Episode 29

Episode 29
A brilliant sunny day, except where we were in Chaves. This town is in a valley and was enveloped in a heavy fog; a hot spring feeds into the river at 78˚C so I suppose that helps to create the fog: You would think that with a nice supply of hot spring water there would be some pools open for bathing, not on your Nelly; the spa complex was shut up tight and seems only to offer ‘treatments’ anyway. I think the place is missing out on a lot of tourist Euros by not having public bathing pools.
Apart from the spa the place doesn’t have a lot to offer. There is another old Roman bridge that loomed through the mist as we approached; it is much shorter than the one over the Lima River but still functions as a traffic bridge taking one way traffic out of the old city. Walking along beside the river was one of the warmest spots in town because of the hot spring. The battlements of two old fortresses remain and from the high one it’s possible to get a good view of the city but not the day we visited. The houses in the narrow cobble streets often have narrow wooden balconies on the first floor that overhang the cobbles, some neighbours could just about shake hands across the street. Often you see the weeks washing hanging out to dry on such balconies but very few people had any out today, like me, they probably had little faith in it ever drying in such weather.
Despite the sign stating the opening hours and we were well within them, the tourist office remained firmly shut but we managed to find our way around quite well as at least there were street manes on the corners, that helps a lot.
As we drove out of town on the lookout for a supermarket that we never did see we passed several shops selling copper stills. Now what do they distil in those stills do you suppose? No tourist office open to ask so some time I will have to try and find out. There must be a big demand for the stills though as three shops within 60m each had a large display of them for sale.
Out of town and the fog, we are once more in the higher drier part of the Portugal. The elevation is around 800+m and it can get very cold here. The high trellises for the grapes have given way to the low growing varieties that are used for wine making. Red wine and port are produced in this area I read somewhere. Many of the hill sides are covered in almond trees and some chestnut trees both of which are asleep at present but in February/March it is said to be just a mass of white almond blossom. Hopefully we will see some further south where they bloom in January on the Algarve. Some small fields of green that I think is oats and rye crops offer a little relief from the bleakness of the winter landscape. Apart from the nut plantations and just a few olive and pine trees many of the hills are bare and quite barren. Any native forest is long gone, though I have seen some ‘broom’ shrubs
Part of the area through which we travelled on our way to the town of Braganc̨a is in a fairly newly created Nature Park. Just what this is supposed to mean I cannot say, but I think it protects the few native animals that just might happen to have survived until now. One of these parks in Portugal does have a small population of wolves the only place in Western Europe where they have lived continuously since ancient times, but I don’t think it’s this one. The villages through which we passed are only tiny but they usually have at least one coffee shop and a small grocery store, and always a church. Often they are very close together with only 2 or 3 k’s separating them and I wonder what the people do here as I’m sure the agriculture can’t support them all. In fact you see very few people about at all, maybe a tractor with a trailer going along the road, or someone driving three cows through a village, a sheppard on a hill looking after 4 sheep or 5 goats, and an odd donkey peering over a wall.
We’ve seen several milking cows lately but the only milk we have been able to buy for some time now is UHT. In some places in Spain we could get fresh milk but not everywhere. There is however, a wide variety of locally produced cheeses and yogurt is available, but I don’t know where it’s made. Smoked ham is said to be a speciality of this area but I haven’t tried any yet, have to find a shop open first.
Another place that was wrapped in a cotton wool fog was Braganc̨a as when we visited it on New Years morning. The cobbled streets were slick with thin ice and any sound was muffled because of the fog. With hardly another soul around we wandered the streets and easily found the Cidadela looming through the mist; the old fortified city with imposing high walls that once had 13 towers around its length. One large square tower has been restored and it houses a military museum that was, of course, closed. One of the towers used to be called the Princess Tower because a Princess was once imprisoned here for being in love with a Troubadour.
Within the walls, right on top of the hill is a pentagon shaped building, the Domus Municipalis; a council chambers, and below this is a huge cistern that holds water from a spring and run off water. The place was built in the 13th or 14th century and held a very strategic position right on the border with Spain.
A great many Jew settled here during the time of the Spanish Inquisition having fled across the border from Spain. The church in Portugal didn’t bother with the small places in the provences. Many of the people bear Jewish names but the Synagogue no longer exists so they must have all converted to Catholicism at some point in time.
After having looked about as best we could with the fog we found about the only cafe open and went in for a coffee. There were only about 4 other in there, all men and some of them engaged us in a one sided conversation. One spoke a little English, he is a maths teacher, another one kept telling him things he wanted translated to tell us, and a third one was a keen Rolling Stones fan, about the same age as Mick Jagger. They we all drinking beer or wine and thought we were weak only having coffee, they wanted to buy us a pork roll each but we couldn’t come at that as the pork was barely warmed on either side, just a little too rare for us, so we made excuses of a very large breakfast that was fairly true anyway.
