Galicia and Cantabria by Road

Set off from Santiago after sampling the hotel’s famous breakfast, giant pieces of toast, fresh blended tomato spread, olive oil and famous Galician ‘titty’ cheese, (it’s a shape thing) fresh oj, great cafe con leche and a giant toasted croissant. Hotel was great - location and quality and certainly warmth of reception. (www.costavella.com)

Car duly retrieved from parking and successfully infiltrated the pedestrianised old city centre. As today was a public holiday (Spanish Army Day, but the hotelier advised with a dismissive wave…that means nothing here.... traffic pressure was a pretty low, and we are thankful for small mercies like that.

TomTom the navigator sent us deeper into the old city, advised right turns where there were no roads, but we were soon out of town and away north. TomTom the navigator is unlike my old one, very calm under all circumstances, never spits the dummy or has hissy fits and always comes up with a solution when instructions have been misinterpreted or not acted on quickly enough.

We had coffee in Ponteverde, even though we hadn’t programmed that place into TomTom, so there were a few insistent instructions ignored. There are some lovely harbours, estuaries and inlets, and we saw Europe’s highest sea cliffs (and the associated wind farms).

Leslie Howard the actor was shot down in a DC3 here by the Luftwaffe in WWII, the interpretive signage has the story and pictures Howard and a Lufthansa Fokker passenger plane. These people obviously need DOC to check their stories and signage. That’s ticked the first few things on the list. Now off to Ortiguera.

Issued instructions to TomTom and of we went. Turn right (we have him with a very sweet feminine voice). We did. We did get soon after Turn around, but he obviously didn’t understand the width of the road issues. Pretty soon after he was showing us driving in the middle of a blank screen. Soon after that a road did appear on the screen and he connected us to it by a red dotted line as a comforting measure. We continued on down this farm track, and eventually decided to retrace our steps. TomTom was pleased, but not overly excited so did the usual, no road, red dotted line tricks on the way back, New instructions at the “intersection” where we had received the initial Turn right instruction. There were half a dozen cars parked outside a barn with a bunch of guys looking like they were celebrating Army Day. Ann did suggest we go and ask for instructions, but TomTom at least speaks English. The road got narrower and steeper, TomTom remained silent so on we drove. I’m thankful that it was Army Day, it meant the huge quarry we drove through wasn’t working.

We arrived into a charming rural area, small lots, fruit trees, a few livestock and we were back on tarmac and heading east. We reprogrammed for our final destination of the day, Cudillero, and set off. Lots of hills, harbours, small towns, eucalypt forest, pine forest, giant viaducts over Rio valleys… that’s where some of the GFC$ crisis (Espana style) went. There are lots of unfinished roads and roundabouts and accommodation developments at beach towns. To be fair TomTom did a fantastic job, although there were some potentially stressful moments where someone had obviously had a whisper to TomTom that they plan to make a roundabout at that point. Probably just a timing issue, and at least it was in a place where we could turn around.

 

Cudillero is a lovely little place at the bottom of some huge cliffs, and with a harbour that is surrounded by giant sea walls and the entrance facing North into the Atlantic (referred to as the Cantabrian sea by the locals.) We watched the fishing boats heading out for evening catch. Quite a lift at the harbour entrance.

Our hotel- La Casona de Pio - is very good for location and comfort. It is right by the harbour. (www.lacasonadepio.com).

Lots of tourist eateries which we avoided. Found a little bar with some of the locals and sampled the local fare after translating the menu over a beer and G&T and a slice of the famous Quiesa Cabrales – a blue cheese made locally. Raided the boat supply of Port for a nightcap.

 Short drive tomorrow to Llanes, 144 km according to TomTom who is privileged enough to share our accommodation. Hasn’t graduated to sharing a Port, but is an appreciated part of the team

Of trains and Santiago de Compostela

The days of being cossetted with bags transported, bed and meals all sorted are over and we are off on our self-organised travels.

Step 1 was actually the trip back to Porto. Despite Ann’s stressing that the train travels both ways on the same track, we did manage to catch the Interregional train back down the Douro River to Porto. The Pinhao railway station had really interesting azulejos (blue and white tiled images of life on the Douro)

The trip had some great views initially of the river, then lots of small, rundown towns as we neared the sea, and Campanha Station, Porto.

Finding a post office took us into a different area of Porto, the Ribiera area which all looked a bit rundown, lots of washing out on the terraces and strung outside windows indicated inhabitation, but the apartment blocks are quite decrepit.

We visited a beautiful bookshop, Lello’s with an amazing Gothic double circular staircase up two levels to a stained glass ceiling with the store’s motto, Decus in Labore. You’ll notice the “do not take photos”signs…Ann didn’t.

But the structure which astonished us was the twin churches. See photo. Two churches built, both Catholic, the first in late 16^th C, the other 150 years later. They share a wall but are totally separate inside! The city is full of iglesias, but this seems amazing.

Dinner also amazed us! The restaurant recommended by the travel firm near the Pestana where we stayed was absolutely crowded but they found us a spot although we hadn’t “book-ed”. The wine, a Portuguese red - 2004 Periquita riserva - was delicious, but the food was HUGE. Steve had a paprika roast pork and roast chestnuts (E8.10) and Ann had a beef and mushroom dish (E8.10). Each would have fed us both. We staggered home defeated by the food.

Next morning had us back at Campanha station at 7.30 am and on a similar train en-route to Santiago de Compostela. Time to stretch the legs and watch the Portuguese country go by. Plenty of fertile gardens, grapes, some kiwifruit plantings, abandoned buildings, but only four cows! The shift to Spain was only registered by the fact that a new guard came through and we had to buy a different ticket, all the rest stayed the same, until Steve noticed that in fact we’d gained an hour, so the 4 hour trip was 3 hours long. Another train from Vigo and another hour and a half and we were in Santiago de Compostela.

It rained a lot on this leg of the journey, but as the taxi driver said in broken English, “It’s Galicia!” - apparently the rainfall here is double anywhere else in Spain. The buildings certainly attest to it too, plenty of lichen and moss, and often ferns growing out of spoutings and crannies.

Our hotel is in the pedestrianised part of the city, filled with pilgrims with rain capes, scallop shells, packs and sticks, and with other tourists as well.

We did a general explore, visited the cathedral, a museum which backgrounds the walk (Museo das Peregrinacions to give it its full due) and St James and some lovely gardens with views back on the old city.

The rain held off for most of the time, so that was great. We also went back and collected the Avis car, Santiago - as with most of Spain, the office closes for several hours in the middle of the day. TomTom obliged, thanks Ross and Michelle, and we got to the parking block unscathed.

We ate local seafood: we’d seen heaps of fishery activity in Vigo, with what appeared to be fish pens lined up in the harbour estuary area. Steve had the octopus and I had scallops. Both delicious. Fresh white wine, Terras Gauda, from Rias Baixas, Porteverde, which we’d trained through earlier in the day.

While we ate, we watched the waiter carve thin slivers of Iberian ham from a very long skinny leg for tapas.

We are off today with our new friend TomTom. I had to do a Google search to work out how to get her to speak louder. I think she has a road rules section so will interrogate that today before we go too far.

Douro Valley: the Valley of Gold walk

To The Valley of Gold

Austerity strikes changed our train journey into a bus trip, but we are on holiday, who cares. The Scania bus was a very smooth bit of gear, super quiet, lots of power, and a great preselector gearbox. We didn’t really have much idea or confidence that we were heading in the right direction, however we eventually got to Carrazeda Ansiaes via some roads you wouldn’t believe for what seemed like a ‘main road only’ style bus. The bus had to squeeze past the odd ute inconveniently parked in narrow cobbled village streets. At our stop we were met by the hosts and driven down the hill to Alojamento Senhora da Ribeira, a little inn alongside the river.

We had a short walk, but it was very hot, so we decided it was time for a beer. There were two others on the terrace, a young German girl, Katrina, and Mario, local vineyard owner and winemaker. We had a long conversation on the valley and his vineyard history …. how do you make a little bit of money out of a vineyard??   Start with a lot of money!!

