I woke up late again. It’s the same story: I thought I had set up my alarm, but I hadn’t, so I only got woken up at 7. That being said, I didn’t really plan on when to start walking anyway. I know in the Camino Portuguese, most people started walking at 6:30 because the sun did rise early. I was surprised to wake up to the darkness at 7, then I checked the weather app only to find out that the sun rises at 7:30 here.
I stayed in a private apartment tonight because all of the hostels in Porto Covo were full (and I booked everything in advance 2-3 months ago!). While definitely more expensive than hostels, it was nice to have the entire apartment to myself at least for the first night, just to get myself reoriented.
The first thing I did after I woke up was to rearrange my pack, making sure that I got all the essentials (food, first aid) in the most reachable place. Then I assembled my breakfast: juice, toast, yogurt from the minimarket, and a cup of coffee. I had a quick flashback to my first morning on the camino, I only had two slices of bread for breakfast, a cup of coffee and nothing else. Of course I would feel like I was dying by the end of my first day on the camino! But I have learned my lesson this time. I will always make sure to stock up on yogurt for breakfast too, I learned this from the French woman I met on the camino and it seems to have worked well for me.
I only managed to set off at around 9… not because I spent too much time lingering having my breakfast, but because I a) didn’t know how to wear my sand gaiters, so I had to watch a few YouTube videos and b) I had some trouble flushing down the toilet. Not the smoothest start (and not the start of the Fisherman’s Trail that I imagined), but I managed.
Porto Covo at 9 was still very quiet. Most shops, except for this one minimarket slash cafeteria, were not open yet. The only people on the streets were either street cleaners or a hiker. Where were the other hikers!? I wondered if everyone had set off earlier, or if this trail was not busy after all… which is honestly good news for me.
What I really liked about this trail is that I was already close to nature since the very beginning. That being said, technically the start of the trail is in Sines which. I chose to skip since many said it’s not that picturesque. The beaches of Porto Covo were even more beautiful when bathed under the morning sun, and it didn’t take long for me to exit the village and found myself in the more remote parts of the trail.
How do I navigate the Fisherman’s Trail? On the Camino, I mostly relied on the Buen Camino mobile app, although technically the golden arrows should have sufficed but sadly I don’t trust my own navigational skills. The Fisherman’s Trail also has waymarks and supposedly it’s very well-marked, but the official website recommends hikers to download the GPX file of the trail and upload it to applications like OutdoorActive which is what I ended up doing. … and thank goodness I did, because it didn’t take long for me until I got lost.
I reached a small cove and I didn’t realize that I actually had to cross it. From afar, there seemed to be no path on the other side, so I made my way to the left, cheerfully thinking that there is no way I had to climb my way up. But then after almost 500 m (of walking on the sand, mind you) I realized that I had not seen a single waymark. This is where my map came handy: turns out I really had to cross the cove I passed earlier, and indeed there was some climbing involved, which is why I couldn’t see the route from afar - because it was up there!
And so I reluctantly retraced my steps and returned to the cove, climbed up, and successfully got myself back to the trail. Another fun part of this trail is walking on the beach! At some point, the path led hikers to the beach. It’s about 2 or 3 km long. Still walking on the sand, but it’s not deep sand like the sand that I encountered on the clifftops, so this was much easier on the feet. I returned to the clifftop when I reached Fort of Pessegueiro, built in the late 1500s.
If in the Camino Portuguese I heaved a heavy sigh every time I had to walk on the road, this time I immediately knew what is the equivalent of the road walking in the Fisherman’s Trail: walking on sand dunes.
I’ve read about how the sand on the fisherman’s trail makes it more physically demanding than regular trails, but it never really registered in my brain until I actually walked on it with my backpack. It wasn’t impossible, but it just made me walk slower. Whenever there were sceneries, I could get myself distracted by the sceneries, but when the route moved away from the ocean and I had to walk inland… that’s when it got tedious. The route eventually brought me back to the coast, where I saw a lot of fishermen along the way. The name Fisherman’s Trail referred to the fact that this trail was used by fishermen in the past to get to their fishing spots, but apparently this is still true now!
Three kilometers before Vila Nova de Milfontes, I stopped by a restaurant for lunch. No pilgrims menu sadly, so I decided to go with a tuna steak, and oh boy, it didn’t disappoint.
