Camino Portugués
16.4 km, 245 m up and 293 m down, through 4 places, 1 of which has somewhere to sleep. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Conímbriga. Most are too small to sleep in — a fountain, a chapel, a bar that may or may not be open — but they are what the day is actually made of.
Leave by way of the road that exits the site. Turn right at the first intersection, heading straight towards and underneath the highway.Once past the highway, you will pass a series of hamlets (Valada, Atadoa, Orelhudo, Ribeira de Casconha, and Casconha) before crossing back over the highway and arriving in Cernache. Along the way, only Casconha has a bar.
Around Orelhudo, a new type of camino marker appears — stone posts with ceramic tiles. They're well designed but not plentiful: one at the entrance to each hamlet, sometimes one at the exit, but rarely in between. Arrows…
To leave town, continue along the road you came in on, past the church, to the roundabout with the clinica. Turn right there and pass under the N1 highway. Turn left at the next main road and follow it to the town of Pousada. In Pousada turn right past the church and then left onto the dirt track. The dirt track continues quietly for 2km before arriving at a series of industrial buildings. Turn left at the bus stop, and head into Palheira.
The way through town is well marked, as is the way out.After crossing the N1 turn right, then left both times in the direction that takes you uphill. When you get to a T-intersection, take the steep path straight ahead, up to the Alto de Santa Clara.
Arrows lead you easily out of town, and steeply downhill to an intersection where you turn left to follow a road parallel and immediately adjacent to the highway. The camino crosses over the highway and passes underneath an arch of the Roman aqueduct. You will shortly come to the suburbs of Santa Clara. At the large SANTA CLARA roundabout turn right. Stay on this road until the next roundabout, crossing it to exit the opposite side. Stay on this road; it will curve slightly to the left. At the next intersection, turn left to leave the primary road for a secondary one. It will take you downhill past the church of Nuestra Senhora da Esperança and to the Albergue and Convent of Santa Clara (3.3 from the Alto de Santa Clara).
Follow the winding cobbled lane downhill all the way to the bridge into Coimbra.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 166 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 16.3 km.
Esta entidad ha sido beneficiaria de una ayuda del Programa de incentivos a la movilidad eficiente y sostenible (MOVES III), gestionado por la Xunta de Galicia a través del Instituto Enerxético de Galicia (INEGA) en el marco del Real Decreto 266/2021, y cofinanciada por la Unión Europea — NextGenerationEU, dentro del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia.