Portuguese Coastal Camino

This tour is sold out! Go back to all alumni UBC tours.

The October, 2019 walking tour booked up in record time! We’re delighted to present this Spring, 2020 walking tour along the Portuguese Way, the less travelled ‘friendly Camino’, to enjoy the tradition of hospitality offered to pilgrims since the middle-ages where all villages and towns participate with their generosity and warm welcome.

Your 14-day, 200-kilometre guided walk, accompanied by coach Marisa Mae is a time for reflection and recognition. It provides thinking time to crystalise the 'where to from here', or if you prefer, a time to step away from thinking at all. This is a true Camino; you will be walking from one village to the next every day, with your luggage transported to the next village inn.

The route is carefully designed for easy to manage walking days. This trip is escorted by Marisa and our Portuguese walking guide, Horacio Santos, but you are free to walk at your own pace in your own time. You will have a pack of easy to read maps and instructions, complete with directions to guide you on the well-marked paths and tracks, following the yellow arrows. And should you need to take a break, support is just a phone call away.

A basic level of fitness required and some uphill stretches in part, however, given you only need carry a lightweight day bag and your water supply, which can be replenished in the various villages on route, it makes this trip very manageable for walkers with limited experience.

Our route starts in the colourful UNESCO-listed city of Porto and follows a beautiful landscape of beaches and dunes through charming seaside towns and villages before crossing into Spain with farmhouses, forests, rolling hills and cobbled stone paths a feature of the journey. You’ll taste delicious seafood and wine, stay in fishing villages with sandy beaches, and be refreshed by the maritime breezes and the sun at your back.