Mario invited us up for a visit so we saw his operation and participated in the process. Some of my DNA is now in the 2012 vintage, and I didn’t even have to resort to the Canterbury stubbies and my Northern Territory black singlet brought specially to wear at any wine pressing opportunity. It was a sad day for Portugal. Harvest has finished and the vat in the picture is Mario’s last brew for 2012. This visit also allowed us to start the wine collection for the canal boat cruise. This was a little earlier than planned but we will enjoy drinking some of Mario’s wine while we tell the Douro story.

 

BTW the wine collection for the cruise is Choco and Vikki on whites, Steve and Ann on reds. So we start with  Marios Negreiros 2007 Riserva which won gold at the Brussels show. If you do Google Earth, the vineyard is Quinta das Amendoeiras, and is the 10 hectares behind the inn.

Senhora  da Ribeira walk

Starts with a casual 5 km stroll along the river, great views across the developments on both banks. It's very dry and quite a few trees are showing terminal stress. We met a shepherd we’d seen the previous day, herding his long-haired sheep along the road and pruning neighbouring vines. We’d seen him yesterday and guess it’s his fulltime job.

We ducked a 7.5 km walk up the hill and our taxi driver and his gorgeous companion drove us up to Pinhal do Douro, about 1000m higher and left us with our picnic lunch. We did see some harvesting as we drove up, but it’s mostly over.

Carefully following instructions we took the trail down an ancient cobbled walk with stone walls on each side. We're not sure who built the track, but at some stage it was the connection between Pinhal  village and Coleja. There were great views and it was better to be descending than ascending. There were plenty of cork trees, with red trunks stripped of their bark, and also olives and grapes. We did say no to an invitation to drink some wine with an already three sheets to the wind resident of  the first village who was arguing loudly with one of his neighbours. Very hot conditions for walking, but a great way to start.  Found a spot under an olive tree for our picnic.

 

Back to the accommodation for a beer, G&T a coffee and an ice-cream, a bit of a wait for our trip in an ancient boat across the river to our taxi to the next spot, Casa de Casal de Loivos. (Trains still not running) The drive took almost an hour and a half, winding around high terraced hills, and little villages. Big quintas in places and trucks rolling up full of grapes to be processed. A spectacular part of the valley.

Casa de Casal de Loivos http://www.casadecasaldeloivos.com has a commanding view down over the Douro, from a beautiful terrace and swimming pool area, so we sat out for a pre-dinner drink, until driven in by mosquitos. Dinner was around the big table with a Canadian and a German couple. English dominated and we shared views on politics, immigration and the economy (seemed most issues are similar in each country.) Attentive staff and delicious food. Drank a Douro valley white wine. (Kopke) which was fresh and crisp.

Casal de Loivos to Vilarinho de Sao Romao

After a relaxed breakfast, we put on the dusty boots and headed off, map and walking notes at the ready. Snatches of village life were  intriguing, like the butcher's van visiting.

The walk today involved quite a lot of height loss and gain! First we wound down to the River Pinhao, along terraced vineyards and cobbled lanes. Many tempting fruit en route; figs, grapes, blackberries, nectarines! Crossed the river and then the climb started up through a pine forest to the village of S. Cristovao do Douro. Great allotment gardens as we approached. Runner beans, tomatoes, squash, brassica. Very lush and well-tended. We were greeted by an elderly couple sitting on their veranda, as we wandered up the narrow cobbled streets.

Further up the climb we reached the village of Provesende. This town is quite historic as rebellious aristocrats from Lisbon were exiled here, and there are many aging mansion houses to attest to their occupation. Also many old abandoned houses for sale, significant do-uppers.

Provesende had an amazing Gothic church – ornate being an understatement. Also a large cross (pillory) in the middle of town where public hangings once took place.  (I now understand the meaning of ‘pilloried’ much more graphically!) We had our picnic here – huge doorstep sandwiches, provided by the last accommodation.

 

Then we carried on climbing up more narrow cobbled lanes. Great expansive views of terraced plantings made for much needed photo stops, including one of the Taylors Estate plantings. It’s interesting to get a better sense of the provenance of these ports. The climb eventually reached the Capel de Sao Domingos on top of an 800m hill. Not sure why one would build a chapel in such an inaccessible spot, but apart from the broken glass in the window it looked well-tended.

