The Camino Portugues — A Week That Changes You

The French Way gets the books and the films. The Portuguese Way gets the eucalyptus, the quiet, and the people who wanted a camino without the queue. I walked it in late September, Tui to Santiago, and by the second day I had stopped checking my phone entirely.

I · Why the Portuguese Way

The Portuguese Way is the second-most popular camino route after the French Way, and for good reason. It is greener, quieter, and far less commercial. You walk through Galician villages where the cafés still charge €1.20 for a coffee, past vineyards and cornfields and eucalyptus forests that smell like a spa. The infrastructure is excellent — yellow arrows every hundred metres, albergues spaced at sensible distances — but you will not spend your morning queuing for a stamp behind a tour bus.

The trade-off: fewer grand monuments. The French Way has cathedrals every thirty kilometres; the Portuguese Way has stone crosses, Roman bridges, and the occasional baroque church in a town of four hundred people. It is a humbler walk, and for me, a better one.

II · The Route Tui to Santiago, roughly 115 km

Five to six days, 18–22 km a day. Here is how it breaks down:

Day 1: Tui → O Porriño (18 km)

Cross the Minho river on the old bridge. Gentle climbing through industrial outskirts — the least beautiful day, but it earns you the rest. Stay at the municipal albergue.

Day 2: O Porriño → Redondela (16 km)

The route joins the Central Portuguese Way here. Wooded paths, Roman milestones. Redondela sits on a tidal inlet; eat pulpo at a taverna by the water.

Day 3: Redondela → Pontevedra (20 km)

The longest day. Arcade, with its famous oysters, is a lunch stop. Pontevedra is a beautiful old city with a pilgrims' square and genuine nightlife.

Day 4: Pontevedra → Caldas de Reis (21 km)

Rolling countryside, a long forest stretch, then the thermal springs at Caldas de Reis. Soak your feet in the public spa. It is free and it is medicine.

Day 5: Caldas de Reis → Padrón (19 km)

The hill before Padrón is the hardest climb of the week — short, steep, a reminder that Galicia is not flat. Padrón's peppers are famous for a reason.

Day 6: Padrón → Santiago (24 km)

The longest stage. The final approach through suburban Santiago is unglamorous. Start before dawn. You want to reach the Praza do Obradoiro with the morning still on it.

III · Practical Things

Packing. Seven kilos, not counting water. Two walking outfits, one for evening. A proper rain jacket — Galicia's rain comes sideways. Broken-in shoes half a size up, blister tape applied before you feel anything. Leave the guidebook; the yellow arrows are better.

Where to stay. Municipal albergues are cheap, first-come, and full of people you will keep meeting. Private albergues take bookings. In summer, book Pontevedra and Padrón ahead. Book directly with the properties — we do not sell beds.

Getting your Compostela. Buy a credencial in Tui. Collect two stamps a day for the last 100 km — cafés, churches, albergues. At the Pilgrim's Office in Santiago, present the credencial and state you walked for religious or spiritual reasons. Queues are longest between noon and four. Go early.

IV · What to Carry

You need less than you think. A ten-litre daypack, two pairs of walking socks, shoes you have already broken in for at least fifty kilometres, a compact rain jacket, sunscreen, a refillable bottle, and a small first-aid kit. Everything else is a weight you will regret by day three. I walked the Portuguese Way in November with a single change of clothes and the kind of bag you can tie to a courier if your feet give out. The accommodations along the route — the albergues de peregrinos — supply bedding and a washing line. You eat in the village restaurants, you drink the local wine, and you walk roughly twenty-five kilometres a day with nothing on your back except what you need to keep walking. The lightness is the point.