Camino Portugués
12.8 km, 91 m up and 121 m down, through 2 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 A Guarda. 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 A Guarda along the Rúa Puerto Rico, passing the municipal albergue. The arrows are poor here and the best way is to keep an eye out for a sign indicating the way to Playa Area Granda, a left turn off the Rúa Puerto Rico. Follow this road all the way to the sea and turn right. Ahead is a small beach, followed by a curve in the road, and then a slightly larger beach. This is the Area Grande.
From the Area Grande beach keep to your left and through the car park. Where the car park ends the path narrows, and a smaller trail to your left presents itself. Follow it along the coast. About 1.2km later the camino turns right at a large house, rising uphill to the main road but turning left just before reaching it. The idea here is to again keep off the busy road by means of a few side roads, twisting and turning a bit but eventually returning to the main road once more. When it does so you can follow along a dedicated bike/hike path. It will pass a car park/lookout point before turning left off the road and then right again to parallel the road all the way into Portocelos.
From Portocelos, continue along the same secondary road parallel to the main road. It will invariably return to the main road, once again following the dedicated bike/hike path adjacent to the road. Where the curb barrier ends the camino veers left away from the road and into Oia.
The path through Oia takes you past all of the important stuff; first the Casa Puerta, then the restaurant, and then the Monastery of Oia.
300m beyond the Monastery the camino turns left to follow a coastal footpath and always keeping to the shoreline. You will eventually return to the road, and when you do the familiar bicycle path is there once more, follow it to the left and into Viladesuso.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 403 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 12.8 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.