Our drive to the border town of Miranda do Douro was through a world enfolded in cotton wool with visibility down to about 40m most of the way. We passed through a couple of supposedly interesting villages of which we could see nothing. Then just as we approached Miranda the fog lifted leaving heavy cloud and a thick haze but at least we could get a look at the gorge that we had come to see. The gorge on the Douro River forms the border with Spain at this point. A strategically placed narrow dam wall holds back the water and floods the deep narrow gorge to a depth of 50m or so. The only vegetation of the steep slopes being the small stunted ilex oak trees, a tiny olive green leafed evergreen shrub, the leaf being similar in shape to that of a holly tree.
Here too, is an old castle, well the remains of one anyway, an explosion in 1762 during the Spanish Wars, blew away a good bit of the castle, and some 400 people were killed. It must have been some explosion as the walls were 3m thick, you can see this from what is left standing.
Turning west again we passed through a mountainous area with gorges and steep sided hills many of which were planted with olive groves, the trees planted in straight lines up and over the tops of the mountains. Some of these were quite old plantation too with trees that had thick twisted and gnarled trunks: As the Jews have a saying that an olive tree never dies, I wondered just how old these trees might be.
Just travelling along quietly without another car or soul around and suddenly with a gentle ‘thup’ and the back window shattered. Well that altered any plans we might have had: With the showery weather we had and the risk that the glass might fall out at any time, we started looking for a place to get it attended to. In the next town we found a wreckers yard but they couldn’t replace the glass only, they would have had to replace the whole back hatch door and with a green one, our car is white. They suggested we head back to Braganc̨a where there is a Citroen dealership. Which is what we did but it was at a garage not the dealership where we got it done, by which time the day was over, daylight had long gone and the rain settled in with grim determination, the cold too.
In one small town the pride and joy of the place is a granite pig. This pig sits atop a high pedestal in the central square for all to see. It’s carved in a light cream coloured granite, is said to be a male pig and believed that it was some sort of fertility symbol to the ancient people who carved it in about 500BC approx. This village Murc̨a, also boasts another Roman bridge, just a single arch one along with a rock paved Roman road that is in good condition for several k’s. We would have walked along its length but it was just too wet to take pleasure in such an exercise. In the town of Mirandela some 30k’s to the east stands another Roman bridge, that one is quite long and has many arches.
This whole area produces a lot of wine and olive oil. Apparently the olive oil is especially good and has won gold medals at international competitions. There are certainly enough olive groves in this area they cover the hill sides.
In the steep hills outside Villa Real we came to an old Roman Temple. There really isn’t much to see, and probably never was though it is believed that three small temples were here, one of each of the granite boulder that constitute the temple. Looking uphill, there are 3 outcrops of granite in a slightly curved line each about 50m apart. The lowest one has inscriptions carved into it, 3 are in Latin, one is in Greek but they all tell of the Roman senator who was a high ranking local official in this area dedicating the temple to the Gods, Serapis in particular, though several others are thrown in for good measure including some from the local indigenous tribes.
Each of the 3 boulders has holes of various sizes carved out of the rock. Each of these holes had a specific purpose and all to do with the sacrifice of animals, or so the literature says. Small holes were for the blood offered to the God of the underworld, larger ones were where the intestines were burned, another larger one where the meat was cooked, and yet another one for cleaning up after. The highest most of these rocks, on top of the hill, has 4 large rectangular holes, the size and shape of coffins and a set of steps carved into the rock leading up to these holes. The beast was brought here to be prepared for sacrifice so I heard and read but just how or what was done isn’t mentioned. To us it all looked the right size for sacrificing humans but we were assured that wasn’t the case. This all dates from the end of the 2nd century AD: Never seen anything like it before:
Not far from here we came across some ‘standing stones’. Just a few standing in an elongated curve, possibly part of an elongated oval: Then on a hill top just a few k’s away there is a stone lined tomb built into a man made mound, something similar to what we have seen in Scotland. No dates or information on any of these but it would be my guess that they are all Iron Age, perhaps around 300BC.
In this area the grapes seem to have taken over and they are growing up and over the hillsides, and down in the valleys. Small areas have been terraced but mostly not. There are also a few apple orchards, and I saw some persimmons growing in household gardens. Just a few citrus too: Along the road you never seem to run out of the village, it’s continuous.
The city of Lamago has a similar religious monument to that at Braga. Here it dedicated to Nostra Senhora de Remedois (our lady of the remedies?). To get to it also involves climbing up steps, this time over 600, passing fountains and statues along the way. The view from the top should have been great except for the drizzly rain and foggy conditions.
