Camino de Portuguese Day 9: Rubiães to Valença

Hiking the Camino de Portuguese from Rubiães to Valença | June 2026

Today was so much easier for me than the day before had been. I didn’t wake up sore, I took a little extra time wrapping up my blistered feet to prevent the existing ones from getting worse or developing new ones before slipping on my boots. We had the option of making today’s end goal to either the public Albergue in Valença, Portugal or one in Tui, Spain, and chose to just go to Valença in favor of taking more breaks and enjoying ourselves more along the way. That made today’s walk only about 17 km of easy walking.

The morning started out with a beautiful sunrise in the valley, and cool morning air. The trail meandered through towns, neighborhoods, woods, and at the end, the city of Valença, with easy ups and downs along the way. We admired the small cute towns and the views of the surrounding mountains in the distance. When we crested a hill, we realized that the land we could see in the distance was Spain, and started to grow excited about our planned crossing the next day.

Along the way, we stopped at a cafe for breakfast, and ordered a chocolate croissant and a cafe con leite (coffee with milk — I’m not usually a hot coffee drinker in the states, but I was growing to enjoy it in Europe!). We also stopped in a small church for stamps and a break in the coolness of the building. Somewhere during the hike, we crossed the halfway point for our pilgrimage — I couldn’t believe we were already at that point, which felt a world of difference from my feelings while hiking the Centennial Trail in South Dakota, when I was always acutely aware of exactly how far we needed to go to get to the end.

When we arrived in Valença, we took our time making our way over to the Albergue, but we still arrived before noon and were the third and fourth to arrive, right after our friends from Latvia and Portugal. After taking a break to sit and chat, we went out looking for a place to grab lunch, and our friends graciously offered to watch our bags. We ended up at an Indian restaurant, where I ordered their equivalent of the pilgrim meal, which included chicken nuggets, salad, rice, and fries. Not exactly what I expected to get at an Indian restaurant but it was very filling after our hike.

We returned to the Albergue and got checked in. We spent the afternoon doing something we had put off for too long: figuring out what our plan was for the rest of this trip. Up until today, we had just been waking up, figuring out where the next public Albergue was, saying ‘good enough’ and walking that distance. We had been hearing that sometimes the Albergues can close for a night for maintenance and realized we needed to figure out if we could keep doing what we were doing, or if we needed more alternatives. Using the Camino Ninja app, we mapped out the rest of our hike, figured out how many days we would take to reach Santiago, and marked where all the Albergues were on the map. It turned out that there was only one closure that would affect us, so we made a booking at a different hostel for that night, and then used hotel points to reserve a place in Santiago for the night of our intended finish. Finally, we researched hotels and things we wanted to do with our remaining days after the hike and made the appropriate reservations. It took some time, but once we had it all sorted out we felt good about the rest of our trip!

We wrapped up our day by walking to a nearby grocery store to grab sandwich supplies for dinner that night and breakfast and snacks for the morning. Our Portuguese friend informed us that food prices in Spain were generally higher than Portugal, and the Spanish take their Sunday closure seriously. We went to bed with great anticipation for a new country the next day, while also starting to feel like time was passing too fast and our pilgrimage would be over before we knew it. I was thankful to be feeling this way though and to have had such a good day after my struggles from the day before!