I almost didn’t take the wooden steps to the right of the trail, but soon my feet were carrying me down to what I thought was a deserted beach. I peeled off my red socks, jumped from the last step, and planted my toes deep into the cold sand.
A surprise to then see two piles of clothes, and further up the beach the unclad couple who owned the piles. Probably more of a surprise for them. I turned my smirking face towards the Atlantic, stuck out my tongue and licked the salty air.
It felt more like a midsummer day in England than mid-January on The Fisherman’s Trail in Portugal. “You’re walking the trail at the worst time of year”, a friend who lives in the Alentejo province had said, “Spring is the best time.” As the sun warmed my back - January felt just about perfect to me.
It was day 3 of the 13-day, 226km coastal trail, and today was proving to be the most epic so far. I’d set off South from the seaside town of Zambujeira Do Mar, with the moon still up and not a soul in sight. Peace, freedom, solitude. Just ahead, a white stork wintering in Portugal like me, cumbersomely took flight.
There was a time when the thousands of protected storks here would head to Africa for winter, but climate change has changed that.
As the daisies opened their faces to the arcing sun, I was gaining good ground, 6k in, 15 more to go. Goats, cows and llamas nibbled the still dewy grass as I diligently followed the well marked trail; “Head South, keep the ocean to your right and you can’t really go wrong.” A friend who’d walked the entire trail in the mad heat of summer had told me. She was right, but she’d also gotten sunstroke.
Coastal erosion has meant the constant adaption and re-marking of the trail, cutting out sections of crumbling sandstone and instead weaving inland through forests of pine and eucalyptus. It was here I took a welcome break, pinned my spine to a tree and tucked into roasted courgette and tomato pasta, probably grown in one of the plastic polytunnels I’d passed earlier.
Continuing on, Jurassic headland after headland. Sharp slices of land make way for thrilling drops to unreachable beaches and coves. From here you can see Sagres in the South-West corner and turning North the chuffing industrial towers of Sines, both famous for their surf. Remnants of layered rock-like cake tell the story of where the cliffs and this path once stood. In 50 years, I’d be walking on water.
It was here that the low banks of neon pink and yellow ‘highway ice plants’, also known as ‘edible sourfig’ or ‘pigface’ (and which look a bit like dandelions on steroids), lined the stream alongside the trail. It was here I ignored the markings and took the wooden steps down to the beach.
Purposefully moving away from the couple's clothes, I could see where the stream above now flowed. A slimy black granite backdrop to a sundrenched waterfall. It wasn’t long before two piles of clothes turned into three that day on a ‘deserted beach’, somewhere between Zambujeira Do Mar and Odeciexe.
The best way to find it - follow your feet.