Tapp's Travels

After all the panic, we breezed out of our little hollow at Toca da Reposa!  But I wouldn’t want to try it without 4WD.

Having invested in a card to pay the electronic tolls, we could leave the area in style.  After a few miles we were on dual carriageway and then onto motorways.  These are magnificent pieces of engineering.  Enormous, gulf-spanning bridges soaring over steep-sided valleys.  Tunnels through rocky outcrops.  And all the way somewhere between deserted and empty (apart from us, obviously!).

We have discovered that inland Portugal, like central Spain, is not really geared up for camping.  The sites are few and far between.  To give you some idea – France is approximately seven times the size of Portugal but has over 100 times as many sites listed!  Anyway, we want to visit the Douro Valley so we head for Lamego where there is a small courtyard style site high in the hills with a view of the valley.  Neat, except it’s not strictly the Douro Valley that we can see but rather that of a tributary of the main river.

That’s us parked in the background …

Camping Lamego is an extremely friendly site.  The owners are very helpful and involved – and the pitches are tightly packed.  So, it’s “friendly” in two ways!

From the back gate of the site a path leads to the church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios at the head of the famous staircase.  This leads directly into the centre of town.

The only snag is that the staircase consists of 686 steps.  A little reminiscent of the 777 steps up Mount Popa in Myanmar.

We decide that walking down would come with too high a penalty later – so we drove down to town instead and walked up the first 50 or so steps!

… and that was enough!

On the Wednesday morning, Glenda, fresh out of the shower, was surprised by the site owner singing Happy Birthday while setting up an early morning drinks party!

Glenda, with wet hair, and neighbours celebrating her 21st birthday again, again, again …

We wound down the N2 to Regua (where we had docked on our river cruise a couple of years ago).  We parked and walked over the footbridge – and discovered we were once again on the Camino Trail!  This time, on the Portuguese branch.  We went to inspect the ships docked alongside – but they weren’t as nice as ours had been.  A couple of modern-looking, grey, Riviera cruisers with blunt bows but no sign of Uniworld’s Queen Isabel.

We wanted to check out some of the places we had visited previously with Isabel.  So, next day back down the squiggly N2.  Joined the N222 which seems to follow the South bank of the river all the way from Porto as far as it can.  Which is Pinhão.  Which is where we went to catch the 11.37 train to Pocinho.  And admire the fabulous scenery along the narrow gorge section of the river.  There is no road than runs alongside the Duoro in this stretch so this is the only way to see the valley apart from on a ship – or, I guess by swimming if you were really keen.  But there is a small matter of a 40+ metre deep lock to navigate.  So the train is probably the best choice and, at €4.75 each return, substantially cheaper than the cruise option.

At Pocinho, we got a 30 minute break.  Just time to get a cup of coffee with the train driver in the local cafe!  Then it was back aboard for the return journey.

A superb trip, rounded off by another visit to Regua – and there she was.  Queen Isabel disgorging passengers for their evening excursion to a quinta for dinner.  Very jealous – but we were under-dressed for the occasion.  Else we might have slipped aboard one of the buses and gate crashed the trip!

Our next stop was the first “return visit” to a site on this trip.  The Quinta dos Moinhos near the tiny village of Vila Nune.  The site is also tiny.  About 10 pitches plus a couple of spaces for tents.  So we had rung ahead and reserved pitch 8 on a narrow ledge between olive and orange trees.  The pitch has stunning views out over the valley to the mountains to the South.

With a lovely infinity-edged pool which we used often …

But there’s no way that you could put up an awning.  Which is a bit of a sore point.  We have carried half a ton of awning gear more than 3,000 miles since leaving home and we’ve never even had it out of the car – and now won’t.  (I know we won’t because as I write this we are only four days away from catching the ferry home!)

We spent six happy days picking oranges from our own orange grove and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast each day.

… Well, obviously we didn’t  just do that.  We really used the disused railway line a lot for our daily walks.  (That, of course, meant it wasn’t stricty disused…)  Each day we would join it at a different spot and do our three miles.  Sometimes more.  Usually early morning and/or evening.  Over the course of our stay we covered almost all of the 40+ km length of the path.  One particular stretch, which had a conveniently located cafe/bar, was walked several times!

One day we drove an hour to Porto to remind ourselves of some of the city sights we had seen before.  That was after a two hour “hesitation” at the El Cortes Inglés shopping mall in Vila Nova de Guaia on the South bank.

My plan had been to take the metro or a tram directly from there into the central station.  However, there was repair work going on at the bridge so rather than fight with a complex tram and bus event, we walked.  Over the high-level bridge with magnificent views over the port wine storage area …

… visited the train station foyer…

… the famous pastellaria (Manteigara’s) for Portuguese tarts ..

… and back down to the docks …

… over the low-level bridge, and back up the hill.  Then we discovered what the auto routes are like in rush hour near the city.  Four lanes, more or less static.  Occasional two or three car pile-ups (piles-up???) In middle lanes with slow traffic weaving in and out and round while the locals exchanged telephone numbers.  Seems an odd place to be arranging dates!

One lunchtime after our morning walk, while driving home, we passed a sign saying “Rural Restaurant”.  That’s the sort of sign that didn’t ought to be passed.  So back we went and up the hillside to the Quinta da Travessa.  The road was impossibly narrow so we scouted on ahead and found that there was just enough room to turn round at the quinta.  So up and in we went.

The owner, Manuel, was Swiss (a long time ago) and we were able to converse in broken French.  The menu? – yes, today it’s bacalau starters, salad, meat, potatoes followed by fruit and icecream plus homemade wine for €18.

But he didn’t take credit cards and we were €10 short in cash so Glenda had to take up baby sitting duties …

… and I had to return later.  He was so surprised that I actually did go back that he gave me a second bottle of his wine – which to be honest didn’t taste as good back at base!

Anyhow, one more trip around the local villages to remind ourselves of the wonderful speed controlled lights.  There are three types.  Firstly the (relatively) sensible ones which stay green if you approach at the speed limit or less.  Second are the (relatively) stupid ones.  These stay green until a car approaches at any speed.  As soon as they detect a car coming their way they turn red while they check your speed.  If you travel legally, they turn green at the last minute to let you through.  So usually, you end up braking hard in the final few metres just in case they fail to change – and there’s a policeman sitting there waiting!  The third type is the best.  They are advertised, as always, but they don’t actually exist.  It’s either a clever bluff, or some village planning officer had forgotten to order the fancy lights to go with his sign!  Or he had pocketed the money he hadn’t spent on lights!

And they don’t paint their speed cameras a friendly, luminescent yellow.  Just not playing fair!  Still it’s almost impossible to speed on their twisting roads!

Give or take, that’s a summary of our activities at Lamego and the Quinta dos Moinhos, and indeed Portugal because we left there for Spain – and a really bad day!