UNESCO World Heritage Sites

In 1954, the government of Egypt announced that it was to build the Aswan Dam, a project that proposed to flood a valley containing untold treasures of ancient civilizations. Despite opposition from Eygpt and Sudan, UNESCO launched a worldwide safeguarding campaign, over fifty countries contributed and the Abu Simbel and Philae temples were taken apart, moved to a higher location, and put back together piece by piece. At last the World was collectively protecting its treasures and hopefully never again will something magnificent like the Colloseum of Rome or the Parthenon of Athens be torn down and destroyed by following generations of rebuilders.

Building on this international success the United States then came up with the idea of combining cultural conservation with nature conservation and a White House conference in 1965 called for a World Heritage Trust to preserve ‘the world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry.’ The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968 and they were presented in 1972 to the United Nations conference on Human Environment in Stockholm. A single text was agreed and the ‘Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage’ was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16th November 1972.

Today there are eight hundred and seventy-eight listed sites and it isn’t easy to get on the list and to do so a nomination must satisfy impressively difficult criteria which in summary consist of cultral criteria:

to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius; to exhibit an important interchange of human values; to bear a unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition; to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or landscape; to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement; to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance,

and natural criteria:

to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance; to be outstanding examples representing major stages of Earth's history, to be outstanding examples representing significant ecological and biological processes; to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-site conservation of biological diversity.

It is hardly surprising that with forty-three listed sites Italy has the most but for those who think of Spain as nothing more than a country of over developed costas with concrete condominiums, marinas and golf courses it might be a shock to learn that Spain has forty sites and is second highest in the exclusive list.

On every visit to Spain I seem to be visiting a World Heritage Site so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that I have been to fourteen and that is over a third of them. In 2005 I visited Barcelona in Catalonia and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi and Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau. Then in 2008 I saw the Historic Centre of Córdoba, the Caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the Old Town of Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville. In 2009 in the motoring holiday around Castilian cities I visited the Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct, the Historic Walled Town of Cuenca, the Historic City of Toledo and the Old Town of Ávila.



Even before I knew anything about World Heritage Sites it turns out that I have visited two more in the days of my beach type holidays, although when I went to these places neither of them were yet on the list. In 1988 I holidayed on the island of Ibiza which was accepted onto the list in 1999 in recognition of its biodiversity and culture. The following year I went to Tenerife and took a cable car ride to the top of Mount Tiede, a national park that was accepted to the list in 2007. I have also visited Benidorm but for some reason that doesn’t yet seem to have made the list.

Even though they weren’t World Heritage Sites at the time I visited them I am still going to count them but the final two might be a bit dubious but anyway here goes. In 1984 while driving back through Spain from Portugal I drove with friends through the city of Burgos which was accepted in that year because of its Cathedral and in Galicia in 2008 while visiting Santiago de Compostella I managed to drive over parts of the Pilgrim Route, which exists on the list separately from the old city itself.

Next time I go to Spain I am going to pay more attention and see how many more I can visit.

Turning for a moment to Greece it will surprise no one that the Acropolis and the island of Delos are both on the list but due to mistakes made in submitting the application form by the Greek Ministry of Culture in 2005 then for the time being Knossos is not there. Everyone is accusing everyone else for this mistake and the Prefect of Iraklion blamed both the Ministry and UNESCO for leaving Knossos off the updated list of World Heritage Sites in 2006. I am surprised that a site that important even has to bother with an application.

WordPress.com

I have been experimenting with an alternative blogging site that I have come across and have been duplicating my postings there. It is an American site and it took a while to get used to the different format but now I like it very much. It has some better features that blogspot and has more of a web site feel about it. The statistics that are available are just fantastic. In view of what happened to the AOL blogging site and the way the users were just abandoned I have decided to keep both sites updated just in case it happens again.

The address of my new blog is www.apetcher.wordpress.com

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Portugal - Day 4, Port Wine and a Francesinha

We thought we were going to enjoy a personal tour of the lodge and this looked most likely until just as it started a coach full of Australian holiday makers gate crashed our tour and we were caught up in an antipodean Saga adventure through the cellars. There was a film and then several stops for information and at least this time it was in English so finally Sue and Christine knew what it was all about.

We learned that under European Union guidelines, only the product from Portugal may be labeled as Port and it is produced from grapes grown and processed in the Douro region. The wine produced is fortified with the addition of a Brandy in order to stop the fermentation, leaving residual sugar in the wine, and to boost the alcohol content. The wine is then aged in barrels and stored in caves, or cellars, before being bottled.

The wine received its name Port in the latter half of the seventeenth century from the city of Porto where the product was brought to market or for export to other countries in Europe from the Leixões docks. Actually there are no port lodges in Porto but an after dinner Vila Nova de Gaia doesn’t have the same ring to it. The Douro valley where Port wine is produced was defined and established as a protected region or appellation in 1756, making it the third oldest defined and protected wine region in the world after Tokaji in Hungary and Chianti in Italy.

This was all very interesting stuff but what we really wanted was to get to the tasting and we weren’t disappointed when at the end of the tour we were given three generous glasses of port in the hope that we might buy some more from the shop. Actually Kim and I enjoyed a bit more than that because our lightweight drinking companions only managed a sip from each glass so we were obliged to finish theirs for them as well as our own.

The day had slipped by and time was getting on now and before we returned to the metro we needed to find somewhere to eat. I had spotted a couple of promising places earlier this morning so we walked back briskly (very briskly actually) down the dangerous road, along the riverside, over the bridge, through the Ribiera and back to the Rua de Flores where we choose a traditional little place with basic furniture and red check table cloths and with no other customers quickly placed our orders.

