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Day 16 | 17 July 2026 | Walking the Portuguese Camino
From Albergaria-a-Nova to Oliveira de Azeméis | 20.2 km – 12.5 miles
I woke up with a lot of pain in my knee and my immediate thought was: I wonder how far I will be able to walk today?
Three hours later I knew the answer – A paltry 7.8 km. Things are bad.
What finally killed me off was a steep downhill section outside Caniços.
The strange thing about this knee pain was that I could walk uphill with less pain, walk on the flat with pain, but walking downhill was murder.
On this stretch of the Camino my saviour appeared in the form of a taxi, trundling uphill to greet me with open doors.
It delivered me to Oliveira de Azeméis.
Oliveira de Azeméis was a charming town with a lovely church, the Igreja Matriz de Oliveira de Azeméis (Mother Church of Oliveira de Azeméis). The beautiful blue and white tiles were added to the façade in the early 20th century to help protect the stonework and beautify the exterior.
At a bar we were introduced to tremoços – Lupini beans that arrived free with our beer. They were served to us by a young Brazilian waiter who was working in Portugal over the summer to improve his ‘European Portuguese’, which apparently differs quite a lot from his native ‘Brazilian Portuguese’.
There is an art to eating tremoços. You pop one into your mouth and swivel it around until you can crack the skin between your upper and lower teeth. The bean pops out and the casing is discarded. It took two beers to master it.
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