We found Caminha perhaps less than exciting, though the square was a pleasant enough place to sit and watch some of the world go by. One bar in particular appealed enough to merit two visits.
We are still on the Portuguese camino and there is an almost constant stream of pilgrims walking around the bay. Just outside the campsite entrance are water taxis which will ferry people across the Minho river estuary to Spain or into Caminha itself to avoid the 30-minute walk around the harbour. A longer 20km or so ride into Valença [I had to keep stopping myself calling it Valencia] is also available though I don’t know how the return might work. We walked into town and back for the leg stretch.
Woodland surrounds the campsite and a short walk through this leads to sandy beach. Francine investigates on the day we arrived and found an interesting offshore fort. We both went for a leg stretch afterwards to see it in morning light.
Portuguese shopping was a new experience for us. It is complicated by not knowing the Portuguese words [frango is chicken – where does that come from?] or the brands or the shop names. One shop did sound comfortingly familiar, Spar, but it proved almost a complete waste of space. Francine was looking for fresh milk, as she frequently is, and thought that the waste-of-space Spar did not have any, so we left.
Happily our erstwhile guide Andy, who had also stopped in Caminha in one of his favoured car parks, pointed us at another supermarket called, intriguingly, Pingo Doce [means “Sweet Drop”, apparently] which proved considerably more successful. Here Francine figured out that one carton, looking completely unlike milk since it featured Toy Story graphics, was, in fact, fresh milk. Maybe this was to go with the kids’ cereal? We’d maligned the poor old Spar just a little – it did have Toy Story milk (though little else). We just didn’t recognize it for what it was. We shopped in Pingo Doce twice.
I’m building up a few things that you do not come to Portugal to buy. Andy had warned us not to fill up with fuel here ‘cos it’s about 30¢ a litre more expensive than in Spain. I’m also having trouble with cheese and beer. Here are a couple of examples. The most prevalent beer [so probably not likely to be the best example], is Super Bock, there being absolutely nothing super about this bock, trust me. Here also is a cheese that looked as if it might be vaguely interesting being coated in some red pimienton-like stuff. I can best describe it as a large lump of Dairylea but just a little firmer, though just as plastic and tasteless.
Thinking we might eat out for lunch, we did, on our second visit into Caminha, seek out a seafood restaurant which Francine had seen advertised. The menu, however, looked both a little less than scintillating and quite expensive so we gave that a miss in favour of buying some prawns with bread and mayonnaise to eat chez Frodo. We’ve had tastier prawns, to be honest, but they were OK.
Having booked into our campsite at Caminha initially for three nights, since we were benefitting from brilliant weather and had a pleasant pitch, we extended our stay to four nights. Pleasant pitches in the Iberian peninsular are not to be surrendered lightly.
Recent Comments