The girls weren’t taking any chances and choose familiar dishes but Micky and I decided to sample the local speciality of Porto, the Francesinha, which is a sandwich made with toasted bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with molten cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce. Francesinha means Little French Girl in Portuguese It is said it was an invention in the 1960s of Daniel da Silva, a returned emigrant from France and Belgium who tried to adapt the croque-monsieur to Portuguese taste. Francesinha sauce is a secret, with each house having its variation and the kitchen was momentarily thrown into a panic when someone had to frenziedly explain to us that they had run out of their special spicy sauce and would we be alright with an alternative. We explained that this really didn’t matter to us because we had never had one before so really had no idea what to expect anyway. This settled things down and we were eventually served the sandwiches and I have to say that I failed to see just what all the fuss was about.

We left the café and hurried back through the Praça da Liberade to the Trindade metro station where we caught the tram which took us back to the stop with the empty car park and once reunited with our Ford Focus drove the short distance back to the Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport just out side of the city to return the car, check in and wait for our return flight. Interestingly, Francisco de Sá Carneiro was for a short time the Prime Minister of Portugal in 1980 and some people have questioned the appropriateness of naming an airport after someone who died in a plane crash!

At the security gate Micky seemed to be having difficulty with his luggage. He always has a bag full of items that might come in useful in an emergency but this afternoon he was still lumbered with the two packs of crisps that he bought twenty-four hours earlier in Vila Do Conde and although he was minded to dump them Sue insisted that he kept hold of them just in case. There was no just in case and Micky finally dumped them on her desk back at her office the next morning.

I had enjoyed Portugal again and on the flight home I was ashamed of my previous ignorance about the place. I had always assumed that because of its geography that it must be a lot like Spain with a few minor differences but I had come to understand that Portugal, its people and its culture and heritage is very, very different indeed.

Portugal - Day 4, rain & another change of plan

When we to bed the sky was clear but at some time during the night the clouds must have rolled in because when we woke the sky was heavy with mist and weather prospects looked desperate. We hoped that it might improve during breakfast but we had to admit that this was most unlikely especially as the clouds thickened and the rain began to fall even more steadily. Postponed from day one we were planning to visit the beaches today but it seemed pointless to wander from damp town to damp town getting wet and feeling miserable so we agreed instead to change our plans and return to Porto where at least there would be churches and museums where it would be dry inside and if the worst came to the very worst probably a shopping centre or a covered market and we could look at shoes and shiny things.

After checking out we drove a couple of stops down the metro line and found an empty car park and left the car all alone without any sort of automobile company while we waited for the tram to arrive. The driving rain slowed to a drizzle but it stayed with us for the entire journey into Porto first through farms with irregular shaped fields, no doubt the result of years of complicated inheritances, then wild meadows, pine-woods and copses of eucalyptus trees on a journey frequently punctuated with stops at every village en route. Nearer to the city the farms shrunk to smallholdings and on the urban outskirts further still to allotments and gardens but everywhere there was fruit and vegetables in abundance.

The tram arrived in Trindade and we could see outside in the street that it was still raining and people were hurrying by sheltered under umbrellas so we stayed underground and changed lines for a couple of stops to San Bento. It only took a few minutes but when we emerged from the subterranean metro system it was a whole lot brighter and there was only the odd spit of rain. We visited the train station, which today was being used for its more traditional function and then we walked towards the direction of the river down the Rua de Flores.

Here there were small shops and traditional bars and cafés side by side with derelict and decrepit buildings with rotting timbers, rusting balconies, tiled facades trying in vain to disguise years of neglect and so many washing lines that laundry could almost be a national pastime. The road channels were grubby and the buildings were grimy but it wasn’t without a certain charm and the defiant message from the residents seemed to be “Come and visit us if you like, we know it’s untidy but this is the way we like it!”

As we walked to the end of the street there were spreading patches of blue in the sky and things were beginning to brighten up. We were heading for the City’s covered market but when we arrived there it had clearly been closed and unused for some time and on the map we located its modern replacement but it was back in the direction that we had walked so we abandoned the idea of visiting it. Miraculously the sun was out now, which was good news for Micky because it meant that we didn’t have to take the church visit option as we passed underneath Igrija de São Fransisco, one of the few medieval buildings in Porto, ignored a multi-lingual beggar and continued on to the Douro.

Not only was the sun out now but it was hot and as we walked along the side of the river shutters were being thrown back in the apartments and more washing was beginning to appear on the balconies. This change in the weather cheered us up no end and on the Ribeira near to the Ponte Dom Luis I we selected a restaurant with outside tables for a drink and a convenient place for an application of sun lotion. Now it was really hot and the waiter was encouraged enough by this to begin fussily laying the outside tables for lunch and brought out table cloths, plates, cutlery and menus and then began to look for customers.

He should have looked up because just out to sea the sky was blackening with alarming speed and it was obvious that we were in for a drenching. Sure enough the cloud rolled in like a fleet of water bowsers and the heavens opened. He had to clear the tables a lot quicker than he had laid them and without the attention to detail either and soon the rain was bouncing off the pavement like shrapnel. The patio umbrellas proved little protection against this Atlantic squall as the rain drove in sideways and soon we were forced to take shelter inside.

It passed by however and as quickly as it had started it stopped again and the blue sky advancing from the west chased the clouds away inland and within only a matter of minutes the sun was shining, the pavements were steaming and the washing was coming back out again. That was a close shave because rain could well have meant an afternoon around the shops but at the bridge we were able to take the fair weather option and we crossed once more over to Vila Nova de Gaia.

