Peneda-Geres National Park 2 - It keeps getting better!

Our next stop in the National Park was Campo do Geres. The weather was really foggy and misty. The small roads that took us there twisted around huge boulders and romantically old stone buildings.

Lesson No. 1 in driving into these ancient villages - make sure your car will fit through the narrow lanes first! John had to do some fancy maneuvering to turn around when things got tight.

Our little house in the village of Campo de Geres was amazing. It had been converted from a typical animal barn where the stock were housed on the ground floor with the hay loft above. The owner showed us a video from the 1980's of cows being led out of what was now our front door!

A large window looked over the village and the mountain range beyond it from our living area. We were surrounded by homes and barns similar to ours. It was wonderful!

Just near our house was this enormous tree that is reputed to be 500 to 600 years old.

It was still cool but it stopped raining so we headed out. Our first walk took us through some gorgeous forest.

More wildflowers brightened the countryside.

A big dam wasn't far away and we walked across the dam wall. It was huge!

The track ended at a village that had been submerged by the dam. All we could see were some rows of stones. Apparently you can see buildings in drier times.

The dam was quite picturesque and was a popular place for locals in summer.

The next day seemed to be clearer so we headed out on a much bigger walk. We made up a mix of a couple of different walks and it ended up taking us five hours or so but it was worth every minute. 

We walked through some beautiful forest again.

At one stage we walked through a forest of wild strawberry trees. The fruit from these are used for making medronho, a very tasty local drink.

We then started walking along the old Roman road. It was incredible! It is thought to have been built in the 1st century as a military road. It originally ran for 215 miles and there were inns and places to stay every mile or so. We came across a couple of places where columns still remained from old buildings.

There were a few critters to see too. We saw a number of these huge black slugs. You can see from John's boot how big it is.

This colourful lizard was much cuter than the slug!

The track then ran along what is now a section of the dam. A short stretch of the Roman road is now under water sadly. The green of the moss and trees here was stunning. The ancient paved road was in great condition and we felt like we were travelling through time as we walked along it.

We even found a column with Roman writing on it. I could easily make out the word "Caesar" on it. We assumed this was a mile post, as we've heard about them, but there are also apparently some stones that have Roman graffiti on them!

Back in our room the view from our living area was sensational with sunshine and clear skies!

In our village we found a campground with a restaurant that sold - wait for it - fried vegies with tofu and rice! This was pretty exciting for me as I'm over the meat and veg meals. The really exciting part was the soy sauce but they put so much on that I think I got enough salt to last a week! 

Looking for something smaller that night we tried a local tapas-type place. It was tiny but had great views over more espegeiros (the old granaries used for storing corn that are still used today). This is one of the largest ones we saw anywhere. Note that the slatted sides on this are made from timber, not stone. They're newer than the stone ones.

We ordered a small serve of chorizo but it got lost in translation and we got the large one. A full chorizo came out on a dish with burning aguardiente, local firewater, in it. The chorizo was heating on top and we had to turn it over after two minutes to finished cooking the other side!

The waitress there was Brazilian and she was really friendly and chatty. Her name was pronounced "Alla-easy". She said to us, "You can just call me Easy"! We didn't have the heart to suggest that might not be the best option!

Her boyfriend worked as a waiter in a local restaurant in the next town so we tried that for lunch the next day. It was a really popular place on a cold Sunday afternoon and was good.

Between bouts of rain and fog we got a little more walking done but the weather was settling in sadly. The misty views were gorgeous though.

We had an amazing drive to dinner one evening. It has to be one of the most spectacular drives to dinner we've ever done. The road wound along the side of a mountain and the views over the nearby mountain ranges were incredible! The road was pretty challenging though so I didn't get to take many photos. This one is looking back over the dam wall. 

At the restaurant, which also had spectacular views, the owner told us that her desserts were fantastic. In a country where desserts rule supreme, that was a big statement. John skipped entree to make sure he had room for dessert and he wasn't disappointed. They were brilliant!