The fairly small church at the top is mostly 18th century though there is a small part from the 16th century. The rounded ceiling is painted in blue and white and around the walls are mosaics in blue and white tiles with gold trim that tell the story of Jesus at aged about 12 when he was an apprentice carpenter.
Travelling down the Douro valley towards the city of Porto the rain and foggy conditions continued otherwise it would have been very pretty. All the way the steep mountains sides are terraced, very small ones mostly; in the higher areas there are apples and other stone fruit, some pine forest and always some grapes: As we got further down stream and lower in altitude there are citrus and grapes and eucalypt forest. All along the way we twisted our way back and forth over the mountains descending to villages along the river bank only to climb back high over the next ridge. The river is quite wide, and in one village we saw a small marina with several power boats moored there. Never really get out of a village, no more that 60m or so at the most between the houses along the road unless there is a strip of forest.
The city of Porto near the coast and the mouth of the Douro River is not the prettiest place in Portugal at all. As we drove in we passed rundown areas with boarded up and decaying buildings with much graffiti on the walls, though the streets weren’t dirty with litter. Pulled into the first parking station we came to and took the elevator down and came out into the food court of a big, quite new shopping complex on four levels, this opened onto an upmarket shopping street that had a surprising amount of people about for a Sunday morning, or any morning for that matter.
One of the first things we saw was an old wooden tram car; at least it was well maintained. After finding the tourist office in one of the main squares beside the Camara Municipal (town hall) up the hill at the top of the prac̨a, we set out, map in hand to have a look about this city:
A short walk brought us to the Sé, (the cathedral) and the bishops palace, the former is a very drab looking structure and the latter is of white painted plaster with the decoration around the windows and doors both have a great deal of scaffolding erected around them. From the terrace here we could look down and across much of the old city that is world heritage listed though I really do think that in this case that old city is past the point of preservation. It seems to be in quite a rapid state of decay with rickety old buildings all of which have the terra cotta tile roofs, some very wobbly, that really must leak like sieves in this moist winter climate. Many of the building are in eminent danger of falling down too. Wandering down the narrow alleys towards the river we did find that they were quite clean too, bit of doggy do, nothing like France, but they didn’t stink as I expected they might. Perhaps the recent rain had washed them well.
From the terrace we had looked down on a public laundry; a square building with open sides and full of laundry tubs, not a laundrette. We thought we’d take a closer look, but we didn’t find it as we meandered down the alleyways. Came out on the waterfront of the river Douro (river of gold) and saw several tourist cruise boats moored by the esplanade. A large steel arched bridge was just upstream. It had a vehicular bridge on one level and on a much higher one was a train line and a pedestrian walkway. In clear weather the view would probably be great but today, well, at least it wasn’t raining at this point in time.
We came to an old church that has been deconsecrated and was once used by Napoleon as a stables for his horses. The Igreja de Sao Francisco is nothing special from the outside, quite plain really and dates from the 13th to 15th centuries. It is the inside that is special; it was redecorated in the 17th and 18th centuries in the gilded, ornate, lavish Rococo style carvings. Between 400 and 800kgs of gold was used to gild this place. These carvings just ooze off the walls; the only bit that isn’t covered is where Napoleon had them removed to make room for his horses. Not really supposed to take photos but I think David sneaked a couple of shots.
We did come across a part of the city that had been rebuilt in the early 1900’s in art Nouveau style and it looked quite nice, but that was outside the preserved old city. Then over near the main market there is another large area that has been rebuilt in the last few years with smart new buildings but not skyscrapers. In this central area of the city, the street where we’d parked was the upmarket street with several brand name stores and most were open when we arrived back there in the late afternoon. The whole area was alive with people. Like Spain these people tend to do everything in the late afternoon and at night. Mornings are slow.
It was across the river and a couple of k’s south where we came to the wide streets and some flash shops and shopping centres in amongst an area 8 storey apartment blocks, a sea of them.
I had thought that in Brazil when we had seen many buildings with tiled exteriors that it was done to help preserve them in the hot humid climate but now I know that it’s a Portuguese style of decoration. A great many of the buildings in this country have tiled exteriors, something I didn’t notice when I visited many years ago. Predominately the tiles are blue and white. Often they are in the form of a mural or mosaic called an ‘azulejos’, azule being the word for blue. Some are really quite beautiful and the train station in Porto has a huge interior one that covers three walls. It’s in two parts, a battle scene is one and the other is the development of transportation, though it all needs a thorough cleaning to see it properly.
© Lynette Regan January 6th 2007