(Grand) Father's Day

Father's Day is a day for honouring fathers and forefathers and is celebrated on the third Sunday of June in fifty-two of the World's countries. The concept is an American invention of course and the story goes that a woman called Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, was attending a Mother's Day service in 1909 when she started thinking about her father, a widowed Civil War veteran who brought up six children alone and she felt that he needed some parenting recognition as well. The first observance of Father's Day is believed to have been held on July 5th 1910 in a church located in West Virginia, in the USA, by Dr. Robert Webb at the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South of Fairmont.

It took many years to make the holiday official and in spite of support from the churches it took many years to be taken as seriously as Mother’s Day and ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar altogether. Where Mother's Day was always celebrated with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with some degree of scepticism. To get it taken seriously a bill was introduced to Congress in 1913, in 1924 US President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea at the highest level and a national committee was formed in the 1930s by various trade groups in order to promote the day. It was made a federal holiday when President Lyndon Johnson issued a proclamation in 1966 and in 1972 President Richard Nixon established Father's Day as a permanent national day of observance on the third Sunday of June.

The trouble with having a holiday on a Sunday is that it isn’t much of a holiday at all. There is no day off work and there are still all of the traditional chores to do like cleaning the car and mowing the lawn. Some countries however have a much better arrangement and actually get a real days holiday. In the Roman Catholic tradition, especially in Italy, Spain and Portugal, Fathers are celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day, on March 19th and when this falls on a week day there is a real day off work. I didn’t know this until this year I was in Cuenca in Spain on March 19th and was surprised to see so many families out for the day and when I asked why I was told about Saint Joseph’s Day.

Annoyed by being cheated out of a day off work this year I took a days leave anyway and extended my personal Father’s Day to a full weekend. On Friday I played golf with Jonathan and as he hadn’t played for two months started the day quietly confident of victory. It wasn’t to be of course and when he started with three straight pars I knew that I was going to be buying the beers at the end of the round. He finished with an excellent 76, which destroyed my 87, which, for me, was a pretty good score. This was his second shot in to the par four fifth and he got the birdy putt of course.

This year for me, Father’s Day, was an even more special event because this was the first time that I have been the proud recipient of a Grandad’s card from Molly to go with my two usual cards from Sally and Jonathan.

Molly is growing quickly and there is a rapid rate of progress. Not content with crawling she is impatient to walk and she spends a lot of time standing next to furniture and practicing balancing and standing on her own two feet. She has made a number of tentative attempts at a step but these have always ended in a tumble and she has to start all over again. She can manage a few steps with the help of a push along lion and because she is a determined little girl it won’t be very long before she achieves that first proper step.

Recently we have reached that development milestone that occurs with all babies at some time or another. Until recently it was all encouragement and support, you know the sort of thing: “come on Molly, you can do it”, “let’s see how you crawl” and so on but now that she can do it there is quite a lot of no Molly don’t do this and don’t do that, “don’t crawl behind the TV and play with the cables”, “don’t pull the cats tail, he won’t like it” etcetera. And I had forgotten this but you do need eyes in the back of your head because she can move about with great speed and has a rapidly developing zeal for exploration.

She now has more teeth and as Sally discovered yesterday can deliver a painful little bite, she is eating proper food and especially enjoys a sweet juicy orange. She has more hair, which his coming through nice and blonde and she is experimenting with conversation and a range of expressions and different sounds. She has alternative ways of communicating with different people, Grandma gets a high-five wave, Sally gets the oohs and ahs and for some reason I always get the raspberry sound. I think she must have worked out already exactly what grandads are for.

Here is my first Grandad’s card and after I have taken it down in a week or so it is going straight into the ‘Memory Box’!

Portugal – Day 3, Bom Jesus do Monte

The plan now was to drive north to the City of Braga and visit the park of Bom Jesus do Monte and although this was only a short journey this wasn’t nearly as easy as it should have been. Tired of paying motorway toll charges I decided to take the old road instead which runs close by and often parallel. What made this so difficult was the curious system of road signs that the Portuguese have. One minute you are happily following signs to a destination and then suddenly, usually at a roundabout or busy junction, they simply disappear and taking the right option becomes a bit of a lottery. It was all too confusing so after only a short while I abandoned the old road and found a way back to the motorway.

Braga is the third largest city in Portugal but we weren’t planning to visit the Episcopal capital of the country and we used the ring road instead to swing to the east out into the country and towards the religious sanctuary on top of a high hill on the outskirts of the city.

Many hilltops in Portugal have been sites of religious devotion and the Bom Jesus hill was one of these. It was an ancient site and in 1629 a pilgrimage church was built dedicated to the Bom Jesus (Good Jesus), with six chapels dedicated to the Passion of Christ. The present Sanctuary was begun in 1722, under the patronage of the Archbishop of Braga, Rodrigo de Moura Telles and under his direction the first stairway row, with chapels dedicated to the Via Crucis, were completed. He also sponsored the next segment of stairways, which has a zigzag shape and is dedicated to the Five Senses of Sight, Smell, Hearing, Touch and Taste and each is represented by a different fountain. Around 1781, archbishop Gaspar de Bragança decided to complete the sactuary by adding a third segment of stairways and a new church. The third stairway also follows a zigzag pattern and is dedicated to the Three Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity, each with its own fountain. The old church was demolished and a new one was built following a Neoclassic design by architect Carlos Amarante. In the 19th century, the area around the church and stairway was expropriated and turned into a park and in 1882, to facilitate the access to the Sanctuary, the Bom Jesus funicular was built linking the city of Braga to the hill. This was the first funicular to be built in the Iberian Peninsula and is still in use today.

We stood at the top of the steps and debated whether or not to go to the bottom but after we realised that true penitent visitors climb them on their knees we agreed that a gentle stroll would be quite easy by comparison so we did just that and we were pleased that we did because the view from the bottom looking up the towering black and white stair case made it worth going to all the trouble.