Our last stay in the Peneda-Geres National Park was in another ancient village called Pitoes. The area outside the village was stark and looked a lot like English moors. As we approached the village though, we were surprised by how neat and agricultural the town was. Crops were planted in neat rows and paddocks of rye waved gently in the breeze.

The village looked pretty but was shrouded in misty rain when we arrived. We were at 1100 metres altitude here so we dug out the thermals and hats for the first time on the trip.

Without sunshine, the granite town was dark. I can imagine it could get depressing here in a long winter. I later saw old photos of people in this town and other towns nearby in what was probably mid-last century. Dirty kids with large eyes stared out from under woollen coats on dark, wintry days. Photos inside houses showed fires lit on the floor and people huddling around. The old, grainy photos added to the atmosphere. It would have been a tough life then. These old buildings have probably seen much tougher than that though as they've been there for many centuries.

We wandered the streets in the drizzle. Narrow cobblestoned lanes led up and down hills through the village. We found a bar where a handful of people were watching the European Cup but it was smoky so we tried elsewhere. As we walked, a couple of dogs joined us. One was one of those huge local dogs, although this one looked like a cross between an Alsatian and a lab. Nothing perturbed him. his friend was much smaller and more timid. They walked with us the entire time that we explored the town!

We found no shops and the only bakery was closed. It was cold, wet and we were getting hungry. We found another bar and learned that there was some sort of shop next to a restaurant that could be open.

Google said two out of the three restaurants were open that night. Neither were. Thank goodness the one that wasn't supposed to be open, was!

John needed milk for his coffee in the morning so we enquired at the restaurant. The man there told us to go outside and go to the next door where his wife met us and opened the shop so we could get the milk!

On our way back we met an old lady who was our neighbour. She must have had an operation on her mouth or a stroke or something as she couldn't speak properly. To top it off, her false teeth occasionally dropped down from her gum! She launched into a barrage of conversation and it took us a while to get the message across that we don't speak Portuguese - at least not well enough to listed to her garbled speech at 100 miles an hour! The old lady talked to us (or rather at us) for a good 10 minutes and we barely understood a word. She said something about the house across the road, working in France and having five children. In the end we think she said that we can knock on her door if we need anything. She was a classic. We had to laugh at the way she just kept talking even though we clearly didn't understand.

Soon afterwards, the weather cleared a little so we jumped at the opportunity for a walk. First stop was the Monastery of Santa Maria. Located in a beautiful spot beside a babbling river, this monastery had its roots in the ninth century. The old ruins were so picturesque.

A particular kind of grass produced a pink haze on the ground.

Soon we had a long slog down to a waterfall then a seemingly much longer slog back up! There were viewpoints everywhere.

We returned past a restaurant and had a lovely lunch and decided to return for dinner. The restaurant had stunning views over the town and mountains.

Dinner was wonderful! The lovely owner was Brazilian. Her parents had emigrated to Brazil and had come from this village. She came to Portugal to study, came to the village to see where her parents came from then met a local man and married him! She cooked us up a seriously good feijoada, a Brazilian stew.

Portugal was playing in the European Cup so we pulled up chairs with the family and watched the game on the TV in the restaurant. We're not into soccer much but it's amazing how enthusiastic we can be when we're in a country that's playing. It was a nail-biter of a game with Portugal winning in the end!

At 10pm we walked back to our accommodation. It was almost dark and the night sky was gorgeous.

We had such a fantastic time in the Peneda-Geres National Park. Yes it was cold here, and drizzling most of the time.  but we figure it's just getting us ready for the next stage of our trip in Iceland and Greenland!

Heather and John

Wow! Peneda-Geres National Park - Soajo

We picked up our rental car from Lisbon and headed for the hills. The particular hills we were aiming for were the mountains in Peneda-Geres, Portugal's only national park. It runs up to the Spanish border and has great hiking.

