Day 60. Wednesday 7 May.

It’s 1230 as we start to write. What have we achieved so far today? Well, T initially fought with a screen making a list of ‘to do’s’ involving train into Porto (several trips for fado, art gallery, walks and a boat ride further up the Douro…enough things to do for a good week).

The plan became to train to Porto today, to visit the Museu do Vitral,  (Stained Glass Museum) and other attractions. Accordingly to plan, we arrived at the station, got easy parking, in good time, to discover this is Day One of a two day strike (hence easy parking! Duh). The new Government hasn’t even been sworn in and the chaos has spread overseas already! So what to do? Quick decision to check out charity shops locally (why not?): found just one, put it into Apple Maps and headed off. No such place existed, at least according to (the increasingly unreliable) Doris. Next decision was get coffee at the restaurant, Adega O Verde, recommended by our host. As we passed an Aldi, we stopped to buy milk: no fresh milk sold. Then arrived at the restaurant: it was not yet open for business and didn’t apparently do coffee anyway – D entered, waited, and was ignored. Coffee at home was now the best, or only, option, so we called into the local Lidl for fresh milk. D stood behind two older women, probably mother and daughter, who had an over full trolley. The daughter looked closely at D standing behind with his three items but chose not to invite him through. He waited patiently, if a bit irritated, while their load was put through…then karma struck: her payment failed! They were hustled over to one side to fix it, as D paid and left, with a very unchristian sense of shadenfruede. He has since berated himself for this lapse.

Great coffee at home, with Valongo biscuits left by our host. And T discovers that the train strike will go through till 14 May!!!  All those bookmarked websites….

Valongo has a couple of biscuit factories; indeed, where are the huge range of various sweet treats made?  T has plans for the predicted wet weekend, especially if trains aren’t running, to make an adapted version of pintos de Santa Luzia, a biscuit explained in the booklet from yesterday’s visit to Vila Real. Legend has it that this biscuit hails from the hands of a sweet tooth Sister Immaculate of Jesus who was cloistered by her parents because she had such a sweet tooth. One day this nun had a vision (?) and ran to the kitchen and made a dough, formed it into a pouch, added some pumpkin jam in the centre  and baked it…blind Mother Superior smelled the sweet treat and enquired…Sister Immaculate replied that it was a specially prepared bandage of linseed that she was taking to patients to ease their ‘eye conditions’. At night, in her cell, Sister Immaculate put her soul to rest, for she had always heard ‘what is not seen is therefore not sinful’. Since we don’t have linseed,  T will use some plum jam, donated by our host. 

Mid-afternoon, after checking out some possible walking trails on the newly downloaded app Komoot (a guide to walks in Portugal) but getting totally confused and dispirited, decided to just take the popular track that passes our front door. We were a bit surprised, having been away during the days previously, just how many folk were out there in our space! We retraced an earlier short walk, and came to some fairly challenging, narrow paths upwards from an old gold mining site beside the river – the track was almost vertical, but marked as ‘running’. While D investigated, T started a lovely, interesting chat with two Vietnamese walkers (now living/studying in Porto), My (the girl) and Light (the boy) – (D couldn’t resist the obvious Dad joke –  which they’d heard before of course.) They were using Komoot as their guide and were heading upwards.

We turned back, crossing over the suspension bridge, climbed some pretty ordinary tracks, to eventually hit a road – flat and reasonably even.

The stacks of blocks of slate were enormous. Although there is a slate industry in Valongo we weren’t sure if these were just retaining walls or some sort of stockpile. They were obviously both at certain points.

Checked Apple Maps: which told us that we are better off to  keep going in a loop back home, all on roadways or footpaths, rather than retrace our steps. The route took us down backstreets, past some ancient and some very modern (up-market, expensive) residences and then we arrived at a grand slate church, a total contrast to the grandeur we’ve mostly seen: Capela Nossa da Senhora Encarnacao. And a private house we passed a bit later had an  interesting tile collage of the Last Supper on a front wall.

In beautiful sunshine we walked home to our reward. We pass a little enclave each time we drive into our place, noting an eccentric little garden, using little toy cars as flower beds. As we passed on foot today a woman was gardening, so  we asked permission to take some photos: of course we could, and take some of the rest of the garden as well! D inspected his roadworks, noting that some concaves could do with topping up before the predicted rain later in the week.

A beer and glass of wine in the late afternoon backyard was delightful. It was peace and quiet, if you extract the trilling of the finches and the rush of the river from the term ‘quiet’.

And a bit later a Google search told us the stained glass ‘exhibition’ had ended! It’s been one of those sorts of days, and we are so grateful.

Dinner. Chicken stir fry (flat beans, broccoli, onion, garlic, chilli carrot) on rice. D got all the chili in one hit.