Days 1 and 2. -Leaving Lisbon - Sort of.,...

DAYS 1 AND 2 – LEAVING LISBON, SORT OF……
APRIL 7, 2016

I’ve decided to combine our first two days of “proper” walking the Camino out of Lisbon. It will become clearer-why as we go on.

As I may have mentioned somewhere else, the first few stages of walking from Lisbon are not straightforward. Part of this is due to the geography of the city, it has a large semi-industrial history. It was, and is, a world ranking port and hence has many miles of seafront port facilities, backed by residential and other industrial or commercial development. Much of this is quite old, some thriving, other parts deserted with empty buildings or just empty sites. It is through this area that the initial stages of the Portuguese Camino run.

The sum-total of all of this is that there is essentially no pilgrim accommodation for the first thirty-plus kms. In fact there is very little hotel property either, what there is available is very exclusive and expensive.

There is no-way that we are going to walk something over thirty kms in one go, certainly not as the first stage, so we have had to use an alternative strategy, one that was suggested by a Camino expert. This works by staying in Lisbon for an extended period but walking out and riding back and forth on local transport.  So yesterday, our first day of walking, we set-out from the cathedral, having had our Credential stamped, and then walked about 12km to Sacavem. There we caught a train back into Lisbon and to our lodgings,. Today we took the train back to Sacavem then walked 24 km to Alhandra before taking the train back here to our lodgings. Tomorrow we will take the train back again to Alhandra and walk out about another 24km but this time we stay out. We have already booked a room at a small hotel. More of that later.

My brain hurts with all this faffing about, how about yours?

All of this shuffling back and forth overcomes the lack of accommodation and is very cheap. The train back tonight, about a 30km ride, cost us 1.85 Euros each or about £1.50. That was even without bothering to claim old age reductions.  It is doing what we hoped it would do in terms of getting started, but it is VERY time consuming.  This compounded with having internet connection problems means that it has been a struggle to get my blog posts done on time.

Day 1 – Lisbon To Sacavem Day 2 is below

We set out fairly early, called at the cathedral for out initial stamp, a ‘Carimbo’ in Portuguese. The guy at the cathedral told us that they have several people every day starting out from there. The numbers are small at the moment but will increase radically in May, and through the summer.

The very first part of the way runs through the Alfama district, about 100 metres from our lodgings and then down towards one of the main rail stations and the Cruise Ship terminal. Today there was a Fred Olsen cruise ship docked.

From there it was through lots of the old dock and military areas. Some old buildings were interesting in i their own rights,  but things became much more interesting towards the end of today’s stage.

We walked through the “Parque Das Nacoes”, the site of ” Expo98″ the 1998 World Fair. This  large area, originally developed for the world fair, but is now used for all sorts of leisure, educational and artistic purposes. One of the very nice things there is a very long cable-car system. We’re always suckers for this sort of thing, so we had a ride, it gave us a rest from walking and also transferred us about 1km onwards on our travels.

Following that, the rest of the walk to Sacavem train station was mainly through the parkland of the area. We had a quick ride back to Lisbon on the train into Santa Appolonia station about a half mile from our lodgings.

In the evening we decided to eat out. We thought that we would try one of the small bars in the lower parts (altitude-wide) of Alfama. We only wanted something simple and quick. What happened next still has us confused, but it happened. We were walking along one of the narrow alleyways that are lined with bars and eateries when a guy at the door asked us if we were interested in eating there. We initially declined, but then changed our minds and went in for a look. It was a small, empty area, it was early so we weren’t surprised., and decided to stay. At this, the guy lead us up some stairs into the main eating room, which was very busy with very well dressed clients in a very swish environment, and sat us down as a table. Almost immediately a very large lady singer started her “Fado” session immediately next to our table, accompanied by two guitar players. She was loud? certainly. On key,? most of the time, but very unexpected . We were stuck, were couldn’t really escape, so decided to stick it out. We were given a menu each and ordered our choices. By this time the soprano had finished, to be replaced by an equally large, wonky voiced tenor. He was very earnest, but also equally as loud as the soprano. By this time out food had arrived and we were totally stuck. To totally crown it, you’ve got to know that we were sitting there, in this very swish place amongst very well-dressed people, in the clothes we had been walking in all day, and we hadn’t even had time for a shower before going out for what was going to be a quick, simple meal. Goodness only knows what the other guests thought we were at.

Neither of us thought that the food was very good. It was pretentious, but very mediocre quality with poor service. To finish off an exciting evening when we tried to settle-up before we rushed away from this nightmare we discovered that they didn’t accept any kind of cards, cash only! Fortunately we had enough, just, to pay the bill before escaping.

Day 2 – Sacavem to Alhandra

After a quick journey back to yesterday’s end point we followed the trail mainly through countryside. The route is described by the writer of our guide as “an ugly walk all the way to Alhandra”. We didn’t find it so. In many ways it was very pretty and certainly interesting. We followed a small tidal river, not “an old abandoned canal”, for many kilometres along a valley. Admittedly at the edges of the valley there could be seen industrial and residential areas, but the areas immediate next to the walk were very interesting. We saw lots of wild flowers, heard lots of birdsong,  frogs croaking. We also saw some sheep and lambs and lots of other things. We were under the flight path from Lisbon airport, but that wasn’t too intrusive. Over all we enjoyed the walk. Much of the land send to be a clay-like soil so some of the paths had puddles of all sizes available for our intrepid walkers to step into.

Whilst doing this part of the walk we met our first companion Camino walker. This is Stuart Nelson, “The Man in the Blue Blazer”, on Facebook. Not only was he English, but from Yorkshire too. That is a very unlikely combination as vet few Camino walker are from England, let alone Yorkshire. At one point he helped us across a very boggy patch by lending us his walking poles. Stupidly we’d left ours behind at the apartment thinking that we wouldn’t need any. He was walking rather quicker than us, as he had further to go, so he soon was well ahead of us. Possibly well meet him somewhere else later, who knows.

The latter part of the walk was on a very new, and long, boardwalk through an extensive nature reserve at the edge of the River Tajo.

This is Lisbon’s main river and it was delightful. In between we went through a number if small towns and some industrial areas, but generally it was a good, but long, day.

We returned by train, as explained above, but decided to stay in tonight to avoid being mobbed by the crowds expecting a repeat performance of our “Weird people out of context” performance at the restaurant down the road.