Camino de Portuguese Day 8: Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes

Hiking the Camino de Portuguese from Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes | June 2026

I’ll be honest — today was the hardest day of this entire hike for me. It started when I woke up, and I felt how sore my body was after yesterday’s long hike, and saw how many blisters were on my feet. Thankfully today’s hike was only 18 km compared to yesterday’s 25, but some of the terrain we would be walking would be the hardest we’d deal with for this entire journey.

People started rising around 5am, and we joined shortly after. There was only the faintest amount of light outside, but we hit the trail regardless because it was all we had to do. The trail led us from the main road to a side street, and soon we were behind the main road and the Albergue where we had stayed, following a creek away from the town center. It was a little overgrown on the path, and probably would have been prettier to see in the daylight — it was a little spooky at dawn. We eventually emerged to another quiet road and continued walking through a residential area, only starting to wake up.

At this point, I had another issue arise: my Camelbak sprung a leak and soaked the backside of my shirt and shorts, as well as my sleeping bag at the bottom of my backpack. We removed it and tried to patch the hole with the only sticky things we had, which were bandaids and moleskin, but of course this didn’t help at all. Instead I drank as much of the water as I could, and just had to deal with being soaked. It made my shorts hang lower than usual which made my thighs chafe pretty badly. Everything was uncomfortable, but I had no choice but to keep walking. Being this wet might have felt good on one of our hotter days earlier on, but today was much cooler with a breeze which just made me cold.

But there were two things that happened that helped improve my day a little. We found an unopened water bottle along the trail, which I took and carried with me throughout the rest of our time in Europe. And while walking through the neighborhood, I heard the unmistakable sound of a hound dog howling, and on the fence around the yard where the howling was coming from was a picture of a basset hound — a sign from Charlotte all the way out here in rural Portugal.

Besides the struggle, the trail this morning was very interesting and scenic. It had a lot less towns, residential areas, and farms than we’ve seen previously, and much more nature. It almost felt like a completely different trail. We crossed a river, walked through deeply forested areas (especially dark because it was also overcast). We followed a stream a ways and saw multiple cascading waterfalls and deep blue pools along the trail.

The last 6 miles of today’s hike ended up being the hardest of the entire Camino. We hiked up the highest amount of elevation gain up and over a mountain pass, on a steep and rocky dirt trail. It even had an ominous sounding name: Labruja. This was much more like what you expect from backpacking in the US, and not like what we had done on the Camino so far. I wish I could have enjoyed it more, but between the soreness and struggles I was already facing, and now the rain that had started to fall, this just felt like a trial to overcome rather than a trail to enjoy. If not for the rain and low hanging clouds, we might have also had some good views at the top or coming down, but these things obscured such a view and I also had my camera stored in my backpack to stay dry, so I have no photographic evidence of the last miles of today’s hike.

But we got through it all, and I’m very happy to say that after this day, things improved for me (at least for my attitude — I still had blisters to deal with for the rest of the hike, but I sort of just got used to them!). After making it over the mountain pass, we walked into the town of Rubiaes, and found our way to the Albergue. We still had some time before it opened, so we sat down and struck up a conversation with a Portuguese man named Miguel. The time passed quickly as we talked with him, he is a teacher from Porto and is very well versed in many things, including Portuguese history, cultures, and foods, and is fluent in so many different languages. We learned a lot from talking with him, and over the next few days we ended up staying in the same places so our discussions also continued.

After we got checked in to the Albergue, I changed and hung my wet clothes out to dry in the sun which had conveniently emerged from the clouds only after our walking was complete. We walked to a cafe next door and ordered beverages and snacks, then returned there to have a pizza for dinner since I didn’t want to walk that much more. Not that we would have missed out on much, Rubiaes isn’t that big of a town , and we would be able to see it a little more as we left the next day. The rest of our day was just filled with relaxing and reading, and left us feeling rejuvenated and ready for our next day.