Portuguese Camino de Santiago walking vacation

Planet

The inland Portuguese Camino de Santiago route follows an ancient trail along quiet country lanes and dirt paths in stunning countryside, interspersed with historical towns and cities in Northern Portugal and Spain.

Our clients can choose to walk or cycle; either way, their impact on the environment is negligible.

To ensure that our self-guided clients are fully aware of their own responsibilities to protect the natural and cultural environment, they have a full in-person briefing with one of our locally-based Camino experts. We emphasise the importance of sticking to the trail and leaving no litter, including not building cairns from stones, and how to avoid inadvertently starting a forest fire.

There are plenty of drinking water fountains along the Camino, as well as the tap water in accommodations etc., so we provide refillable water bottles to encourage clients not to buy disposable ones.

We typically have more than one client following this programme at any given time so we arrange bulk luggage transfers with local drivers to reduce carbon emissions.

Our carefully selected accommodation partners use eco-friendly practices to save water, use solar power and promote recycling.

People

The villages and small towns along the traditional Camino trail receive few other visitors apart from pilgrims and the small local businesses depend upon the income they derive from clients like ours. For this reason, as well as the opportunity to interact with local people and absorb something of the local culture, we strongly recommend that our clients patronise small cafés, local family-run restaurants and independent stores.

To make such encounters easier for all concerned, our info packs provide advice about how to respect local cultures and interact without inadvertently causing offence as well as some helpful phrases in Portuguese and Spanish.

Local people are used to seeing pilgrims and often go out of their way to support them. Although we provide detailed route notes, if a client is ever in doubt as to which way to go, a friendly local will point them in the right direction without them even having to ask.

Our main office is in Ponte de Lima in Northern Portugal, a small town along the Camino route. Our staff are mainly from this region and have deep ties with it, meaning that they are able to quickly mobilise local resources to help clients if they need it.

We treat our staff and suppliers with respect and provide fair working conditions.