There are signs for it on the camino, it's about 13.5km past Albergaria-a-Velha.

Beyond that, Águeda has umbrella 'artwork' and São João da Madeira has some industrial museums (e.g. a hat museum) of the type beloved by @peregrina2000 but in general, as I have said many times before, I found the Coimbra-Porto stretch to be not that interesting compared with the Tomar-Coimbra stretch before it.