Tag Archives: Scenery

Day 34 – Valença: Rest (and drone) day

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Wednesday 30 September 2026 – It was rather nice not to have the imperative of getting up in time to hand our bags over for collection, so we took things fairly easy; also, the rain hadn’t cleared from the previous day. As we went to our leisurely breakfast, we could see people walking the walls of the Fortaleza dressed for inclement weather – and we couldn’t see much beyond that through the mist and rain!

However, it’s not in our Jane’s nature to be utterly lazy, so when the rain stopped we went out for a short walk, which is pretty much the only kind you’ll get if you stay within the Fortaleza. The most important thing was to get a selo from the Tourist Office. Unsurprisingly, the stamp has the Fortaleza as its motif; and the tourist office has on its wall an overview of the fortifications

which was very much an appetiser for me, as I wanted to see if I could get some decent aerial photos and/or footage with the drone. In going to the tourist office, we passed an elegant and beautiful church

dedicated to the elegant and beautifully-named Saint, erm, Stephen. It’s a Romanesque number which had been reconstructed in neoclassical style in 1792. Inside

there appeared to be a surprising number of Eucharistic Thrones – two to be precise.

We treated ourselves to coffee and pastries at the (rather crowded and claustrophobic) café in the main square. In fairness it was crowded because all the outside seating was soaking wet from the earlier rain…

The cafe had a rather nice set of azulejos at the far end.

Then we headed back through the crowded streets to our hotel. As well as being on the Caminho, the town is clearly and quite reasonably a popular tourist destination, and there were coach tours aplenty unloading punters while we were in the Tourist Office. We took the opportunity to get some more photos of the fortifications visible from the environs of the hotel.

Then, as Jane relaxed in our room, I headed out with the drone to see what I could capture. The Fortaleza is one kilometre from end to end, if you include the actual earthworks and fortifications; the maximum range I am allowed to send the drone out is 500m, so it should theoretically be possible to capture images all the way round if you stand somewhere reasonably central; and we’d identified a quiet spot on the walls near the middle of the Forteleza which looked promising. And so it proved; I came back with some stills and video and was reasonably happy with them. I spent an hour or so tinkering with them, during which time the weather improved somewhat, so I went out again and had another go. I took a few stills, but this is the one I like most.

If you have five minutes to spare, then you might like to watch the video that I was able to capture; it’s a 360° fly-round and I hope it gives a good impression of the imposing scale of the fortifications, as well as showing that the Fortaleza is really two fortifications, with the lower one protecting the higher one from a landside attack.

I really was delighted to have got the stills and video; it’s a wonderful location for this kind of video and makes it worthwhile having brought the drone with me.

Thus satisfied, we went to the hotel bar for a drink and a snack lunch and the improved weather gave us a good view over the river Minho and the border with Spain to Tui, through which we’ll be walking tomorrow.

Why they named the town after a travel company is anyone’s guess*, but the place has an awe-inspiring cathedral,

which I hope we’ll be able to visit as we walk through the town.

jane discovered that we’d missed something of pith and moment, a Roman milestone, which was just outside St. Stephens Church, so we went back out.

According to its infoboard it was adapted as a pillory after being transferred from its original location in 1860. The inscription reads “TI(berius) CLAUDIUS. CAESAR AUG(gustus) GERMANICUS / PONTIFEX. MAX(imus). IMP(erator) V / CO(n)S(ul) III, TRIB(unicia) POTEST(ate), / III, P(ater) P(atriae) BRACA(ra) / XLII”. Its original purpose was to mark 42 (Roman) miles from Braga to Tui and was built by Emperor Claudius when he made improvements to Via IV of the Antonine Itinerary.

We also visited the Bom Jesus Church, outside which is a statue of São Teotónio, who was the first Portuguese Saint and after whom our Pousada is named.

We returned to the hotel for the rest of the day, during which time the weather really brightened up,

which augurs well for resuming the walking thing tomorrow.

Because tomorrow is October 1st – new month, new country, new language, new time zone. We will cross into Spain (one hour ahead of Portugal) to complete our journey to Santiago de Compostela – seven more stages and 120km to go. Tui is the Caminho Português equivalent of Sarría on the Camino Francés – the 100km point, walking from which qualifies one for a Compostela. Three years ago, I found the crowds and and the babble on the walk from Sarría very difficult to adjust to; it will be interesting to see how these final kilometres of the Português are by comparison.

 

* Any fule kno there is no connection between the travel outfit owned by the German company Touristik Union International – TUI – and the Spanish town of the coincidentally identical name.

