Stage 10 — April 24: Sagres to Praia do Zavial (12 km)

22°C — Full sun (no shade or cloud) with little sea breeze

By Jim

Our guidebook declared the official end of the Fishermen’s Trail to be Cabo de São Vicente/Sagres.  However, in 2019, three more stages were added to the FT extending it to Lagos.  For the remainder of the trip, we will rely solely on the Stingy Nomad’s online guide.  Before going to bed last night, we both read over today’s stage description with dread.  SN rated it the most difficult of the entire FT — 5/5 for steep, rocky ascents/descents and 21 km with no shade.

Since we had gotten too much sun yesterday (I can’t believe that I complained about not enough sun just five days ago!), we decided to sleep in, eat the breakfast included with our bed, and walk only the first 12 km of the stage, ending at Zavial Beach. We planned to catch a cab from there to our accommodation in Salema.

Our host, Theo, made us a wonderful breakfast and we headed out at 8:45.  The sun was already blazing and so we tried to keep a steady pace to limit our exposure.  I also relied on Pocket Earth to keep us away from cliffs where possible. Our four bottles of water were getting low and we were both overheating, so we sought out shade in some bushes along the trail and cooled off a bit.  We stopped for a cold drink and refilled our bottles at Ingrina Beach, about a difficult 1 km from our planned stop at Zavial Beach.  Three large bottles of aqua con gas (fizzy water) and another great fish lunch restored our senses.  As we waited in the shade for our taxi to come, we watched a steady stream of younger, fitter, more tanned walkers serpentine up the steep rocky embankment on the other side of the beach, and knew we had made the right decision.