Adieu Rota Vi­cen­tina – hello Lissabon

Sun­day, 09.03.25

Af­ter a to­tal of 10 days on the Fisherman’s Trail, I ar­ri­ved in Lis­bon th­ree days ago. The con­trasts could­n’t be grea­ter: from wild, al­most un­touched na­ture on the co­ast with clear wea­ther, blue skies and hot suns­hine, Lis­bon was full of rain show­ers, cool tem­pe­ra­tures and an in­cre­di­bly huge, im­po­sing city. Lis­bon, curr­ently one of the most po­pu­lar and the­r­e­fore most crow­ded ca­pi­tal ci­ties in Eu­rope. With a to­tal of 4.5 mil­lion tou­rists a year, but only 500,000 in­ha­bi­tants, Lis­bon feels very strange to me. Af­ter a first im­pres­sion on Fri­day, I don’t plan a tou­rist pro­gramme as the city is far too crow­ded and noisy for me, but in­s­tead let mys­elf drift whe­re­ver the city ta­kes me. This re­sults in many rou­tes on foot that no tou­rist would other­wise take on. For ex­am­ple, from the Belèm dis­trict via Al­cant­ara (‘X‑Factory’) and Cam­po­lide to Ave­ni­das No­vas, where I live. In the side streets, I meet Por­tu­guese peo­ple who eit­her look at me ques­tio­nin­gly or ac­tually ask if I’m lost. Here I can fi­nally let go. Not­hing here is pret­tily done, it’s simple, dirty, bro­ken, pretty poor and not at all pim­ped up. But ho­nest and real, au­then­tic and tan­gi­ble. And so I walk tens of ki­lo­me­t­res a day back and forth in the un­tou­risty parts of the city and am glad that my feet carry me up and down the hills of Lisbon.

The last week of hi­king in the truly un­be­lie­v­a­bly beau­tiful co­as­tal land­scape bet­ween Ode­ce­ixe (pro­no­un­ced: Ott-ßè­ij­sche) and Porto Covo in the Alen­tejo still re­so­na­tes. It was cha­rac­te­ri­sed by un­touched na­ture with count­less se­cluded be­a­ches and bays, cliffs, ro­cky land­scapes in the sea, wild flowers and wild herbs, small fo­rests, bird­song, count­less pairs of storks with their young, wild cats and dogs, clear wea­ther and a roaring sea. Not a house, not a road, still not, for days. I hiked for hours th­rough bus­hes, craw­led un­der bran­ches, clim­bed over bus­hes, jum­ped th­rough and over streams, then clim­bed up and down very steep cliffs, and trud­ged many ki­lo­me­t­res th­rough lo­nely, deep sandy be­a­ches every day. Mostly in si­lence with the sound of the sea. At the weekend, sud­denly the beau­tiful or ra­ther ugly Lis­bon, the huge city. Al­re­ady in Porto Covo on the Fisherman’s Trail on Fri­day mor­ning, I took a bus to Lis­bon to avoid the last stage with al­ter­na­ting na­tu­ral and in­dus­trial areas and re­gu­lar heavy cold rain­storms. In a very nice ho­tel room in Lis­bon, the first thing I do on Fri­day is get into a bath­tub and en­joy the dry, warm room and fi­nally some peace and quiet.

Weekend: Re­la­xa­tion to the full

For the first time since the start of the trip, I ac­tually sleep 8 hours on the first night in Lis­bon. The last 12 days on the Rota Vi­cen­tina co­as­tal hi­king trail I slept badly and very little, as the ac­com­mo­da­tion was al­ways re­ally damp and cold. The smells of a mix­ture of mould and de­ter­gent be­came in­cre­asingly un­be­ara­ble, ma­king it im­pos­si­ble for me to sleep and re­lax. Here’s an­o­ther con­trast: ex­pe­ri­ence the most beau­tiful na­ture, but also the most dif­fi­cult ac­com­mo­da­tion in your life… 😉 So here I am en­joy­ing a ho­tel room of the fi­nest qua­lity at the weekend in Lis­bon and fee­ling like a hu­man be­ing again.

Ap­pearance and reality

I ob­serve the city and the peo­ple around me in­ten­si­vely and, as so of­ten, think a lot about it. About ap­pearance and be­ing, the out­side and the in­side, about my per­so­nal com­pe­ti­tion with ‘the others’, about ‘be­ing re­co­g­nised or re­co­g­nised’ or my de­sire for it. Here I par­ti­cu­larly no­tice how much ap­pearance do­mi­na­tes in the tou­rist town af­ter the wild be­ing on the na­tu­ral co­as­tal path. I sense that I just want to be. Wi­t­hout pre­tence. And there are ques­ti­ons wi­thin me: Do I want to keep hi­king? Do I want to do ever­y­thing on foot? Who won’t take me se­riously, won’t re­co­g­nise me if I just take it easy and don’t do so much hi­king? I have the fee­ling that I am so deeply caught up in this de­mand that this part of the jour­ney is a good chall­enge for me right now. It’s been cold for th­ree days and rai­ning a lot. It will stay that way for the next day or two. This might not only make hi­king less fun, it’s sim­ply not fe­a­si­ble wi­t­hout hea­ting. And hea­ting is not the norm in the coun­try­side on the co­ast in Por­tu­gal. You get wet and then you don’t get dry. I’ll take that risk tomorrow.

Next step: Lis­bon to Porto

To­mor­row I con­ti­nue my hike along the co­ast. I start at the ‘Farol do Cabo Raso’ light­house, 36 ki­lo­me­t­res west of Lis­bon. An Uber will take me there to­mor­row mor­ning and then I’ll con­ti­nue on foot for 20 ki­lo­me­t­res towards Porto. Un­til Porto, I will have to create my own daily stages along the co­ast, as there is no known hi­king trail with a coll­ec­tion of spe­ci­fic stages. So un­til then, it’s my very own path 😉

I wish you a good start to the week. Stay sta­ble and give yours­elf a big hug!

Best re­gards

El­len