How to Take the Trail to Fatima

In 1917, three shepherd children received visions of the Virgin Mary in the countryside near the Portuguese village of Fatima, a series of events that later became known as the Miracle of Fatima. The village has since become a major pilgrimage destination in Europe, attracting both the curious and the spiritual year round, with as many as a million pilgrims undertaking the journey for the annual festivals on the 13th of May and the 13th of October. This popularity has made Fatima a major Portuguese tourist destination, and the route from Lisbon to Fatima one of the best-marked long-distance hiking routes in the country.

Tours
Most guided tours of Fatima fall into one of two categories: bus tours from Lisbon or week-long tours which include some hiking along the last legs of the pilgrimage route. The former are typical day tours, with buses departing from Lisbon to spend several hours visiting Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima and other religious sites before returning to the capital in the evening. Tours of this type involve no hiking and have little or no contact with the pilgrimage aspect of Fatima.

Tours lasting between four to eight days invariably involve some hiking and contact with the pilgrimage route. The usual format is to start by traveling to and exploring Santarem, a city with a lovely and well-preserved castle, as well as churches, towers and other buildings that span the history of Portuguese architecture, from Romanesque and Gothic to Manueline and Baroque.

Santarem is also about halfway between Lisbon and Fatima. The longer tour packages depart from Santarem and join the pilgrimage route, also sometimes called the Camino do Tejo ("Way of the Tagus"). The distance between Santarem and Fatima is less than 40 miles, and the typical tour hiking from Santarem plans on its patrons not being hardy hikers and spends three days covering this distance and one day in Fatima. Shorter hiking tours usually visit Santarem, but start the hiking further up the trail and spend only one or two days walking to Fatima. The route passes by many small towns, and since these towns have hosted pilgrims since the 1920s, the Camino do Tejo is an inn-to-inn hike. Tours book lodgings in advance and include luggage transfer, and none involve camping.

Self-Guided Hikes
Ardent hikers will probably be happier tackling the Camino do Tejo on a self-guided trip. Whereas a tenderfoot might struggle to manage 10 or 12 miles a day, a hardy hiker should manage better than 20 miles per day.

Strictly speaking, the trail does not actually begin in Lisbon, but in the village of Arranho, located north of the capital and between Mafra and Vila Franca de Xira. The route is roughly 75 miles long, and from its start it bends over to the Tagus River, which it follows to Santarem. Once there, the route leaves the Tagus behind and sets out cross-country, passing through the Parque Natural das Serras de Aire e Candeeiros for part of the route. Once again, the path is an example of inn-to-inn hiking, so even a self-guided hike on the pilgrimage trail has no need to resort to camping. Indeed, there are no formal campgrounds on the actual route, so any camping runs the risk of trespassing and staying in a guesthouse or hotel every night is strongly recommended.