Day 23 – Porto: Intermission 2 – playing tourist

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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.

Ponte de São João, a 1991 railway bridge, replacing the Maria Pia Bridge (q.v.)

Maria Pia Bridge, from 1877. Designed by Gustave Eiffel, and the oldest bridge connecting Gaia and Porto

Infante Dom Henrique Bridge, designed by Adão da Fonseca, opened in 2003 to replace the upper deck traffic of the Luis I Bridge (q.v.)

“Our” bridge, the Luis I Bridge, from 1886, designed by the Belgian engineer Théophile Seyrig, a former business partner of Gustave Eiffel, and now a Unesco World Heritage Site

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

The final bridge was quite far downstream.

The Arrábida Bridge, which has a 270-metre span that for some time held the world record for reinforced concrete arch bridges. Designed by engineer Edgar Cardoso, and inaugurated in 1963

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!

 

A Pain in the Pena

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Thursday 27 August 2026 – Our original plan had been to scarper back to Lisbon fairly sharply today with the idea to visit Belém, a suburb which features a Manueline Monastery, a Tower and, importantly, a pie shop. However, Carlos told us that the monastery was to a certain extent shrounded in scaffolding which somewhat dimmed our enthusiasm for the jaunt. In any case, Jane had been looking at photos of the Pena Palace, showing facets that were not well-displayed in the photo we’d struggled all that bloody way up that bloody hill to get. Yes, this one, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention.

Our original intel had opined that the Palace wasn’t that much worth a visit but Jane decided that this was probably not the case, so had gone online to book tickets. I suppose that a warning light should at least have flickered over to amber when the only time slot available to book for entry to the palace was 0930, but idealism and optimism ruled the day and so we booked tickets for the palace (and the shuttle ride up from the gates – you weren’t going to get me that way a second time, oh dear me no). My thought was that getting there early would mean smaller crowds. (Can you hear the hollow laughter at this point?) And though Google asserted that the distance from the hotel to the palace was a mere 3km, we knew enough of the local terrain to realise that those kilometres were not going to be of the benevolent kind. Anyway, the 434 bus went there and ran very frequently, although we would have to catch the first bus, at 0830. With breakfast only being available from 0800 at the hotel, a certain donning of metaphorical skates was thus called for in the morning, so we were up, showered, packed and ready to go as we entered the breakfast room, and were checked out so we could get to the bus stop at 0830.

So: the Pena Palace, then. Why would one want to visit? Well, it has quite the history, and (as was clear from our photo from yesterday) has the bonkers architecture that appears to be a qualifying quality to be allowed to exist in Sintra. The village was popular with the various royal families of Portugal because of its cool summer climate (downpours included, as we found out). In 1838, King Ferdinand II (the German-born artist-king and consort to Queen Maria II) purchased the hilltop ruins of a 16th-century Hieronymite monastery that had been destroyed by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Ferdinand commissioned the Prussian engineer Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege to transform the ruins into a theatrical, vivid fairy-tale castle, which was constructed primarily between 1842 and 1854. We read that “the palace intentionally clashes bright yellow and red wings, blending Neo-Gothic, Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic, and Neo-Renaissance styles into a pioneering masterpiece of European Romanticism.”

Bonkers, then. But probs worth a visit.

Some of the practical realities of the day began to become clear at the bus stop, as there were a load of other people there. A French lady in the queue told us that many of them were staff for the various places along the route so they (quite reasonably) got first dibs on spaces on the bus. We managed to squeeze into the last couple of seats on the bus and it set off for its journey round the local lanes. The 434 is a circular route, which goes from Sintra, via a very roundabout route, to the Moorish Castle and then the Pena Palace before returning to Sintra and doing the same loop again; these buses run very frequently, so it would have been no issue had we been forced to wait for the next one.

The journey to the palace was along narrow and winding roads, so took some 20 minutes and deposited us by the palace gates just before 9am. It looked like there was a bit of a queue

and, annoyingly, people seemed to be jumping it, so I wandered up towards the front to see what was going on, and discovered that it was

really quite a substantial queue, with some kind of fast track system being operated by shifty-looking operatives, who were probably just normal tour guides doing their best to help their people.

At 0900 on the dot the queue started moving forward and we actually spent only a few minutes getting through the gates and into the grounds. It’s a 10-minute walk from the gates to the palace and lazy people (like me) could pay for a shuttle to do the hard work, and so we had a ride to the entrance. From the bus, you (along with hordes of others) walk through an impressive gate

and get your first (and, it has to be said, very striking) view of the palace

before you round a corner and….join a queue. (Note to travellers: tickets give you an entry time and woe betide you if you are late.)

The queue leads you through a tunnel (helpfully described on the audio guide, should you have it about your phone)

which is, again, made somewhat more aggravating by people skipping past because they’d paid for fast track access. As you shuffle forward, you do, though, start to get an idea of what awaits you.

As with all palace visits, one gets led along a pretty much pre-determined path through the palace rooms, which are very palacey but also somewhat Manueline, which adds a bit of spice to the otherwise rather humdrum run of furniture and decorations. Having shuffled through yet another grand and elaborate portal,

one gets to say hello to old Ferdinand

and then carries on through to the Stag Room, which admittedly makes something of an impact.

This was designed to be the palace’s large dining room, part of the palace’s reception and entertainment centre, along with the Great Hall and the Smoking Room. It takes its name from the stags’ heads you can see dotted around the walls. The Great Hall is next,

again decorated in the elaborate, not to say overwrought, Manueline style. The decor is quite extreme but there are several more conventional  palacey touches, such as overdone lamp stands.

Another doorway

leads to the Smoking Room, with its lovely Murano glass chandelier

and beautifully-worked ceiling.

Impressive as these rooms were, I was beginning to get very fed up with the crowds and the slow progress, but at last we were allowed out into the open air so we could admire the buildings from the outside, which is what I was really interested to photograph. We debouched on to the Queen’s Terrace, which allowed us to get an eyeful of some of the astonishing architecture and decor.

There were, of course, the usual run of people who seem to think that a view like this is improved by having their stupid, gurning faces in front of it.

There were other rooms to take a look at, such as the Sacristy

and the chapel, which was a tad crowded

before one could get through to see it properly.

I was a bit palace-roomed-out by this stage, but we spent some more time exploring various views of the buildings.

before talking the Wall Walk

which neatly led to the reciprocal view of the castle from which we’d viewed the palace less than 24 hours before.

The urge for caffeine was beginning to kick in by this stage, so we looked round for some more angles for photos

and then headed for the café. Trouble is, loads of others had had the same idea, so we thought “sod it” and headed for the exit, giving me a view that allowed me to formulate my First Rule of Pena Palace: if you hate crowds, don’t visit Pena Palace.

(The Second Law is: If your desire to see bonkers architecture is greater than your hatred of crowds then do visit Pena Palace.)

On the way out, we made a couple of useful discoveries: there is a much quieter cafeteria outside the ticket barriers

but which still gives you an inkling of what the palace is like;

and there is such a thing as “chocolate salami”, which is an upmarket version of rocky roads and so delicious that we had to have a second portion.

As we walked down to the exit, we saw hordes of people still pouring in and about to have their enthusiasm crushed by the queues awaiting them,

and even more outside waiting for this experience.

One of the 434 buses was there as we exited so we hopped on for a ride back to the station. For such a short distance (just a couple of kilometres), it took a long time, stuck in a slow traffic jam to and through the village. But we got to the station eventually, and found that it was 40 minutes until the Lisbon train, which was just enough time for a beer. On arrival in Lisbon, we pottered down to the same hotel we’d been in before, where we were effusively greeted by Rita on the reception desk, who immediately recognised us as the people that the hotel still owes over £400. She apologised for the slow process through which their finance people were grinding, and leavened this depressing news with the titbit that we’d been upgraded to an Executive room, which was nice of them.

We relaxed for a bit and then went out for another splendid meal at Em Alta Na Baixa before retiring for the rest of the day.

Because (drum roll…..) the walking starts tomorrow! Our journey to Santiago will start from the Cathedral and take us several weeks. In the few days we’ve been here we’ve already walked over 25km, and we have just the 630 to go. Do please stay with us for the journey.

 

 

*  Carlos told us that until about 15 years ago, Sintra was a lovely quiet place, but then Condé Nast magazine buggered things up by nominating Portugal as the best tourist destination in the world, after which it’s been overrun. The result is living proof of what our late next-door neighbour Cyril used to say: “Tourism is ruined by tourists”. The place was madly busy when we were there – traffic jams, difficulty passing people on the pavements, crowds everywhere. Nice to see a place being successful, particularly somewhere as arcane as Sintra, but one wonders where the money’s going. Renovation work on the three major buildings we visited was apparently being funded by EU grant (and reluctantly at that – the authorities nearly missed the boat) rather than tourist takings. Sintra is absolutely worth visiting, but at peak season, like we did it? Less rewarding, I’d say.