Camino de Portuguese Day 14: Briallos to Pontecesures

Hiking the Camino de Portuguese from Briallos to Pontecesures | June 2026

After our rejuvenating night in Briallos, we rose early, quietly packed up, and set off on the road leading back to the Camino. Today we would be walking 20 kilometers to the town of Pontecesures, which we were pronouncing “Ponte-saurus” as if it were a dinosaur, because we are silly like that sometimes. For our first 5 kilometers on the trail, we didn’t see another soul, because we had been the first to leave in Briallos and most pilgrims stay in the first town we would pass through, Caldas de Reis. I can see why most would prefer it — even though it doesn’t have a public Albergue, there is a lot more to see and do and eat here, and plenty of hostels or hotels to stay in. We enjoyed the ‘seeing’ part of that while walking through town this morning.

Much of the first 5km of trail were through farmland and vineyards, which was beautiful and quiet in the early morning. When we arrived in Caldas de Reis, the town was only starting to wake up, and we were now among the pilgrims who were not so early risers, a different crowd than we were used to. We walked through the town, admiring the architecture, crossed a river, and continued until the houses thinned out and we were back in farmland and ‘in between’ land.

We stopped for a break at a cafe that was more out in the countryside and catered mostly to pilgrims. We shared a delicious giant chocolate croissant here before continuing on. Up next, we walked through woods, neighborhoods, and small towns. The trail was at times paralleling the main highway to Santiago, but not in an unpleasant way, there were always trees and other natural features blocking the sights and sounds of traffic. I did find it fun to occasionally see street signs pointing the way towards Santiago, even though they usually stated less kilometers than I knew we had to walk.

Once we made it to today’s stopping point in Pontecesures, we navigated a little off the trail to find the Albergue, which was right across the street from a school. We took off our backpacks and were immediately greeted by a very friendly cat, and spent our time waiting for check in petting him, watching him with his shy friend, and listening to the sounds of children at recess.

This Albergue was yet again one of the less popular ones, since most pilgrims will walk another 4km to the next Albergue in the bigger town of Padron. There ended up being less than a dozen pilgrims staying here, which meant everyone could spread out among the bunk beds and have space to themselves. We enjoyed some quiet time resting and reading in our bunks before we ventured out into the town of Pontecesures.

I will say, this wasn’t our favorite town that we visited, and it lacked that certain charm that we had found in most other towns along our way. But we still gave it a good walk through, walking down the hill where the Albergue was to the main road, walked the entire road through the town center, then over to the bridge where we walked along the river. We knew that we might have enjoyed Padron more, but we also knew that we had enough time built into our next day to enjoy it so we weren’t too concerned about that. After our walk and hanging out in a park near the river, we got dinner at a kebab restaurant and then made our way back up to the Albergue. Just down the street was an overlook of the town and river, which we walked over to in the evening to enjoy our last bit of the day.

One of my favorite parts of the routine we had created on the trail was that we weren’t walking all day long —mostly just in the mornings, during the best temps of the day. This made us feel very productive right off the bat, and then we would enjoy our slower, more relaxing afternoons in whatever town we found ourselves in. And during our ‘relaxing’ times, I was finding myself still doing things that felt productive, like reading, journaling, and planning for our next day’s hike. I loved these habits that we had formed and already knew I would miss it when it was all over in a few days. I guess it’s safe to say that after taking 5 years off from backpacking after the Centennial Trail, I had found a way to do it in a way I enjoyed so much, and was already dreaming of what trail would be our next long distance hike!