Portuguese Coastal Camino walking vacation, last 100km

Planet

The countryside of rural Galicia is beautiful, with lots of traditional villages and stone buildings. It’s important to us that guests respect and appreciate the unspoilt nature of this area by doing nothing to harm it.

The fact that they are on foot is already a major advantage in terms of having negligible environmental impact but we also clarify their responsibilities in the travelers’ code of conduct, which explains how to leave no trace by avoiding common Camino practices such as cairn-building.

We reduce the amount of plastic and waste by providing refillable water bottles. Tap water is perfectly safe and there are fountains along the route where clients can top up their supplies with drinking water.

We combine luggage transfers with those of other clients and use a local service in order to minimise the amount of road transport for this part of our service.

We also encourage clients to either fly out of an airport near Santiago de Compostela or to use public transport to return to Porto or Vigo.

People

The route passes through numerous small villages and towns that are way off the tourist trail and many of the local shops, caf้s and restaurants rely on the income generated by pilgrims like our clients.

We make recommendations for independently-owned local restaurants and tasty regional dishes throughout the journey, e.g. oysters in Arcade and the Galician empanada (pie).

We encourage clients to make the most of the opportunities to talk to Portuguese and Galician people and learn something of their culture, which is why our roadbooks provide advice about how to interact causing offence, as well as some helpful phrases in Portuguese and Spanish.

Our office is in the small town of Ponte de Lima in Northern Portugal, not far from the starting point for this programme. Our location and specialist local knowledge enable us to rapidly organise local help and support to any of our clients as required.

It is vital to us, and our clients, that our staff feel valued and respected so we make sure they are fairly recompensed for their dedication to our clients and the community.