Our first set of back-to-back hiking days. We woke up in Carrapateira, packed, made breakfast and called an Uber. We arrived at the Endless Summer Surf House, stored our bags, and were on the trail about 1020. This is a much later start than normal, which was primarily due to the fact that we were hiking on a travel day.
The weather was superb and Julie carried her pack with our essentials: water, long sleeve shirts, glasses and our foot repair kit, as well as my man-bag with our passports and wallets. Because we didn’t have much time to prepare we did not bring a lunch.
One thing we have noticed the last two hiking days is that there is a lot of sand on the high trails on the cliffs. We did not experience that type of terrain in the southern part of the Fisherman’s Trail. It is also fairly deep sand, like walking on a dune, so it did slow us down a little bit. That said, we both believe it was comforting for our feet walking on a softer surface.
The trail took us to the archeological ruins of the Ribat of Arrafana, a 12th century Islamic fortress/convent. Borrowing from our guide book “it was founded by Ibn Qasi, political leader and spiritual guide of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam. It was a fortress convent, dedicated to prayer and watching over the coast.” The site had one partial building with partial walls and a number of other areas where you could still see the base layer of foundations, but otherwise not much was left. The actual location was truly impressive though; it was positioned on a cliff that jutted out into the sea that provided extensive views up and down the coast.
This section of the trail was very windy — probably 15 mph sustained winds with gusts around 25 mph. It doesn’t really slow you down much walking, however a couple times I had to take my ball cap off because it was being blown off my head.
The trail takes you to Praia de Monte Clerigo, which is a very popular beach for young families. We had lunch at a beachside cafe and were surrounded by toddlers crawling and walking around the deck on the outside patio. It was very cute.
Before turning inland for the trek into Aljezur, we had an amazing bird’s eye view of a beautiful winding river (Ribeira de Aljezur) trying to make its way to the sea. So far, the few rivers we see only connect with the sea during high tide so if needed you can generally wade across without any difficulty. We were staying south of the river and continued our walk into a very nice neighborhood where the homes had impressive vistas of the coast and the inland countryside. Julie saw a number of places that would be very appealing homes if we ever decided to make a move to Portugal (to include an empty lot with an existing foundation and utility hookups that was ready to go).
This was also the first day we had to walk along a road to get into Aljezur. Fortunately the traffic wasn’t too bad and we felt safe, however not the most pleasant hiking conditions. During this last section the trail veered into a wooded area where we were able to pick up pieces of bark from a cork tree — apparently much of the world’s cork is harvested from trees in Portugal and Spain. The bark feels just like the cork from a wine bottle.
The final few kilometers took us down a very steep dirt road where we had to walk diagonally to preserve our knees. We entered the town of Aljezur and felt good about walking on back-to-back days. Our next goal is to start walking with our full packs.