And then not a lot happened. We needed to stop, recoup and take time to smell the…….fishes. So on Tuesday afternoon we cycled down to the beach, stretched out on the sand and watched the local fishermen doing their thing again. I kept trying to imagine, the tractors, trailers, fish and noise being part of the scenery on Bondi, or Freshwater Beach…….nope, it just couldn’t happen.
Unfortunately our chill out day turned out not so chilled at the end. We discovered our credit card had been used illegally in California, USA, so we spent the evening making a $45 phone call, followed by three emails to the bank in Australia. When we tried to get to sleep, our heads were full of bank problems, dang! And we started Wednesday morning with more emails from and to the bank, before driving north up the coast road through Costa Nova and Barra to Aveiro.
The Michelin Guide describes Aveiro as the ‘Venice of Portugal’. Mr Luis Campsite warned us that there was “really only one canal, that’s it, just one”. He also gave us a map and showed us how to find a spot that was free to park in all day. We walked through the main tourist centre in about 5-minutes, looked at the one canal, found a café for our daily pasteis de nata, and then paid for a 45-minute ride along the canal. It did actually have a couple of small side shoots, but there really wasn’t much to see; Luis was right. But it was nice relaxing in the rather lovely flat-bottomed boat with its brightly painted, elegantly curved prow and stern. In Portugal they call them moliceiros and have a competition each year to find the best painted prow, a nice touch.
When we returned to Eileen we could see two men walking around her looking a little too interested, so we called out “hola”. It turned out they were from the two French big campervans parked nearby and were intrigued by our little Eileen. They said they thought she was “très jolie”, which pleased us and we thanked them. We now consider her officially ‘very très jolie’.
From Aveiro the 54 kms drive up the N109 was…….dull. It seemed like one, long, never ending town with endless roundabouts. There seemed to be no break in the housing, or businesses; there was nothing attractive about the route and something that we’ve always thought was a good idea, turned out to be a huge pain for us. As you drive into a town or village in Spain and Portugal there are flashing yellow lights. If you don’t slow down to 50kmph or less, the traffic-light 100 metres ahead changes to red, so it really does work well at slowing the traffic to the speed limit, as no-one wants to stop and wait for the light to change. Very clever stuff. However, when you’re travelling along 54kms of pot-holed roads past so very many of these traffic-lights, it is mind-numbingly frustrating to say the least! We were very relieved when after a two-hour drive, we finally reached Camping Madalena, just south of Porto.
Keen to find an interesting city, we caught an early bus into Porto. I was still a bit sleepy, but the bus ride certainly woke me up. It was a bit like a thrill ride at a theme park. The bus was full size, not some little mini-bus. It shot through villages that weren’t seemingly wide enough to take Eileen. For 40-minutes we saw every village and suburb south of Porto and I do not know how we never hit another car, or wall, or house. We had a head-on standoff with a huge coach on a sharp bend near Grahams Port Wine Cellars, but we won and the coach somehow backed up enough for us to get through. I honestly had to close my eyes and lean away from the window on many occasions!
The bus dropped us off behind the Igreja de Trinidade and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the size of the city, Portugal’s second largest, we knew it would take us more than 5-minutes to discover its beauty. So we hopped on a ‘Yellow Bus Historical Tour’ and enjoyed an hour of watching Porto go by, whilst sitting on the open top deck in the drizzly weather. Actually, it was more of a mizzle than a drizzle, we didn’t really get wet, but it wasn’t pleasant and we were glad we had jumpers on for the first time in ages. The tour took us right out to Foz do Doura on the west coast and then round the opening of the Rio Douro and back into Porto. We hopped off at stop 29 to take a look at the amazing Ponte de Dom Luis I, a fabulous two-level iron bridge which is now a World Heritage site. The view from the terrace of the former Convento de Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar is quite spectacular looking over the bridge and the city of Porto on the opposite bank.
From there we wandered down steep winding lanes through the heart of Villa Nove de Gaia where all the wine lodges store and mature their port. We ate a very meaty lunch at one the many riverside restaurants and then crossed the road to the open doors of all the port wine cellars. Not sure why, but we chose to visit Sandemans; maybe because I remember my parents selling it to customers in our off-licence in Weston-Super-Mare and I’ve always liked the trademark, which turned out to be one of the very first trademarks in the world. It was a very interesting tour, we learnt a lot about port and at the end of the tour I learnt that I much prefer white port to a ruby.
The sun was trying to come out when we left the cellars and strolled over the lower deck of the Ponte de Dom Luis I and along the opposite riverbank. We followed steep streets that led us up through the Ribeira district to the cathedral, which turned out to be the gloomiest I’ve ever seen; we didn’t stay long.
We were now on track for being high enough to find the road across to the top level of the Ponte de Dom Luis I, and again the view from up there is quite lovely. We hopped back on a Yellow Bus at stop 29 and enjoyed sitting for a short while as it took us over the Ponte do Infante and back in to the centre of the city. I was keen to find the smallest house in Portugal, built between two churches, the Igrejo do Carmo and the Igreja das Carmelitas. Apparently an ancient law banned two churches sharing a common wall, strange but true. You’d think it would save a bit of money. So a tall, very narrow house was squeezed in between and it looked like someone was renovating it to move in!!
We took a turn around the base of the Torre dos Clérigos, which must be the first tower we haven’t gone up, but a cold drink was calling to us more strongly than 225 steps. Finally we strolled along the Rua de Santa Catarina with all its modern, busy shops and caught the 906 bus back to Madalena, with my eyes sometimes closed again, for some of the ‘ride’.
Friday was forecast as the only nice day for a week, so we decided to stay put for an extra day, get all the sheets washed and spend some time on the beach, or by the pool, before we have to pull on jumpers again. Trouble is, neither of us is good at sitting all day, so at 3pm the bikes came off and we cycled down to the promenade at Praira da Madelena, turned right and then kept pedalling, past Praia de Pedras Amarelas, and Praia de Salgueires and Praia da Lavadores. It was a brilliant, flat cycle path all along the beach front and we reached the mouth of the Doura and its massive sandbank in less than 20 minutes.
Still not puffed, we turned right again and followed the estuary through the village of St Pedro da Alfurado and we only stopped when we had passed under the enormous Ponte da Arábida and could see the centre of Porto in front of us. We hadn’t realised that we were so close to the city and probably could have cycled there in much the same amount of time as it took the bus; though I’m not sure I could have cycled back after so much pavement pounding yesterday.
A fun fair was being set up in St Pedro da Alfurado, plus bunting and street lights were being strung across the narrow streets in the village. Next weekend they apparently celebrate St Pedro in a big way. Back at Praia de Lavadores we stopped for a rejuvenating drink at one of the numerous stylish cafes that are set right on the beach all along the promenade and then cycled on back to Eileen for dinner. Tomorrow we will try and get nearer the border…….
