Balugães to Ponte de Lima

The Balugães-Ponte de Lima stage closes the day split from Barcelos and offers pilgrims a short route, descending in profile and with the incentive of finishing in one of the most beautiful towns of the entire Portuguese Way. The departure from Balugães is via quiet country roads, between the estates and vineyards surrounding the village. The first section leads to Vitorino dos Piães, a rural parish with pilgrim cafés and a small parish church, before continuing towards Facha. Here the Way enters a landscape of "latada" vineyards, cornfields and scattered pine groves, with almost no traffic and perfectly visible yellow arrows. The terrain alternates short sections of secondary asphalt with dirt tracks and old cobbled Roman roads, a legacy of Portuguese medieval routes. As the stage progresses, pilgrims begin to descend gently towards the valley of the river Lima, crossing scattered hamlets, the occasional historic fountain and several granite stone crosses. In the last three or four kilometres, the first houses and bell towers of Ponte de Lima are already glimpsed in the distance. The entry into the town is made by crossing the spectacular medieval-Roman bridge that gives the population its name: a succession of arches over the waters of the Lima that constitutes one of the symbols of the Minho. After the bridge, pilgrims access the historic centre, with its cobbled streets, squares with centenary plane trees and a dense network of restaurants, guest houses and hotels.