People normally walk the Camino Portugués towards Santiago.

We’re walking it in the opposite direction because it looked like a nice way to get from Santiago to Porto on foot.

Walking it the other way round is harder but still fun. We’ve been doing it for two days now so we’ve picked up a few tricks.

Blue arrows

Both caminos we’ve walked have yellow arrows at important points to show the way.

A yellow arrow showing the way to Santiago

The Camino Portugués has blue arrows for anyone doing it backwards.

A blue arrow for anyone walking a Camino in the opposite direction

You sometimes see them in the same place.

A yellow and a blue arrow on the same stone but pointing at each other

A yellow and a blue arrow on the same stone but pointing in directions that only make sense for those coming from either direction

Stop and look around

The yellow arrows can still be useful. If you can work out where they expect to be seen from, that’s where to go. The trouble is it’s easy to walk past them.

We’ve found it useful to stop at junctions and look around for any markers before moving on.

Plan to get lost

With fewer obvious markers, it’s easy to get a bit lost. On average, we’ve gone about 2 to 3 kilometres off track for each day’s walk.

We’ve started to plan some time for getting lost into our days and that seems to make it less stressful.

Pilgrims as markers

Pilgrims walking towards you is one of the best ways to know you’re on the right track. A few times when there’ve been no arrows in sight, a pilgrim appearing out of a side road has saved the day.

Making people confused and cross

Walking the other way can confuse any pilgrims who aren’t sure that they’re going in the right direction. A couple of days ago, a class full of students helpfully shouted at us: “You’re walking the wrong way!”

We were thinking about getting t-shirts that say: “Don’t worry, we’re walking it backwards” in all major European languages. Seems a bit too much like hard work, though.

We also bumped into an elderly Spanish lady just outside Santiago who got cross at us for going in the wrong direction. We tried to explain that we’d already walked to Santiago but she wasn’t having any of it. She was livid. Clearly not a Trexit reader. We were outraged.