For the first time today the sun was really out and it was a warm climb back to the top where the park was beginning to fill up with Sunday afternoon visitors from the city. There was a curious blend of attractions in the park, with the church itself, gardens that had a touch of Antoni Gaudi and Park Guell in Barcelona, the inevitable tourist train and children’s photographers. Everyone was having a good time including a quartet of old lady singers who were being enthusiastically orchestrated by a fifth member of the party who was in charge of song selection and keeping everyone in some sort of time.

We left Bom Jesus and as the sun was shining decided to head for the coast and a late lunch at the seaside down of Esposende. Because of the trouble with direction signs we crossed the city from east to west instead of using the ring road and after we emerged on the other side we passed by the town of Barcelos without stopping and made straight for the coast. Along the route there were lots of roadside vegetable stalls where growers were selling their produce, mostly onions and potatoes, to passing motorists who would pull up now and again without warning to make a purchase.

There were more and more motorists now and as we approached the coast the roads became quite congested and somewhere along the way the girls stopped blue-sky thinking and the clouds rolled back in from the Atlantic. Esposende was very busy and although we found the seafront restaurant where we were planning to eat it was completely full inside and with a strong wind coming in off the sea it was far too cold to sit outside. This was a disappointment, we had sat in this very spot in February when the sky was blue and the sun was shining, there were only a few people around and the place was pleased to see us. Today it didn’t need our custom and it seemed less friendly so we abandoned the idea and returned to the car just as the first spots of rain began to fall.

Although it was only a few kilometres it seemed a long journey back to Vilo do Conde and this wasn’t helped when I took an unnecessarily circuitous route back to the main road. By the time we arrived back it was really pouring with rain and with everyone in Portugal out for a Sunday afternoon drive and clogging up the streets we made slow progress through the town. Before going back we stopped at a small patisserie and bar and had coffee and cakes and watched the rain bouncing off the pavement outside and Micky got drenched through when he went looking for a mini-market because Sue and Christine needed a packet of crisps to keep them going until dinner time.

On the previous evening we had sat on the terrace bar for an early aperitif but tonight was different and we were forced to sit inside on account of the poor weather and wait ages for service because the hotel was running on a skeleton staff because all but a few of them were at church celebrating someone’s first communion.

We had a final meal in the restaurant and Sue and Christine must have been feeling brave because they ordered fish pie but, partly down to me I suppose, it wasn’t exactly what they were expecting and this turned out to be another setback on the journey towards the enjoyment of marine food dining. After dinner we played cards and drank the second bottle of port and just before we all went to bed there was a firework display over the town which brought us out of our bedrooms to watch on the balcony, with at least one of us with slightly fewer clothes on than perhaps they realised due almost certainly to the quantity of port consumed!

Portugal - Day 3, Guimarães

When I woke I was encouraged to see strong sunlight creeping underneath and around the sides of the curtains and I turned over and slept a while longer confident in the certainty of a good day. When we finally got up however there was some cloud and by the time we had finished breakfast and set out for the day it was overcast and threatening to rain.

On the advice of the helpful lady at the car hire office we planned to drive thirty kilometres or so inland to the city of Guimarães which is ranked second in the Portuguese most livable cities survey published yearly by the Portuguese newspaper Expresso. As might be expected Lisbon is rated first and Porto is third. We joined a deserted motorway and with the weather less than promising I drove at an appropriate Sunday morning pace because there wasn’t any need to rush. I encouraged everyone to have ‘blue-sky thoughts’ and it must have worked because by the time we arrived and parked the car (free on Sundays) there was a brighter sky and little hints of sunshine.

As the first capital of Portugal, Guimarães is known as the place where the country was born – ‘The Cradle City’. In 1095 Count Henry of Burgundy, who had married princess Teresa of León, established in Guimarães the second County of Portugal and on July 25th 1109 Afonso Henriques, son of Count Henry of Burgundy, was born here and it was where Duke Afonso Henriques proclaimed Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of León, after the Battle of São Mamede in 1128, declaring himself to be Afonso I, King of Portugal.

Today Guimarães is a busy and important University city with an industrial base of textiles and metalurgy. It was quite relaxed this morning with groups of men chatting on street corners and waiting for the wives to leave the churches scattered along the streets. The city is clean and smart and since Portugal and Slovenia have been selected to host a city as the European Capital of Culture in 2012 Guimarães has been chosen by Portugal to represent the country. Slovenia has chosen the city of Maribor.

We walked through tidy streets and open green spaces without high expectation of Guimarães but we found a street map that indicated a castle, a palace and a UNESCO World Heritage site in the old centre and so we walked to the top of the city and into the grounds of the twelfth century castle where there were some musicians playing tradional songs inside the delightful leafy gardens. In 1881 the castle was declared the most important historical monument in this part of Portugal and in the 1900s a lot of work has gone into its restoration. We went inside and were struck howevere by the fact that they hadn’t spent a lot of the renovation budget on basic health and safety.

The Castle is an accident waiting to happen, with uneven surfaces, irregular steps and almost completely without handrails or safety barriers to prevent visitors accidentally slipping off of the high battlements and becoming a permanent addition to the rocky foundations. In the middle of the castle was a keep where there was a stiff climb to the very top which was perilous and pretty hard work but the reward for tackling it were some excellent views of the countryside and the city including the football stadium where Rio Ave had narrowly beaten their neighbours only two days before.

After the castle we visited the Palace and without explanation there was free admission today but where an officious attendant still insisted on issuing tickets and someone else insisted on checking them. Inside the Palace of the Condes de Castro Guimarães there was a small museum containing family portraits and other paintings, as well as furniture, china, silver and gold objects and local prehistoric finds. At just half an hour to walk round it was the perfect size for a museum and without crowds of other visitors to slow us down we wandered from room to room practically by ourselves.

