29 January 2026
Rain and Storm is Going Strong
The storm is going strong at night, and no electricity yet. The woman from the house brings me hot tea and bread with marmalade. She asks again if I need to go to Caldas de Rainha, to take the bus.
“No, I will walk to Nazare today!”
My phone is charged until 50%. It is not enough to get me through the walk. So it needs to be a walk without using Google Maps, at least not so much. I need to find the hostel at the end of the day with my phone. I guess it doesn’t have to be too hard, because today I will walk a lot by the road. No risks today.
Report of a Boring Road Path
I was warned that it is a boring path on the road from Foz de Arelho to Salir do Porto. There is no way back, the woman of the description wrote and she took a taxi. But I am happy on the road, there are some fallen trees, but I can pass and the road feels safer because there are cars and I am not totally alone.
I see the GR-route again, all the time this route is via the road, finally it went towards the sea. Since it is drizzling and I can’t see more than 60 meters ahead, I will not take the cliff route, later it comes back to the main road and at the end of the road, the GR again goes again towards the sea. Also here I don’t dare to go to the wet dunes. Adventure of Day 1 is enough for me.
I pass Serra do Bouro, and Boavista. And then Sao Martinho de Porto, a nice bay, you see already long before you arrive there. This beach village, is struck by the storm. It is 11:30 and nothing is open. People are not around to clean. Maybe the people are litarally ‘struck’ by the storm? The electricity must be down and it is a mess, sand everywhere and fallen signs etc.
This is it, the typical view of Sao Martinho de Porto, the view on the other side however, is totally different. A ghost boulevard destroyed with sand everywhere.
No break for me here, also it is still raining. When I see a roof and a dry place to stay under at a municipal building I change my socks, they are wet from the water. It is refreshing to walk with dry socks!
This part to Nazare I will walk on the road again. I try once to go for a walk in the dunes, but first I had the wrong path, and the good one was so wet that I didn’t even look like at that path at all. It’s so slippery that I walk all the way back to the road. I leave Praia Salgado behind me and after a while I have to go all around some rivers and the harbour. Very difficult because it is steep, and on the road with cars. Quite a lot of cars here. Finally, I reach the harbour, where I already see the first signs of damage. I eventually I walk on private property of the harbour, the fences are blown away and couldn’t pass them on the small pavement but I could get into the harbour.
Restaurant in Nazare after Lunch Time
I do like to have a good meal, it will be my lunch and my skipped dinner from yesterday! The restaurant where I ate before, when I walked the first part of this trail is closed. Just walk further to a nice and small restaurant, but they don’t have a lot of fish anymore, so I ended up in another restaurant, a tiny one at the boulevard, where I ate a year ago with my brother. I had sea bass again with fries, and migas, it was good but I didn’t finish the migas. Don’t like this typical Portuguese dish with old bread, olive oil, and green cabbage and ‘black eye’ beans.
Brave surfer in Nazaré, I walk to the elevator to the upper part of Nazare to call it a day.
Sleeping @Spray B&B
Afterwards I buy some bread and cookies, and I go to the funicular. I have to go up to Sitio where my Albergue is, and I am not going to walk one more km. I pay 2,50 to go up. A nice touristic attraction too. Up you can visit Nossa Senhora, go to Praia Norte and you can go to the fort, where you will truly see the biggest waves in the world coming at you. I just go to the Albergue and call it a day.
