Leaving Odeceixe in the morning, we were now officially following the Rota de Vicentina, or the Fisherman’s Route, a 125 km route along the coast of Portugal. It’s a fairly popular route, which meant we could take advantage of the luggage transfer service, leaving us with daypacks only for the 18km trek to our next stop, Zambujeira do Mar. With a lighter load, a good night’s sleep, and the still cool weather (in fact, it even rained in the morning!), this day was a lot more enjoyable and scenic!
The trails are fairly well marked, but you have to keep a constant eye out for the small coloured markings, or the “x”s telling you you’re going the wrong way. The Fisherman’s Route intersects quite a bit with the historical route, which is a different colour, as well as the road, so you do have to be diligent. We had to backtrack a couple of times for a few minutes, or use google maps to determine if our route would come back to the marked trail if we had gone too far. It would probably be easier by yourself, as you’re not as easily distracted. There were also a couple of detours that seemed fairly recent, either to protect vulnerable coastal areas, or to generate business to local towns. Both seemed fair.
With cool weather, water wasn’t really a problem, nor was the lack of shade, but I can imagine you’d have to be more careful with hotter weather. Most days were between 18-22 km, and weren’t too tough. The slowest and hardest part was probably walking through deep sand, where I tended to alternate between shoes, flip flops and bare feet. This strategy didn’t work as well when the sun began burning my feet and sand, but was good for the first couple of days.
Because we were going south to north, and most of the other walkers were doing the reverse, we tended to have quiet mornings, and began passing by people around 11 or 12, often the halfway point in the day. It certainly wasn’t crowded, although I imagine it gets busier closer to the summer. Leaving around 9, we tended to get in to town around 2 or 3pm, some days earlier or later. That left the rest of the night to get laundry done (although rarely dry it seemed with the first few days of cool weather), figure out dinner and relax. I got a lot of reading done.
Our route went: Rogil to Odeceixe, to Zambujeira do Mar, to Almograve, to Vila Nova de Milafontes. The final stop is supposed to be Porto Covo, but we had heard it was pretty difficult, as it mostly walking in the sand, and the longest of the days. By this time it was also 36 celsius. We decided to instead stay two nights in Milafontes, which was a nice tourist town on purportedly the cleanest river in Portugal, flowing into the ocean, and take a day hike towards the direction of Porto Covo. As the sand heated up, the idea of walking in flip flops didn’t pan out as well as it did on previous days. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
We spotted a beach with public access according to Google Maps up ahead, that also seemed to offer desperately needed shade, and headed towards that. The public access was more a somewhat treacherous scramble down a steep slope, but we got there and found a beautiful secluded beach, with shade! We had lunch there, cooled down and rested before braving the heat for the way back. I managed a quick dip in a very cold and rough ocean, hoping that would keep me cool for the way back. Luckily, going back always feels shorter, despite the extremely hot sand. With that heat, we were glad we decided not to attempt all the way to Porto Covo, and headed to Lisbon the next day.
