Despite telling everyone our 2019 travels would be free from pre-planning, we did decide in advance to walk the Fisherman’s Trail in south west Portugal with our daughter Danielle. And so on Saturday May 4th Jo and I were at Lisbon Airport eagerly awaiting Danielle’s arrival from the Philippines. Being a frugal traveller, Danielle had chosen an itinerary which lasted nearly two days and included three stopovers – our expectation therefore was to be greeting a slightly grumpy, tired traveller (it’s happened before, believe me). In fact it was quite the reverse . . .

We picked up our rental car which turned out to be a brand new 5 series BMW. OMG I have never driven such a beautiful car. European cars are so expensive in New Zealand whereas everyone here seems to be driving around in a Merc or something else exotic. I have no idea what all the buttons do – but I am very happy they are all there, gleaming in quite a self-important manner. OK, yes we could have got something cheaper but what the hell – you only live once . . .

From Lisbon to Porto Covo, the start of the Fisherman’s trail, is around 170km which takes surprisingly little time on the excellent Portuguese toll roads. The speed limit is 120 km/hr and, if you happen to be so diligent as to actually travel at that speed, everyone else simply roars past you.

Porto Covo is an old fisherman’s village (“covo” referring to a fishing net) and our Airbnb apartment had a great view over the small natural inlet where a few fishing boats still anchor. There are only around 1,000 people living in the village, but there are signs that tourism is a big thing here, judging by the number of restaurants and shops. Surprisingly there were very few tourists to be seen – both in Porto Covo and on the trail – given the almost perfect temperatures for walking. In mid-summer it apparently gets blisteringly hot.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in The Fisherman’s Trail runs for 80km from Porto Covo in the north to Odeceixe in the south and is actually part of the longer Rota Vicentina trail. The Fisherman’s trail section is popular as it runs virtually all the way along the sea front, taking in some spectacular views of Portugal’s wild Atlantic coast. It runs through a number of small villages and towns, has a reasonable amount of climbing and is, for the most part, sandy. Walking on sand all day is actually tough and so we were constantly searching for firmer ground.the module Advanced settings.

One surprising aspect of the walk was the number of abandoned buildings decorated with the most amazing murals.

Danielle, that fit little bugger, walked the whole length of the trail in five days with Jo and I tag teaming. We would drive each day to the start of the section and whoever wasn’t walking that day would pick up the others at the end. After five nights in Porto Covo we moved to the village of Odeceixe at the end of the trail. It was great to relax out on the town after our last day of walking – we all had a bit too much of the Port wine that night . . .

Next stage of our journey takes us 400km from the coast to the mountainous region of Sera da Estrala.