 

Our walking guide notes took some interpretation as we wound back down and it was with some relief that we reached the village of Vilarinho de Sao Romao. On the outskirts, to my great joy they were picking the grapes so we walked into the vineyard and were greeted most cordially by the owner, who spoke no English! All picking was by hand, into big buckets, then tipped into bins and carried off by truck to the quinta. The grapes were delicious! On a single vineyard there can be many different grapes which must make for some issues with ripening and harvesting them all at peak. This was the case at this vineyard with Tourega on one side and some other variety on the other.

Our accommodation Casa de Vilarinho http://www.casadevilarinho.com  has an interesting history. You can see it above with the hostess and owner Cristina. Apparently it belonged to a Viscount who lost it as a gambling debt. Then the vineyard land was sold off and the house separately acquired by the Old Portuguese family who own it now. It has a lot of beautiful furniture and is very spacious and comfortable. Chestnut ceiling with beautiful ceiling rose of wood, and 'courting seats' in the window bays. Though as they are granite the courtship might need to be quite short as they are hard and cold!

Our dinner companions who were a day ahead of us on the walk, were a Norwegian woman and her American husband who have done a lot of sailing, including around the world, and also diving and fishing so lots to talk about. We had a very pleasant meal and evening with Kim and Reidun.

A lay day the next day, so we headed on a shorter walk, but still a lot of up and down and ended up being about 15k long. Visited Sabrosa village, the birthplace of Magellan as part of our walk. A highlight of this walk was the wild figs along the way. Delicious! And the usual spectacular views.

We then visited the nearby Quinta de Portal for a tour and tasting. Tasted three reds, from a cheap and cheerful, to a riserva and then a grand riserva. The distinguishing factor was the amount of Tourega went from 30% to 50% to 60% and the complexity and quality reflected this as well. We tasted with a couple from Lisbon who had visited NZ and had good English so certainly enjoyed the chat. They were very disconcerted that we were walking and wanted to host us, drive us somewhere and find food and accommodation for us.

The walk to Chanceleiros

So today the last walk is about 15 km. We started heading uphill through pine forest, and some eucalypt. It was a steady climb up to another of the Sao Domingos chapels. On the way we stopped in a village, Vilela,  for a water break and were in time for the bread delivery. Van screeches to a halt in front of us. Horn beeps loudly several times. Woman comes out of door, and buys her rolls for the day and the van races off again.

Steady climb up to the chapel (another 860m hill) and again it was in immaculate condition. Then a long and treacherous descent with loose scree. Great views back over Casa de Loivos where we'd stayed on our second night of the walk and over the area we'd walked previously. Certainly steep!

 

We dropped down into a really pretty village, Covas do Douro, for lunch. Then it was a gentle walk down the road to our accommodation for the next two nights. Casa do Visconde de Chanceleiros. http://www.chanceleiros.com.  Palatial. We have a huge room with a separate wardrobe area and huge bathroom and also an anteroom. Then there's a private terrace overlooking the pool and a jacuzzi, which was a very pleasant way to restore tired legs. 

Chanceleiros and Pinhao

We caught up with Kim and Reidun again for poolside drinks, pre-dinner champagne for Reidun’s birthday and a lovely meal. R and K have a sailing friend by the name of Dag Ekstrom who is from Sundsvaal in Sweden; we will look him up when we do the “heritage and ancestry” tour at some future date. Dag and a friend sailed around the world 1962-1964 in a 26 foot sailboat. Their adventure has just been celebrated in a book which is a bit tough going as it’s in Swedish. There is a Nils Persson in the book, one of the guys who restored the sailboat  Lunkentuss recently and set up a little museum in Sundsvall, he looks very much like Pop. May be some interesting leads as Carl Erik Nilsson’s father was a Persson and I do recall Ekstroms on Andrew’s family tree. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of it on the laptop, so will check it out when we get back. 

Talking about look alikes, Kim could easily be Ken Crompton’s double. K and R  have done some fantastic sailing and diving all around the world. You can visit www.metolius.net to see some of the places visited and check out the dinghy.

