Camino Portugués
18.4 km, 238 m up and 218 m down, through 1 place, 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 Vigo. 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.
Departing Vigo is a simple affair. From the Xunta albergue (or the port) follow the Ruá Areal to just beyond the train station. The camino follows the road uphill to the right, but only for a short distance as it turns left almost immediately onto Rúa Garcia Barbón. 2.5km later the camino turns right and crosses the large autopista. A short distance later it turns left and follows along the highway which is high up on the hill on your right-hand side; to your left is the estuary and you are high enough up now to have a wide view of it. When you eventually turn away from the water, you pass over the highway which tunnels beneath you. From here the camino stays inland, winding its way through the suburban hillside until it joins with the Central Way just before entering Redondela.
When leaving town, the camino crosses the N550 at a bottleneck on the north side of town that is heavy with traffic at all hours. Cross the N550 as soon as you get to it, and almost immediately veer left gently onto a side road.
The arrows from here leave a bit to be desired. They are present, but have been spray painted with a not quite right yellow and at times, they don’t feel legit. Follow them all the same, and as you near Cesantes the stone markers return.
Getting past Cesantes means crossing the N550 once more, at probably the most dangerous point in a curve in the road. Head straight across and keep to your right.You are climbing uphill now and will traverse around the O Viso peak. Along the way you pass an installation of pilgrim shells and if you have a marker on hand you can leave a message on a sun-bleached shell. From here it is downhill again to the N550.At the entrance to Arcade, the camino turns left rather unnecessarily. It will cross back over the N550 in a few hundred meters, taking you past the albergues and shops of Arcade.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 619 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 16.5 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.