Saturday 19 September 2026 – A full day of leisure lay before us. So, a bit of a lie-in and a decent hotel breakfast over, we went for a walk. Obviously. Our main objective was to do one of the main tourist activities – take a short cruise up and down the Douro river and inspect the bridges that cross it. Fortunately, there is a company that offers such a cruise. Well, actually, there are probably dozens, but we just rocked up to the nearest one on our side of the river, operated by Manos do Douro. There was a 1030 departure, labelled the “6 bridges cruise”, which seemed just the thing, and we were there very conveniently at 1020, so we got on board

and off we went. On a sunny day like today, Porto is exceedingly photogenic,

so we got loads of pictures, including the bridges we went under.  We started off up-river and up-sun, so the best pictures started when we turned and headed back towards the city, when we had the sun behind us.

The Luis I bridge is photographically useful for framing important subjects on the mainland.

The final bridge was quite far downstream.

Those of you who have stayed awake long enough to have been counting will have noticed that there are only five bridges, and we were sold six. The sixth, the Freixo bridge, is sufficiently far upstream that neither Jane nor I noticed it in order to take a picture of it.

As well as the bridges, there were a few other things to see as well, because, as I say, Porto in the sunshine is a very attractive place.

As you can see, among the pretty pastel houses there’s evidence of what must have been some fairly chunky fortifications at one stage. The Parish Church of Massarelos prominently displays a cross of the Order of Christ (which, as you will remember, is what the Knights Templar morphed into).

There are several parking lots for the river cruise boats, but one seems to attract most of them.

At some time, t, in the future, there may well be a seventh bridge for the cruises to go under. On port and starboard side of the boat, this could be seen.

Interestingly, as we passed, we noticed that the two bridge ends don’t actually point at each other. I hope that Someone Hasn’t Blundered.

We passed a house that prominently featured the Sandeman port logo

which we’d originally thought indicated the location of their port house; but this is on the Porto side, so there must be some other connection. For the real Sandeman house, and why it matters (to us, at least), read on.

As the cruise boat neared its return to its start point, it passed an exhibition of old port boats, the ones that were used to bring the wine down the river in barrels.

There are several of them, bearing the labels of some of the port houses that line the banks near where these are moored. After we disembarked, it seemed a good idea to wander along the quay back towards the port houses in search of coffee. It was a more difficult quest than one might have imagined from the number of eateries and drinkeries along the quays. Most of them were restaurants and not open until midday; the few genuine cafés were, unsurprisingly, crowded and we couldn’t find a seat for a while.  However, because we kept on wandering we came across two golden examples of extreme tourist marketing. Normally these sorts of things are the sorts of things we would avoid, but actually they are both charmingly done, or rather overdone. The first is a sardine shop. You’ll remember that we saw such a thing in Lisbon, and this one was no different

Literally wall-to-wall canned fish – mainly, but by no means exclusively, sardines.

They even offered a tasting.

It was so inviting that I recorded a short walk-round video.

Next door to it is an even more idiosyncratic place, the Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau, dedicated to the codfish cake.

Again, this is not something that would normally interest me, but the building’s interior is very quirky.

According to their website, “The Codfish Cake with Serra da Estrela PDO Cheese was born from the desire to honour the work of the shepherds of Serra da Estrela. It is thanks to them that the sheep produce an extraordinary milk that gives rise to a unique cheese in the world.

“At Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau we celebrate the protagonists of this story by creating the conditions for them to have a dignified life, fairly remunerating their work.”

This was another place for which recording a video was an inviting prospect.

Both places, whilst being sharply commercial and aimed at tourists, managed to be very charming.

Further up the quay was the place where the big RIver Cruise boats were parked – indeed triple-parked. That’s why there were so many punters in the town!

We passed port houses with various familiar names, as we have enjoyed Fonseca, Quinta da Noval, Graham’s, Sandeman’s and so on. There are flags on the quayside bearing all the names,

but the one that interested us the most was Sandeman’s.

It must be 30 years since we went to a Sunday Times wine show. While we were there we passed the Sandeman Port stand, where Graham Sandeman was on duty. It was he who first alerted us to the possibilities of port and tonic made with a medium white port. Given that we were passing his family gaff in Vila Nova de Gaia, it seemed rude not to pop in and lift a glass to the memory, particularly since they had a nice terrace outside in the shade.

If you look carefully, in the distance you can see that house with the Sandeman logo on the side.

After a couple of glasses, for it was very good, we pottered back to the hotel, past where young lads were jumping off the Luis I bridge for pocket money

and spent the rest of the day relaxing and psyching ourselves up for restarting the walking thing tomorrow. The next two days are, you guessed it, official heat wave days, with forecast temperatures of over 30°C – not as ferocious as we’d seen earlier, but still not to be trifled with. So we plan to make a very early start tomorrow, to get 22km of walking out of the way before the worst of the heat.

The Caminho proper starts at the Cathedral, and there are three route options – Central, Littoral and Coastal. These are explained, if you can be bothered, in the Stingy Nomads pages. For the rest of our Caminho we’ll be dodging about a bit between them, but we are starting with the Littoral route; furthermore, we’re going to start outside Porto, at a place called Matosinhos, and walk thence to Vila do Conde. It’ll be a Sunday, so we’re not sure whether we’ll be able to get coffee on the way, but I’ll of course report back. It’ll be hot and sweaty by the end of the walk – wish us luck!