El Camino Portuguese Azambuja to Santarem

El Camino Portuguese  

Azambuja to Santarem 

I started before light as it was a long way at over 33 kilometres. The area is flat and seems to only grow tomatoes.

One of the trucks loaded with tomatoes. There were tomatoes all over the tracks and roads, especially on corners where they had rolled off the back of the lorry. It was only after three hours of walking past tomato feeds that I saw another crop, a small vineyard.

The flood defences at Reguengo although I couldn'd see the river through the reeds.

The flood defences at Valada just two kilometres up the road.

And the river viewed from the top of the defence wall. The last big flood here was recorded as eight metres and the water level was just below the height of the flood defence. Canvas sacks for sandbags and sand have been stockpiled as a temporary measure and plans are being made to monitor more floods in depth and come up with enhanced flood defences if needed.

a curious collection of snails at the top of a post.

 Glimpse of the Ponte de Muge, a pair of railway and road bridges side by side and as luck might have it, as I walked underneath, a freight train passed overhead and I had no chance of a photo.

My final destination seen from the track but still over six kilometres to walk. The straight line in the middle of the photo is the motorway on  viaduct across the floodplain.

Another curious collection of snails on top of a concrete pylon, but so arranged as if they were trying to obliterate the signs.

A pillar with the depths and dates of various floods which stand behind the flood defences. Most of the lower plaques are in the 60's to 70's whilst the top three are the most recent, another indictor of changing weather patterns due to global warming. 

The Santa Casa de Misericordia in Santarem and its church on the left. The brotherhood was founded in 1498 when Queen Leonor opened the Misericordia in Lisbon. She had recently been made a widow by the death of Kig John II of Portugal and had begun dedicating herself to the sick, poor, orphans and prisoners. There are multiple sites in Portugal and throughout their former empire plusher countries around the world.

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