El Camino Portuguese Vila Franca de Xira to Azambuja

El Camino Portuguese

Vila Franca de Xira to Azambuja

The guide book says very little about this 20 kilometres stretch but I would see why later. It has some long straight stretches without even a bend to break up the monotony transversing excellent farming land but totally flat and featureless.

Leaving Vila Franca de Xira the main distinctive landmark were two water cooling towers and six red and white painted chimneys away in the distance. It took a while to get close and I intended to take a photo when I was nearer but forgot. The route runs up to one corner of the massive site and then follows one side and then another. By the time I remembered to take a photo, I was too far away and there was a motorway viaduct in the way.

I had seen bird towers before but not quite like this one. They were erected to house birds to give a supply of eggs and meat.

At the railway station at Nova Vila de Rainha there is a plaque on the footbridge which overlooks what is now fields but from August 1916 to February 1920 it was the Military Aeronautical School. The plaque shows where the various buildings were such as the hangars, workshops and barracks and where the runways were positioned, in typical war time airfield arrangement of three partially intersecting strips so that aircraft could take off under any wind direction. 

The former site of the airfield without a hill or tree to get in the way.

I had seen this before on El Camino Frances where people would weave twigs, grasses or stems into a cross in a fence.

Some of the infrastructure to control water levels in the canals and ditches and to supply irrigation water.

Water being released from  dam.

Large motors aerating the water.

The modern bullring outside Azambuja.

A statue of a bull outside the bullring.

And despite walking along side the railway all morning, this is the closest that I got to seeing a train that was not a passenger train.