Camino Portuguese Hiking Day 1 Matosinhos to Vila do Conde

Tim
Sep 8
3 min read

Updated: Sep 9

Howdy there, This was a long damn day. My day started around 5:30AM, which isn't so bad since I am used to getting up that early normally, BUT I had a dinner in Porto Portugal with a bunch of people that I was technically also going to be hiking with in addition to the folks I started out this trip with. The restaurant was just "meh" BUT the red wine was really good.

I won't go into much detail about the folks I met at that dinner, at least not yet. I will hope to get an opportunity to know that better, or not. Most likely not though.

Overall though, there are people from Washington State, Tennessee, Oregon, Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Florida.

Sunday 7 September 2025 at 07:00AM we went down for breakfast. After that I went to finalize packing my luggage and a driver took us to where we were going to be starting out our journey North along the Atlantic Ocean Coast of Portugal.

We arrived in a beach town called Matosinhos, threw on our backpacks and at 08:47AM we started our NON "Pilgrimage" to Santiago de Compostela.

As luck would have it, it started to rain, the temperature was in the high 50's I think, and the wind was blowing pretty good. As I said there was a group of us, 12 twelve in fact. That last a whopping 30 seconds, the groups split up into the groups they came with. It rained, and it rained and then...well it stopped, the sun came out and it was super cool. Most of the day was spend walking on a boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean, there was rarely anyone in the water, a few times I saw some surfers. Portugal, has really cool looking beaches, but they necessarily have people in the water though. The water is pretty damn cold, and in some locations there are ginormous boulders in the water, waves that were really bug and most likely would make for a bad day if you weren't a strong swimmer.

Around Noon'ish it was time to eat and we came across a small place to eat on the boardwalk that seemed to be like a legit restaurant and not your typical beach dive.

This Restaurant just happened to be....wait for it.....WAIT for IT! It was a pizza place. So like any "good" ugly American I was going to order pizza. Ya know one of the things that annoyed me about restaurants in Portugal was that, I have been spending a lot of time teaching myself to speak Portuguese. Now, I never said I was any good at it. BUT before I could even say "Óla, Boa Tarde"! (It sounds more like Boa "tart" actually, well sorta) The Server would walk up and say "Hello, would you like a menu"? I was almost ALWAYS I was caught off guard and would say something really cool like "Yes please", but like in English. I'm to have to just not say a damn thing, and say something in Klingon. Anyways, I ordered pizza, it was pepperoni pizza of course, and it was AMAZING! They used this spicy pepperoni that was super awesome. After lunch I had an espresso and got on my way. Not a huge amount actually happened along the way. 7 hours and 13.3 miles later, we arrived in Vila do Conde. Besides really good pizza All I had to show for the journey were just really sore feet, and a few blisters. Oh and my hips hurt, oh and my knees, both knees in fact. Oh, wait, there was a really cool beach that we did go down too and I did manage to soak my feet/leggs, and when a big ass wave came and my aching body couldn't move fast enough my whole ass got wet. Thankfully quick dry cloths, do in fact dry quick sometimes.

That's it for now, I am wiped the hell out. Monday is a 17 mile day. There is a good chance I will probably be attacked my at Portuguese Man-O-War.

Stay outta trouble, and if you can't do that. Don't get caught.

Tim