The sun couldn’t quite manage to make a full appearance but there were bits of blue sky here and there and the weather was pleasant and warm enough to sit outside in the garden terrace of a trendy little restaurant selling fair trade products and handicrafts and we had a drink in a charming shady garden surrounded by herbaceous plants, herbs and fruit trees and with the relaxing sound of a water fountain close to our table.

From the castle we followed the beautiful cobbled Rua de Santa Maria, that didn’t look as though it had changed a great deal since the Middle Ages, down into the heart of the old town, where there are superbly restored historic buildings including a former sixteenth century Baroque convent of Santa Maria, now serving as the City council offices. At the end of the street were two delightful squares with outdoor cafés and balconied houses, Praça de Santiago and Largo da Oliveira. At Largo da Oliveira is the old Town Hall and the Church of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, with a Gothic shrine erected in 1340 standing in front of it. There are many legends about its origins, but a popular story says it marks the spot where Wamba, elected king of the Visigoths, refused his title and drove a pole into the ground swearing that he would not reign until it blossomed, and it then sprouted immediately. We walked right the way through the streets of the old town and then reluctantly left Guimarães and returned to the car.

Portugal - Day 2, Porto

When we had been on the boat we had seen a military procession on the Porto side of the river with a lot of men and women in Napoleonic military uniforms parading through the streets, demonstrating drill and letting off canons and now that the parade was over they were spilling over the river and into the cafés and bars in Vila Nova De Guia. We were surprised to discover that these were all English eccentrics who enjoy dressing up in nineteenth century uniforms, re-enacting Peninsular War battles, letting off guns and getting pissed. There were all sorts of regiments here including some Green Howard’s but I couldn’t spot Sean Bean amongst them.

The reason that they were here was because in two days time (12th May) it was the two hundredth anniversary of the relief of Porto by Arthur Wellesley who entered the city in a surprise attack across the river from Vila Nova De Guia and routed the French troops who were forced to retreat east back towards Spain.

We were finished now with Vila Nova De Guia so crossed back over the bridge to the Ribiera district, which used to be the commercial centre of Porto but is now an up market tourist centre with gaily coloured houses, quayside restaurants and the highest prices in the city. Actually they weren’t really so bad and we choose to sit at a table at the edge of the pavement in a small square with brightly coloured furniture and umbrellas and we sat in the sun and had a glass of beer before continuing with our walking tour of the city.

Porto's undulating topography means that there's a view lurking round almost every corner and as we continued to climb away from the river until we reached a terrace outside the City’s Cathedral where there were good views of the city and we were at once struck by the huge contrasts. Alongside modern hotels and banks there were houses that looked desperately poor with rotting windows, balconies that looked perilously unsafe and behind the windows 1950s kitchens and old fashioned furniture and it was clear to see why (according to Eurostat) Portugal is the nineteenth poorest country in the European Union (out of twenty-seven) and easily the poorest in Western Europe.

The district around the Cathedral was full of busy streets and monuments to past achievements, and the lined with houses built like layers of a cake then crowded together with a maze of small twisting alleys in-between.

Outside the Cathedral main door there was a lot of wedding activity as a smart groom waited for his bride to turn up as the guests were all arriving and going inside. Weddings have a different effect on men and women. We are sceptical and ambivalent while women go weak at the knees and become overcome with the romance of the occasion. The Bride was waiting around the corner in her sleek black limousine and making last minute mobile phone calls and the girls wanted to wait around and see her arrive but there seemed no urgency about the occasion so we had to give in and move on. And a good job too because Micky and I had a lucky escape when a seagull sitting on a nearby lamp post emptied its bowels over a car that was too close for comfort and if we had been a couple of metres closer would have spoilt the afternoon and certainly required the emergency purchase of replacement clothing because although a bit of bird excrement on your shoulder is supposed to bring good luck there is a world of difference between a little bit of sparrow dropping and a full arse load of seagull shit.

From the Cathedral we started to walk back towards the metro station passing by the San Bento railway station, which we couldn’t visit because there was a wedding reception being prepared (probably the same wedding) and then through the Praça da Liberade with a statue of King Pedro IV and impressive neoclassical buildings flanking it on either side and at the top the City Town Hall looking splendidly important.

Back at Trindade there was only a short wait for the tram to take us back but it was busier tonight and we had to stand for half the journey until the passengers began to drop off the further we went out of the city.

It was still sunny when we arrived back at the hotel and it was perfect to sit in the late afternoon/early evening sunshine on the hotel terrace bar and enjoy a cool beer as the sun went down and thoughts turned to evening dining arrangements. Across the river there was a good view of the Santa Clara Convent and the extensive remains of the Aqueduto do Convento, a sixteenth century structure that was built to supply water to the Convent which was once the largest in all of Portugal but is now being converted into a Pousada hotel, which is the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish Paradors.

We ate in the hotel again because the food was good, the prices were reasonable and there didn’t seem to be many alternatives nearby. Sue and Christine were getting over their seafood salad incident and boldly choose a tuna fish salad, which they knew was safe because Kim had had it the previous night, Kim had fish, Micky had meat and I had a wonderful cod fish pie – the speciality of the house.

Later we retired to one of the hotel lounges and opened the first bottle of port and played some hands of cards. I had too much port and being a bad loser got upset about not winning and went to bed but the others stayed on long enough to see two sets of newly weds arrive and get thoroughly confused about finding the hotel reception. There was a lot of wedding activity and we put that down to the fact that there must have been a special honeymoon deal on Saturday nights at the Hotel Santana.

Real Ávila - Play Off Results

To begin with I need to recap on the rules of the Spanish third division play-offs. The eighteen group winners are drawn into a two-legged series and the nine winners are then automatically promoted to the Segunda División B. The nine losing clubs then enter the play off round for the last nine promotion spots. The eighteen runners-up are drawn against one of the seventeen fourth-place clubs outside their group and the eighteen third-placed clubs are drawn against one another in a two-legged series. The twenty-seven winners then advance with the nine losing clubs from the champions' series to determine the eighteen teams that will enter the last two-legged series for the last nine promotion spots. Is that complicated enough do you think?

Real Ávila finished in fourth spot in group 8 and therefore had to face a runner-up from one of the other groups. This year for the first leg they were drawn against Almeria from Andalusia group 9. After a disappointing 0-0 draw at home on 24th May the teams drew 1-1 in the second leg and Ávila went through on the away goals rule. For the second leg they were drawn against even tougher opposition, RSD Alcalá from the Community of Madrid who this year were the runaway winners of division 7 but had lost the chance of automatic promotion after losing in the opening round of games to table topping Villajoyosa (near Benidorm) from Valencia so were now playing for one of the final promotion places in the second round of games.

It started well enough when on 7th June and playing at home Real Ávila won the first leg 1-0 and things looked promising but in the second away leg the wheels fell off and the home side ran out 5-2 winners, which means Ávila have now played in the play off finals four times in the last five years and never succeeded in winning promotion and are going to have to wait until next year for a another opportunity.

Alcalá de Henares, meaning Citadel on the river Henares, is a Spanish university city with a UNESCO World Heritage Site historical centre that sounds an interesting sort of place and may well have to go onto the travel itinerary next time in Spain. It is located in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, thirty-five kilometres northeast of the city of Madrid, at a height of five hundred and ninety metres above sea level and it has a population of around two hundred thousand, the second largest of the region after the Spanish capital itself.

Interesting facts about Alcalá are that as the birthplace of Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, it is twinned with the English city of Peterborough which is where she is buried in the Cathedral there. The author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes was born there in 1547 and there is an annual literary prize giving ceremony awarding the Cervantes Prize which is the Spanish-speaking world's most prestigious award for lifetime achievement in literature and so important that it is presented by the King of Spain himself.

We saw a lot of storks in Spain especially in Ávila and Segovia and Alcalá too is well-known for its population of white storks. Their large nests can be observed on top of many of the churches and historic buildings in the city, and are themselves a significant tourist attraction. Situated in the lowlands of the Henares river, the city is an attractive home for the migratory storks due to the easy availability of food and nesting material in the area.

One not so good thing to be remembered for however is that Alcalá is a commuter town with an excellent high speed rail link to Madrid and it was on the 11th March 2004 and the infamous Madrid train bombings when all the bombs were placed on trains that originated in, or passed through, Alcalá.

Portugal- Day 2, Ruby, Tawny, Vintage and Reservé

The weather wasn’t especially clever again when we woke and went to breakfast and it didn’t improve as we walked to the Santa Clara tram stop for the short journey to Porto. It took about forty-five minutes to travel to the city on the Bombardier Flexity Outlook low-floor dual-carriage ‘Eurotram’ and it stopped every few minutes to pick up and drop off more passengers. It was an impressive metro that was only started in 2002 and continues to be expanded and enlarged today and it stopped twenty-four times before we reached our stop at Trindade in central Porto.

The sun was struggling to come through but it remained overcast for most of the journey and, close to the city, as we went underground weather prospects didn’t seem too promising at all. We changed lines at Trindade and took another tram across the river. After a couple of stops we came out of the underground tunnels and to our amazement the sun was shining and the sky was gloriously clear.

The historical centre of Porto is a declared UNESCO World Heritage Site and we were now approaching one of the six bridges across the River Douro, the Ponte Dom Luis I, which is an iron bridge, designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel and built on two levels. From the top elevation there were unbeatable views of the river, the old town and Vila Nova de Gaia, a sister city to Porto on the other side of the river. It was simply stunning riding across the bridge, the sun was shining, the river was a glorious shade of deep indigo blue and the tiles on the coloured houses on either side reflected the sun and made everywhere look cheerful and happy. On the balconies of the houses people were opening the shutters and allowing the sun to fill their homes with welcome warmth following a miserable start to the day.

On the other side of the river we left the tram and walked through narrow streets of derelict houses where some families were hanging onto occupation that must surely end soon and down to the riverbank that had good views back across the other side of Porto. We were now in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, which is where the city’s famous port lodges all have their cellars and sit side by side next to the river. On the water were flotillas of Rabelos, which are traditional sailing boats that used to transport the wine in barrels from the vineyards up river, but that was before the river was dammed in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent flooding in the city and to create hydro-electricity. Now the wine is brought to the City by road in tankers but that is not nearly so romantic or picturesque and these little boats are left here bobbing up and down in the water simply for the benefit of the tourists.

All along the riverside people tried to persuade us to visit their port lodge or buy a ticket for their short river cruise and eventually we gave in and bought tickets for a fifty-minute boat ride and entry to two of the lodges, Offley and Croft. All of the port lodges offer visits and tastings and we were keen to take advantage of this.

The boat left at midday and just went up and down the river to visit the six bridges of Porto that cross the Douro. Furthest west is the road bridge Ponte Do Friexo and then following the river towards the Atlantic Ocean the train bridge Ponte San Joao and then Eiffel’s own iron bridge the Ponte Do Maria Pia, which was undergoing renovation and repair, the concrete and unremarkable Ponte Do Infante, the marvellous Ponte Dom Luis I and finally close to the mouth of the river the bridge that carries the city’s ring road, the Ponte Da Arrabida.