As a general rule, John drives and I navigate. We wanted to go to the tourist office at the entrance to the park first to get some hiking maps so I put that into Google maps and off we went. It was about 4.5 hours to our destination and the drive was good. It wasn't until we got there that I realised we were in the wrong town. Apparently there are five entrance gates to the park! To his credit, John took it pretty well when he learned that he now had to drive an extra hour to get to the right place, We couldn't believe it when I put the correct address in and Google took us through Spain! I don't think I've ever got my navigation so wrong before.

We finally got to Soajo, the correct village! Antonio, the owner of our apartment, met us and showed us around. We thought we'd died and gone to heaven. The apartment had amazing views over the ancient village and surrounding mountains. It was quiet, comfortable and the setting was oh-so-pretty.

The house sat on a small piece of farmland. Antonio and his father before him and his father before him grew grapes, oranges, vegetables and herbs here. An old watermill sat at the end of a still-functioning water channel. Antonio had given us a number of goodies in the apartment including home-made biscuits and wine. When we showed interest in the wine he took us to the cellar, which was the original animal stables that the apartment was built on top of. He had all the wine-making equipment in there. The local wine, called vino verde, doesn't take long to ferment and is often made by people at home. It's delicious!

Everything here is made from local rock - even the very old posts at the end of the grape vine rows!

On our first night, we didn't go out anywhere. We sat at a table on the deck outside our apartment in the pleasant evening air, eating cheese with mini-toasts, apples and Antonio's wife's homemade jam. We drank the bottle of vino verde that he gave us while we looked over the grapes they were made from. The wine had been made and bottled under the house so the total food miles for this wine was about twenty metres! It was magical!

Needless to say, we absolutely loved this place. It was so pretty and everything was so old. The laneway to our house was one of the most beautiful I've seen anywhere. Tiny flowers and ferns peeped out of cracks in the ancient stone walls that lined the equally old track. 

Around town, most of the buildings were clearly very old. Built out of local granite, many have been there since the 12th century.

We came here for hiking and the walks were superb. Our favourite walk ran right past our door. Near the start, grapevines grew overhead providing a wonderful shady canopy of vivid green.

The track was made of large slabs of stone. We saw many ruts in the old stones caused by the wheels of centuries of ox-cart traffic. 

The views along the way were spectacular.

There were ancient water mills and what looked to us like a Roman bridge, complete with curved upstream posts designed to reduce water pressure on the bridge. 

The old stone buildings were amazing.

Much to our surprise we also came across a cluster of beehive-shaped huts. These were apparently used for animal shelters. They were all soooooo old!

Stone walls had been sitting in the shade for so long that moss dripped down them.

The lush greenery seemed to take over everything. Ivy climbed all over this wall.

That night we had a wonderful meal at a local restaurant. It started well when the English-speaking owner, who used to live in the US, gave John a few tastes of local wine. Red wine is always drunk from a white bowl here so the colour of the wine can be seen!

We ate local delicacies such as a special type of sausage, which is eaten on its own as an entree, and beef from the local cow breed, with potatoes and vegetables. There were five tables of us all sitting outside. Between us we were English, American, Irish, French and Australian. The Frenchies left early but the rest of us ended up chatting for a long time. The Irish couple in particular were lots of fun. They were driving a motorhome around Portugal and were having a ball.

The next day we drove north to another area to walk. First we stopped at a tourist office for walking info. There was an ancient dolmen - a burial chamber - outside.

There were some amazing viewpoints along the way.

Walking trails wind all through the national park. We found the start to our walk and started climbing up and up and the views just got better and better.

More mossy goodness.

The views really opened up as we got near the village of Branda de Busgalinhas. 

Beautiful wildflowers were everywhere.

"Branda" means summer village. Stock are brought up to these villages in summer then they return to the lower pastures in winter. This village was fairly empty so the stock mustn't be here yet. Someone must have been at this old house though. We often see old people using these sticks as walking sticks.

