Down the coast of Portugal as a motor boat - 17th September

 

We have just left Sines to round Cabo Vicente and get to Lagos and the Algarve.  We are going to meet a friend called Alastair, who is joining us.  What is it about Ala/ist/dairs that they are drawn to the sea?  We have three Ala/ist/dairs - you get my drift - who sail with us.  So if your name begins with A and ends in r why don’t you come too!

Enough of that.  I am getting to know what it might be like to sail, not the correct word, to travel across the Pacific or some other long passage.  Since we got to the Portuguese coast we have not had good winds, so the days have been filled with the noisy little engine rattling out her song and never, thank God, like me getting bored and deciding to stop; ‘eye spy’ is a little limiting at sea, my sole comfy cockpit cushion is now very grubby, damp and salty creating an uncomfortable bottom, my supplies have got down to the boring leftovers and I feel like a contestant on Ready Steady Cook.

We had an uneventful overnight trip from Povoa de Varzim to Lisbon.  I have to say again what a wonderful boat I have, to be able to take a shower and wash my hair when tired and grumpy after a night watch is such luxury.  Notice the I in the ‘my boat’.  We have solved the form filling conundrum of who is skipper/captain/crew etc by deciding that I would be the owner and Andy would be my skipper!

I love sailing up rivers to cities, something  that has been done from time immemorial.  Where Porto is dark Lisbon is light.  The city was devastated by an earthquake in 1755.  It happened on a Sunday when most of the population was in church, candles were burning bright and mass was being said, many people died and fire spread quickly across the city.   The city was rebuilt and the result is grand, spacious and light, the elegant buildings and squares in the Baixa area not unlike the new town of Edinburgh.  Candles have been replaced by little electrical devices, safer but not nearly so evocative.  

Fado is Portuguese soul music.  Edith Piaf crossed with Billie Holiday, sung traditionally with the body  still and eyes shut, all emotion contained and concentrated within to issue forth from the mouth with a yearning intensity .  We went up into the Bairro Alto district in search of a Fado club and within minutes, as we hesitated outside an establishment that was advertising just such an event, we were seized upon by a manic fadista - ‘Hallo Fado?’ - she said it to all the passers-by, persuading them in with degrees of success.  She was full of energy luring people in, rushing around getting drinks, organizing the staff, winding herself up to the performance.  Between songs and when someone else was singing she sat with friends, smoking copious cigarettes and occasionally shouting ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Sim!’ (yes).  The evening came to a crescendo and then, almost without our noticing, she was gone, spent of energy.  The food there was the best I have had in the Iberian Peninsular and it was cooked not by a Portuguese but by a round cheery economic migrant from Brazil.  She was all black and white, black glasses, big squashy black beret, black top and trousers covered with a black and white stripy apron.  Her English was pretty good, she had worked in London and California and she was making money to send back to Brazil for her two daughters.

We bought ‘My Lisbon’ tickets which enabled us to whizz around by bus, tram, metro and train.  The latter we took along the coast past Estoril where, while on summer holiday, Salazar reputedly fell banging his head on a tiled floor resulting in a brain haemorrhage and his death two years later.  Portugal was released from his iron grip and his policy of keeping the masses in their place with a diet of ‘fado, Fatima and football’.  Then there was the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and development into the modern country of today.  Later the same day we went on a very different line that instead of passing rich summer villas took us past the poorer suburbs of Lisbon and up into the hills to a place called Sintra.  This is a World Heritage site but was so busy and full of tourists and traffic that we didn’t linger.  Best visited out of season I think.

Portugal and England may have the equivalent of  Scotland’s Auld Alliance with France.  Henry the Navigator’s mum was Phillipa of Lancaster and when Portugal was having a little local difficulty with Spain and France, England came and helped out.

We took a bus to the tile museum but unfortunately went past it and reached the equivalent of Wester Hailes before turning back and eventually finding it.  It was well worthwhile.  Housed in an old church/convent, the Igreja de Madre de Deus, built in a lovely soft coloured stone, with calm, cool cloisters and tall rooms, it was the perfect back drop for the tiles.  The city has many miradouros (viewpoints) and Castelo de Sao Jorge, situated high up behind the city is one.  Here, Andy walked around taking an intelligent interest while I sat in a shady courtyard and listened to a guitarist as the evening sun set.  It is a hilly city and there are lifts to help get one from one level to another.  One is a famous structure built by a disciple of Eiffel.  

We motored on from Lisbon to Sines where Vasco da Gama was born and then on around  Cabo de SaoVicente on a beautiful day, the cliffs looking magnificent.  We were missing being at anchor and so we snuck in underneath a place called Sagres overnight before going on to Lagos, not in Nigeria as I had always thought but a big Marina popular with the British for over wintering.

Even though Aeolus has been asleep these last few weeks, we have had a wonderful experience of Portugal and her people.

Jinti

Upper left- Jinti at Castelo de Sao Jorge, Lisboa (Fort George?).  River Tagos (or is it Teja?) behind.

 

Lower left - another day, another cape, in this case Capo de Sao Vincente - SW corner of Europe.