It was hot now and without sunscreen and on the open deck of the boat we were beginning to turn rosy pink by the time the trip ended and we disembarked back on the south bank of the river. We found somewhere in the semi-shade for a drink and a rest before continuing our port education with a visit to the lodges. We went first to Croft and discovered here that the all-inclusive ticket was a bit of a con because this was a free tour anyway. We sat and tried a white aperitif port and then not wanting to wait half an hour for the English tour joined a party of Portuguese for the twenty minute walk through the barrels of ruby and tawny port and the cellars full of bottles special reservé and vintage wines.

Next we went to the Offley port lodge where there was a charge but this was covered by our boat trip ticket and once again, being impatient, we didn’t wait the half an hour for the English tour but this time joined a French one instead. This was alright for me and Kim who had had an English tour the last time we came and visited the Cálem lodge and for Micky who can follow a bit of French but it was not too helpful for Sue and Christine who had no idea what was going on. At the end of the tour there was a tasting session with an especially nice reservé so we bought two bottles for evening consumption back at the hotel.

Portugal - Day 1, An Unfortunate Fish Salad

As we descended towards the Douro there was a change in the landscape as we entered the vine growing terraces of the grapes that produce the famous port wine. At eight hundred and ninety seven kilometres the Douro is the eighth longest river in Western Europe (the eighteenth in all of Europe) and flows first through Spain and then Portugal and meets the Atlantic Ocean at Porto. This part of the Douro Valley, and for about one hundred kilometres towards Spain, has a microclimate allowing for cultivation of olives, almonds, and especially the grapes and the hillsides are scattered with picturesque quintas or farms clinging on to almost vertical slopes dropping down to the river where tourist boats were making the daily return trip to Porto at the Atlantic Ocean.

Now it is cruise boats that use the river but traditionally, the wine was taken down river in flat-bottom boats called rabelos to be stored in barrels in cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia, just across the river from Porto. In the 1950s and 1960s, dams were built along the river to regulate the current and to produce hydro-electricity and now Port wine is transported in tanker trucks, which is less romantic but a lot more efficient, less dangerous and cost effective.

We arrived in Peso Da Regua and parked the car and walked into the town which had interesting shops and houses with colourful tiled walls in bright blues, greens and yellows. There were some of those old fashioned hardware stores that you rarely see in Europe anymore and a couple of old fashioned mini markets that are always a joy to shop in. Portugal is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and behind the tiled walls we could see that the houses were made of tin and through open doors and windows we could plainly see that the homes were simple and sparse. Although it is in Western Europe (in fact it is the most western mainland European country) Portugal did not begin to catch up with its neighbours until 1968 after the death of the dictator António Salazar and eventual entry into the European Community in 1986.

It was almost mid afternoon and we needed something to eat so we set about looking for a café or a bar but something suitable was difficult to find and so with options running out we choose a simple place on the road next to the river and made selections from a restricted but satisfyingly cheap menu. Micky selected the local sausage, I choose hake and the girls went for what they thought was the safe option of a fish salad, but if they were expecting John West tuna they were in for a shock because when it arrived it was a massive plate of black eyed beans and chopped egg and a couple of grilled fish complete with heads and tails plonked on top.

Portugal is a seafaring nation with a huge fishing industry and this is reflected in the amount of seafood that the Portuguese people eat. The country has Europe's highest fish consumption per capita and is among the top four in the world. Fish is served grilled, boiled, fried, deep-fried, stewed or even roasted. Cod is the most popular fish in Portugal and it is said that there are three hundred and sixty-five ways to cook it, one for every day of the year. In recognition of this passion for seafood Portugal has been granted an ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’, which is a seazone in the Atlantic Ocean over which the Portuguese have special rights in respect of exploration and use of marine resources. For the record it is the third largest Exclusive Economic Zone of the European Union, after France and the United Kingdom and the eleventh largest in the world.

Kim will eat mostly anything and Christine reluctantly finished her unexpected meal but I have to say that I would not describe Sue as a seafood enthusiast at the best of times. I wouldn’t say that she is a fussy eater but when it comes to things from the ocean she doesn’t really care for things that slither, float, or crawl about the seabed and she prefers her fish in a bit of batter or covered in bread crumbs so she pushed this ugly critter around the plate a couple of times and then tried to cover it up with her knife and fork in a way that we used to try and hide unwanted food as children. It didn’t work then and it didn’t work now and this gastro incident was a serious setback in Sue’s journey towards more adventurous dining when it comes to creatures that come out of the sea.

We left Peso Da Regua for the return journey to Porto and I saw a sign that said ninety-five kilometres and therefore calculated that this would take about an hour and a half to get back. Unfortunately this was a sign for the direct route using the motorway and I choose mistakenly to take the N222 which turned out to be a minor road that followed the river valley through a a succession of gorges and detours that added a further fifty kilometres or so to the journey. And it was hard work as well as the road clung to the side of the vertical mountain side and twisted and turned in every direction, around every corner there was imminent danger from oncoming traffic and from the back of the car the girls kept up a chorus of complaints as they were thrown from side to side as we went up and down and up and down all the way along.

All along the route there were cherry trees loaded with ripe fruit and every few hundred metres or so there were local people selling them from makeshift stalls at the side of the road. Mostly old folk it has to be said who had probably been sent there at first light and told not to go back home until everything was sold. The journey took an absolute age but at least the scenery was stunning as we passed through verdant vineyards and strikingly steep river valleys and followed the river almost to Porto before thankfully leaving the minor road to join the motorway network that took us back to Vila Do Conde and the Hotel Santana. It had been an excellent day out and we were glad to be back, especially Sue who had to visit the bathroom to bring back what little bit of fish she had eaten at lunchtime and which had been shaken about inside her on the drive back.

After a rest I went to the bar and on the TV there was a football match between the local team Rio Ave and the neighbouring city of Guimarães. This was a Potuguese Premier League, the Superliga Portuguesa, fixture and Rio Ave needed the points because they were close to the bottom of the league and in danger of relegation. I didn’t see the end but later the barman was pleased to tell me that they had won 1-0 thanks to a first half penalty and this was going to help. For a match report see http://www.portugoal.net/index.php/portuguese-league/1473-rio-ave-get-one-up-on-guimaraes

After the unfortunate fish salad experience there was no chance of gastro adventure tonight so Sue and Christine stuck to tomato soup and definitely were not tepted by the starter of tripe. Tripe it turns out is a local speciality and locals are sometimes known as Tripeiros, or “tripe eaters” and I tried a little bit but it tasted quite offal so I was inclined to agree with the girls that this wouldn’t be something that we would be ordering again.

The City of Porto is associated with a dish of "tripe" due to a legend that when the King of Portugal was equipping his fleet for the invasion of Ceuta in 1415 he stocked his ships with every available piece of meat and left the citizens to exist on all that remained, which was tripe. The inhabitants when forced to continuously eat this and they invented as many ways as possible to make the dish palatable. It has become the traditional dish associated with Porto but it wasn’t really to my liking at all I have to confess.

Post script:

Rio Ave Football Club finally finished twelfth (out of sixteen) in the Superliga Portuguesa and avoided relegation. Guimarães, with eight more points, finished eighth.

Portugal - Day 1, Confusion over the itinerary

We travelled to Portugal on an early evening flight that arrived at Porto airport just before nine o’clock and by the time we had collected the hire car from an office just a short distance from the airport and driven the twenty kilometres to the hotel Santana at Vilo do Conde it was just after ten so we had to be quick to get to the restaurant before it closed. We had an excellent reasonably priced meal and then because everyone was tired went straight to bed ready for an early start in the morning.

The weather had been changeable over the last few days and when we woke on Friday morning it was a bit dreary with low cloud over the River Ave outside our bedroom windows and it was difficult to predict just what sort of day it would turn out to be. We had planned to do beaches today but the weather looked unsettled so over an excellent buffet breakfast we decided instead to go to the city of Porto. The sensible way to go to Porto was by using the convenient city Metro that had a stop nearby but Kim persuaded us instead to drive most of the way with a plan to park the car at a station close to the city to get the Metro for the final few stops. I was the driver and could easily have overruled this decision but I went along with it all the same.

So we set off and drove for twenty kilometres to the city suburb of Matosinhos and everything went well and we effortlessly found our way to the edge of the city until at a roundabout, Kim, who had previously been paying no attention whatsoever to the road signs, in an outburst of extreme feminine interference, suddenly declared (with confidence) that she knew the way and foolishly I followed her wild directions and predictably we were lost! I don’t know why I did that because unless she had had an overnight navigational brain implant there was no way that she could have known where we were going and so we ended up driving around in circles until we came back to the same roundabout and this time I took my preferred option, which turned out to be the correct one after all.

I didn’t care for Matosinhos that much, it was the busy commercial port end of the city and there was a lot of traffic and with no sign of anywhere to conveniently park the car I made a unilateral decision to abandon the Porto idea and drive instead to the Douro valley which was already on the agenda anyway for one of our days in Portugal. Without plans we were unsure of the direction however and spent some time on the Porto motorway network until we found our way back to the airport and discovered the signs for our first intended destination of Amarante.

It took us about forty-five minutes to drive to the interesting little town which is famous for being the birthplace of an unnatural amount of artists, painters and writers, a sixteenth century convent and an attractive eighteenth century bridge across the river Tâmega. It was here on the 18th April 1809 during the Peninsula War that a small band of Portuguese soldiers held the bridge against the weight of the invading French army for an incredible fourteen days. Needless to say the French troops weren't too pleased and afterwards took their revenge on the local inhabitants and set the buildings on fire before moving on towards Porto.

After parking the car we walked through unremarkable streets until reaching the river and in an adjacent square declared it time for the first refreshment of the day. There was still no sign of the sun but even under white overcast sky it was still warm enough to sit outside and we ordered beer and sampled the local speciality of “papos de anjo” (angel chests) which is a traditional sweet egg pastry made from whipped egg yolk that is baked and then boiled in sugar syrup. They were ok but we didn’t call for seconds! If you want the recipe go to http://www.maria-brazil.org/papos_de_anjo.htm

Amarante is an interesting little town and the annual festivities, which take place in early June, are known as the Festas de São Gonçalo, and perhaps because of the romantic-sounding name (Amar is the Portuguese verb to love), one of the traditions of this local celebration is to give a phallus-shaped cake to the one you desire. Luckily this was May so there was no embarassing exchange of gifts!

Later we walked around the pretty town and its seventeenth century mansions, with colourful balconies of painted wood brightly decorating the narrow streets, its restaurants with elegant terraces overlooking the river and the beautiful bridge of São Gonçalo, which leads directly to the great monastery that bears the name of the same saint. Away from the main street we walked through twisting back alleys with cobbled streets, past washing lines full of clothes outside tiny houses with only the most basic facilities and in need of urgent repair and attention.

We left Amarante and crossed the river as we drove south towards the Douro and immediately began to climb up the side of the Serra Do Marāo, the mountain that overlooks the town. This took me by surprise as I had not anticipated this, I don’t know why but I had expected the Douro to be in a wide river valley and this was not the case at all and we quickly climbed to over a thousand metres up a winding potholed road with never ending twists and turns through woodland and forests and golden yellow hillsides of flowering broom. When we reached the top the road then began a descent down the other side towards the town of Mesāo Frio where we stopped again and walked around the little streets that were deserted for the siesta and then continued on our journey towards the next town of Peso Da Regua.