Many of the buildings appeared to be for stock. The top floor is for storing hay and the bottom floor is for stabling stock in bad weather.

We wound our way down to the village of Sao Bento do Cando.

The views kept changing at every turn.

Back in the car, we often saw stock on the road but horses were less common. These were so quiet they wouldn't move off the road!

Corn was introduced to the area in the 18th century and it changed the way people lived. Suddenly food was easier to get and people prospered. The corn ripened late in the season though so they had to build "espigueiros" (granaries) to store the corn in and let it dry. Amazingly, they built these out of granite. Each family had their own espigueiro.

Back in our village of Soajo, there was a cluster of 24 of these all together. They varied in size but were strikingly perched on a rocky outcrop.

Just as amazing is the fact that these are still used. I photographed this through the aeration slots.

The cows here are gorgeous. They have enormous horns but are very gentle. They roam free at this time of year but I suspect they're stabled in winter.

In the centre of town is a pillory. There are many of these in Portugal. People used to be punished or executed here. It's a horrible reminder of a more brutal past. I've tried unsuccessfully to learn why this one has a smiling face on it!

A water channel ran right through our village, passing through a number of old mills on the way. Next to the main road was the communal laundry where people used to wash their clothes. Some washing is still done there now.

Shops are not obvious here. We found the bakery tucked away in a back street. We also found a hardware store and a cafe that sold a few supplies as well. Then there was the main bar/cafe and, surprisingly, three good restaurants.

Heading out again we visited the Sanctuário de Nossa Senhora da Peneda, a church of special significance. Once a year people make a pilgrimage here, often starting from Soajo and walking along the track outside our house. We pulled up at the car park and were faced with a huge wall of steps.

Lika a Sara Lee cake, there was layer upon layer of steps. As we climbed, separate rooms flanked the stairs. Inside were statues of phases of Jesus' life and the 12 stations of the cross.

We could see the church sitting grandly at the top of the stairs.

It was such a striking piece of architecture. The inside of the church was fairly standard - the wow factor was in the approach.

On another walk we found another gorgeous Roman bridge.

An old watermill was nearby. Tucked under the shade of a huge tree, the roof was covered in moss.

I'm not sure if these are hollyhocks but they were everywhere.

I love the way that tiny plants grew in among the rock walls. Nature's own rock garden.

A community oven for baking bread. It still looked like it was being used. Right next to it was the old town laundry area. It'd be a fair guess to say that they probably channelled the water past the oven and had hot water to wash the clothes in!

At one stage we walked near a house and three enormous dogs came out. They were the local shepherd dogs. They looked like a cross between a labrador and a great dane. They were pretty scary but seemed tame enough, thank goodness.

The landscape kept changing as we walked.

On our last outing from Soajo we drove to a village where there was a great walk to the ruins of an old castle. Again, the views were superb.

We took a different route back and found ourselves walking through a stunning oak forest.

Somewhat out of place was a statue dedicated to the local dog breed. Apparently Portugal has something like 13 unique dog breeds. The ones in the mountains are the huge ones we came across earlier.

At the start of our Portuguese trip, when we were in the south, the food was all based around seafood. In the mountains it's based around meat. Sausages are common as starters then they're followed by huge slabs of meat with heaps of potatoes and a few other vegies, mainly cabbage. It's not really my style of food. I also find it all a little bland but it's ok. A lot of people, John included, love it though.

For lighter meals, I quickly got over ham and cheese toasted sandwiches. They were often the only non- junk food option. They were usually very plain - no butter, spreads etc and usually on white bread.

One good (and dangerous) thing is that they love their desserts here and they're often fabulous! One restaurant we went to offered a handful of entre options, five options for mains and seven options for desserts!

We really loved this town and the stunning National Park. What a fantastic place!

Heather and John