 |
| Porto - traditional boats used for transporting port wine barrels |
Monday 30th
July. We had a pleasant, gentle sail down from Viana do Castelo to Povoa de
Varzim yesterday. Povoa is a seaside resort with several good beaches, but the
main reason for stopping there was to visit Porto, which we did today.
Porto rooftops from the Torre dos Clerigos
Povoa is the last stop on one of the Porto’s new Metro
lines, and the journey into the city took less than an hour. We had a brilliant
day visiting the Cathedral and the old town, eating a fish lunch on the banks
of the Douro and then taking a river trip to admire the six bridges including the Ponte
de Dona Maria Pia, another bridge designed by Alexandre Eiffel. The river is
attractively landscaped on the south side and still has many of the original
barcos rabelos moored on it - flat bottomed, square rigged wooden boats that
used to transport the port wine casks.
We finished our day with a port tasting tour in the Sandeman cellars,
it was fascinating to learn more about the links between Britain and Portugal.
Porto old town
Looks familiar....
Tuesday 31st
July. Up at 4.30 ready to sail to Figueira da Foz. Back in bed by 5am – fog
again. Spent the day catching up on boat jobs and took a walk along the beach. Sun umbrellas have been replaced with wind shelters, very practical given the high winds here!
Povoa de Varzim beach with wind-proof shelters
Wednesday 1st
August. We finally made it to Fegueira da Foz. We’ve discovered a new
sport, pot-marker slalom. The course is set by Portuguese fishermen who pepper
the harbour approaches with pot markers so that the unsuspecting yachtsman has
to sail a slalom course to get around them (the penalty for failure is pot
lines wrapped around your prop). We wove our way through a particularly tricky
set of pots to get to the harbour entrance today. The marina is expensive –
twice as much as we paid at Povoa, so we’ll move on again tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment