Portugal

Perhaps as a prelude of things soon to come, my plane journey had me sat next to a very friendly gentlemen, travelling over to Portugal to visit family, who proved quite the light relief for the sometimes somewhat trying act of flying. The guy was – if I am to be honest – overly chatty, verging on what I might in my weaker moments describe most pejoratively as garrulous, but the between-jobs-computer-programmer who happened to come from the same square mile of this fair isle as my Grandparents, I must confess, did make the flight just a little more bearable. I have rather ambivalent feelings towards air travel generally, because in fact being thrust forward through the thinning atmosphere more than 10km above the ground held in place only a loose hotchpotch of metals and the collective wills of all on board is not my idea of a fun way to spend the afternoon. This having been said, I do of course love the actual act of taking off itself – it’s sort of like a cheap version of Alton Towers. Landing in Porto is fun too; the plane takes a circumnavigative route around the tip of the country, or so it seems, which affords the Porto-bound traveller an excellent view of the city itself, and the lights of the city centre twinkling in the river from the bridges. A prescient prelude of pluribus pleasures pending.

My excellent host’s place is in fact in Gaia (pronounced as the moth-y new-age theory of the spirit of the Earth) which is but a stone’s throw from the centre of Porto, by car a mere few minutes, and from the balcony of his fifth floor apartment the visitor is granted a quite splendid view of the city lights shimmering and reflecting again in the same river as visible from the plane. Of course much of our time was spent in Porto itself, in various coffee shops, and touring around the historic centre of the place, and eventually – fate finally relenting to our cause – the fairly epic cathedral which forms quite a focal point of the whole city, certainly when viewed from afar. Porto is built up over many layers, and so when you get to a high point in the city then you can see for miles around, such as from an ancient tower precariously maintained near the cathedral site, or across the river walking down through the old city centre. The spirit of the place, as it is communicated to the perspicacious, was very positive indeed, it seemed full of helpful, friendly people on the streets and in the shops, although it could be said no more than any other European metropolis. I was warned here and there of places angels fear to tread after hours, but all cities have such places. The threat of being violated in series and mugged is not one of real concern to me …

Once you venture out of the big city, as we did taking a weekend sojourn to Viana, a town further to the North still on the coast, the metropolis is lost and replaced, happily, with the bucolic splendour of Portuguese coastal countryside. I have to say the experience of being able to swim in a deserted river with no sound from the inhabited world, and coming out onto the rocks to warm up and dry off in the baking sun is one not soon to be rivalled. The town itself is pretty too, with yet more glorious sun kissed sandy beaches (a word which must be pronounced with great care in the Portuguese accented English) and old churches. It seems my guide was less enamoured with the people in this rural setting, their being more closed minded and old fashioned, and conservative; he knows them better than I, and although I must confess it did sometimes feel as if people were more than a little curious to see why two such people as ourselves should be talking in English, it didn’t bother me so much staying there for only the weekend. The town here is overlooked by a very sizable hill, atop of which lies a very plush hotel (which, pretentiously or not, calls itself a hostel) serving coffee out on the terrace overlooking practically the whole city! I would imagine it to be one of the finer places in the region, but I was assured it was of a more average calibre than the grandeur of its standing leads one to infer.

Of course Portugal is famed and rightly so for the production of a certain wine which I have bordered on being obsessed with for almost a decade now – Port. And no self respecting oenophile could come to Porto and not take a tour around some of the cellars where it is produced. This we did. We took tours of three cellars, Sandeman, Offley and Ferreira, all of which had impressive dark and dusty cellars enrowed with miles of barrels of port fermenting away in the microcosm of the bacterial world. Each came with tasting sessions afterwards, and after the third cellar even the most seasoned port enthusiast is approaching ‘squiffy’. I refrained from buying anything, but did pick up later a vintage bottle from 1987 (a very good year!) which shall sit in my liquor cabinet for some sufficiently momentous occasion – my eventual graduation perhaps. 1987 might be old enough for my pockets, but the Ferreira cellars had several bottles of vintage port from 1815!

The weather was so good it was hot enough to swim in the ocean, which was a very refreshing experience. As a British person, the only experience of ocean swimming is from my childhood, on the east coast of the country, where at the very height of summer the sea becomes just about tolerable, but warming up afterwards in the scant sunshine difficult. I remember in fact one year reading Jaws just before heading away, which timidified my waterward advances somewhat! Here whilst swimming you can make out the bottom of the ocean floor – to see the field of sand punctuated occasionally by the odd rock here and there, and I actually had a shoal of fish swim around me – green things with a yellow-ish stripe along their sides. Aside for the saltiness it was just perfect. Suffice it to say, that to return to Standstead and wait for my late train for Cambridge in the drizzle, damp and cold, was quite a come down from a fantastic sojourn to Iberia.