Progressing to Portugal

The drive from Spain to Portugal was one of the nicest we had been on in a while – lots of green eucalyptus trees and a great road. Our destination was a really pleasant surprise as well, Ponte de Lima. The little town is named after the multi-arched (31) medieval bridge that crosses the Lima river. The town displays a great deal of civic pride with lots of statues. Apart from the usual stamping and snorting bulls and mounted cavalrymen, there are large statutes of musicans and farming folk.

A French man parked next to us was doing repairs to an oops on his motorhome with man’s best friend – silver duct tape. Stuart offered him some of his white tape to cover up the silver and act as the ‘invisible mend’, he was effusive in thanks, standing back to admire his handiwork.

Ponte de Lima, Roman soldiers crossing river

Porto – the home of port wine is a ‘must see’, and we headed to the coast to a campsite at Vila Cha where we could catch the metro into the city. The campsite was in the low season and I don’t know why, but we were sent to the end furthest from reception (ie wifi) passing all the other motorhomes. Not only was it furthest away but the access was tree-lined and narrow, Stuart steered this way and that to avoid taking out a wing-mirror or corner of the truck. Our designated area seemed to be the home for stray cats and kittens and they were always on the lookout for an open motorhome door to jump into. I love cats but these didn’t look very healthy, poor wee things, I felt bad shooing them out.

In the morning we shared a taxi ride to the metro station with a French couple. The old Mercedes had a worn out suspension and bumped and rolled along the cobbled streets, but the driver was friendly and spoke English, he promised to meet us at 5pm for the return trip.

The highlight of Porto for me was the trip through Taylors port wine lodge established in 1692 with a tasting afterwards. We were offered a chilled white port, aperitif style and a late bottled vintage.

Port is made by stopping the grape juice fermenting after about 3.5 days by adding a colourless grape spirit. This preserves some of the natural sweetness of the grape in the finished wine. The oldest port houses are British. A ban on importing wine from France had caused merchants to look further afield to Spain and Portugal and to help the wine travel better, the ‘fortification’ process was invented.

The lodge (as they are called) was up a steep cobbled road from the Douro River. The lodges face the old area of Porto across the river, with its narrow colourful houses piled on top of one another, it is full of character. It is to the lodges that special vintages are bought to be processed into various types of port, they used to travel down the river in barrels on barges but are transported by road now.

Porto is undergoing renovations and old buildings are being revitalised, graffiti in Porto has been elevated to a form of art and is used in some places as decoration to disguise otherwise ugly features. Porto still has a long way to go though to become as elegant as its sister city Lisbon, but that is just my personal opinion.

We caught the metro back and there was our driver, as promised, waiting for us and we bumped and rattled back to the campsite where the staff are helpful and welcoming but with the grey weather and all those permanent caravans it is a bit depressing. I did a magazine swap however – a lovely new ‘English House and Garden’ for a photographic magazine, woo hoo, I miss seeing English books etc

Looking across Douro to Porto old town, wine barge in foreground

The weather is cooler and the way to warm weather is south and coastal but we are pressing on east and central. On our way east we stopped at Amarante, once again there are cobbled streets and narrow roads. I watched some small cars carefully thread themselves through a narrow difficult turn from a medieval bridge into a square. Then I looked from the other side of the turning and saw a sign bearing the graphic of a caravan and tent, pointing to the camping ground. Surely a mistake as there is no way a car towing a caravan could ever make the turn and other options looked hopeless as well. We continued to walk over the old bridge and saw an even bigger sign pointing in the direction of the difficult passage to the camping ground. A separate sign displayed the maximum length of a vehicle to be 5.5m, so if a Mini with a tent wanted to get to the campsite they would be ok. Such is the cruelty of satnavs and municipal officers.

We journeyed on to Peso da Regua, part of the way following the Douro river looking out at the vines turning gold and crimson on the narrow terraces that rise steeply from the river. The lines they make look like contours on a topo map. We continued to follow the Douro, passing steep fields of Chupa Chup grey/green olive trees and ended up in the Foz Cua valley that is famous for prehistoric rock drawings. Such is the demand to see the sites where archeologists are working that even in this low season we missed out. However we took advantage of the carpark outside the futuristic-styled archeology museum building and made ourselves at home for the night. The museum is perched on the edge of a cliff with a grand view over the river, precision-built drystone walls line the 2km access road and olive and almond trees cover the hills. We spent time inside the museum and came out not a lot wiser.

Overlooking terraces of vines above Cua, near Douro valley

The food in other countries is always interesting, I peruse the supermarket shelves picking up items and wondering what they are. Here, in the meat chiller there are long narrow packs of something called ‘enviserado’ - and they looked exactly like it too – the enviserated entrails of animal unknown. Portugal specialises in salt cod. This looks like a fish opened up, flattened out, dried, covered in salt and as stiff as cardboard. It is everywhere, especially on display outside shops. I had the misfortune to accidently order it in a restaurant after I thought I established that I was getting fresh cod.

Pastel de nata however is a different story - crispy pastry cases with creamy egg custard topped with a thin brulee finish. I buy two, one for me and one for Stuart – then eat both myself. Vinho Verde (green wine) is the Portugese equivalent of Beaujolais, a wine that is meant to be drunk while young and fresh. Stuart found a few of these and added them to the roaming cellar, along with a bottle of port.

Street kitten with incredible eyes, lots of street cats had Siamese traits

We have our sights set on Spain again as we have travelled in Southern Portugal before but Spain is much bigger and lots to see, so we have set the satnav to ‘allow tolls’ after swearing never to travel on Portugals minor roads again. The driver doesn’t see much and the passenger does some teeth sucking and wincing when the walls on either side of the road tower over the truck, the camber leans into some serious ditches and oncoming traffic doesn’t stay on their own side.