Ross and Michelle, Molly says hello, she looks just the same as the photo in your blog

We walked into Pinhao this morning via Quinta da Rosa for the obligatory Port and wine tasting. Watched the grapes being stripped off the stalks and then sent into the vats. This is a traditional vineyard. For a while they dispensed with the grape stomping but the wine didn’t taste as good they decided, so they reinstated it. It’s done at night, after the stompers have finished their day jobs, so Steve has missed out, to his disappointment! Purchased some stores for the boat and watched the process as well. This is a small winemaker 50 000 litres of Port and 200 000 litres of wine. It has been in the same family since 1906, when it was given to its current owner as a christening gift! Once it supplied Sandemans but has branched out alone, once regulations allowed them to do so. But still a highly regulated industry, for instance olive trees are not allowed to be planted in the vineyards as they need to be watered and watering of the vines isn’t allowed unless they are newly planted.

We had lunch at a local café in Pinhao, Ann had the fish, I had the pork, we both had a beer, a coffee, a piece of Port cake (aka drunken cake – it’s saturated in port) and a glass of port. He charged us 18 Euro which seems amazing…the two beers in NZ would have dealt to 10 Euros. Food is certainly cheap in Portugal. Maybe it was 'be kind to tourists’ day!!

We booked our train trip back to Porto tomorrow and the first leg of our journey up to Santiago de Compostela on Thursday where we pick up the first car. This ticket gets us to the Spanish border where the Spanish conductors enter the train and sell us a ticket for the rest of the leg, not that the train changes at all.

So the Valley of Gold walk is over, apart from another delicious dinner to look forward to tonight. It has been fantastic!

All-abiding memories of the walk: terraced hills, sweet wild fruit, chapel bells ringing the time and barking dogs in every village!

 

Oporto

After a quick flight across a very arid Spain interior, we arrived in Porto and took the metro into town. It is very clean and new, and at 2.30E very cheap. Porto is fascinating. The home of the port industry, on the Douro River. The wine, made from grapes grown up the river, used to be shipped down the river, to be finished off and bottled here and then exported. Now it comes down in stainless steel tankers. Safer, but less romantic than the old boats moored on the river. Our hotel Hotel Pestana Porto http://www.pestana.com is on the riverside in the historic centre of the town (in the photo it is in the centre, to the left of the yellow building). It’s a great spot to watch all the action.

There are many port houses on the opposite bank. All the famous names like Sandemans and Cockburn, and lots I’d not heard of. We did a cellar visit and tasting at Sandemans. The tasting involved five different ports, a white, a ruby a single vineyard, then two tawny ports, the second 20 years old. It was quite pale in colour compared with the others, and absolutely delicious. Certainly an interesting experience and great background research for the start of our week’s walking amongst the grapes of the Douro Valley!!!! They say the harvest may still be on in places so maybe we’ll get to see it in action? There’s a train strike here so we won’t be catching the train up to the start of the walk, it will be a bus.

A Morning in the Old City

No after-effects from Ann’s research on the five port styles, but we are now encumbered with a bottle of Sandeman’s Imperial Reserve Porto, which was going to be part of a picnic dinner. It became apparent that it would be a bridge too far, so the luggage weight goes up. Talking of picnic dinners, there’s a narrow little shop near the hotel, and, wedging our way down the narrow aisle, we found some delicious local quieja (cheese) which tasted very good with fresh fruit and the ubiquitous jamon.

We had a lovely morning ambling around the place, across Ponte Luis 1, (very high and carries foot traffic and the metro train), bumped into more students doing initiation week stuff, more Catedrals, narrow streets.  

The historic Sao Bento railway station, typifies much of the architecture of the area, with beautiful blue and white tile images of moments in history. Lots of derelict old buildings, both houses and factories. The place needs a few billion Euros to refurbish some of the old infrastructure, but I guess that now is unlikely to happen in the next 20 years or so.

The funicular up the hill from Customs wharf was a smart bit of gear. The climb is very steep so, in the cabin there is a hydraulic system which  keeps the floor level. If you look hard in the photo you’ll see the funicular on a journey up the hill in the photo taken from the bridge, and see what I mean.