On the Saturday before Palm Sunday we decided to have a day out in Caminha, a small market town on the estuary of the River Minho which looks across to Spain. The cold March weather seemed to be keeping the townsfolk at home. Even the cafes round the fountain in the main square were devoid of customers. It was as though the place was sleeping before the festival which would take place on the following day.
To see more of Caminha and its parish church click here.
Built like a fortress, this is the kind of Portuguese church I like best. Solid, simple and unpretentious, the outside is of plain faced stone, which sets off to perfection the west door and round window above. With its fish, stone mermen and fishy-tailed sea monsters, no one could doubt that this is the church of a sea-faring people.
The same contrast of simplicity and ornament is evident inside too. Though the side chapels have busy baroque altars, the plain nave terminates in a small apse where a simple table serves as the high altar beneath a stone ribbed roof. Three ungilded statues and a crucifix are the only decorations on the wall.
Above the slim columns are traditional tiles of a pleasingly uncomplicated design. This restraint is the perfect foil for the church's surprising roof made of wood in an ornate, Moorish-style.
As you can see, the church is dressed for Palm Sunday, with palm branches curving over the aisle. Here too we were alone except for one lady who was making sure that all was prepared for mass.
We didn't see Palm Sunday in Caminha, when undoubtedly the church was full and the town bustling. We were in Ponte de Lima for the traditional procession instead but that is for another post.
Do you have a favourite church in Portugal? Are you, unlike me, a fan of the baroque? Do write in and tell us. If you are Portuguese, please feel free to write in your own language. You don't have to write in English. (O que é importante não é a língua mas a contribuição.)
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Just on the outskirts of Porto near the Rio Douro is Villar D'Allen, a 19th century villa boasting a comprehensive collection of around 600 camellias, my Mum's favourite tree and hence the reason for our visit.
To read more about Julie and her Mum's visit, click here.
If you were to design and build a castle, isn't this exactly what you would draw: a square keep, four turrets with little conical hats on top, a crenellated wall with arrow slits. It's almost a perfect Lego design. Yet this is no Lego, it's a historic castle standing on a hill in Santa Maria da Feira, a region just south of Porto.
Against the sun the castle manages to look severe, threatening even but that is because we were there at the wrong time of day and couldn't stay for better pictures – we were due at a meeting in Porto later.
To see more about this castle, and its importance in Portuguese history, click here.
What is it that makes us interested in something? Is it our genes? Or maybe our surroundings? Our childhood experiences? Who knows? One thing that is certain is that some people experience an overwhelming fascination which may be incomprehensible to others. Most of us, for example, find entomology a bit of a turn off. Beetles and greenfly? Who cares as long as we can rid our gardens of them? Other interests, even if we don't share them, are more understandable.
Here I'm going to share with you the obsession of Dr Lopo de Carvalho, a doctor who lived in Geraz do Lima just off the southern road from Viana do Castelo and its suburb of Darque to Ponte de Lima.
To learn about his special interest, click here.
You won't see too many flesh and blood shoeshine boys in Ponte de Lima, not even ones as well coifed as this one. I'm delighted to say that our little town is thriving and provides plenty of good work without young men having to clean someone else's shoes.
We also have an entrepreneurial mayor who has encouraged people into the town by sponsoring every sort of festival you can think of, from the Festa de Sarrabulho, a local dish made from pork offcuts and rice stewed in pigs' blood and the Festa do Vinho Verde, a green wine festival, through exhibitions of science and technology for students to wedding dresses and accoutrements. Some festivals are more appetising to an outsider's taste than others: what about a festival of lampreys? I find the fish so ugly that it puts me off but others claim it is really tasty. Whatever your particular interest, though, there will be a festival for you in Ponte de Lima, so all summer long the town bustles with locals and visitors.
To find out where this charming, old fashioned scene of a city gent and shoe shine boy fits into the picture, click here.
Today I'm taking you to the village of Brufe, high in the Serra Amarela, the Yellow Mountains, by the border with western Spain. Mind you, when I was last there, at the end of a brutally hot summer, the land was so parched that it wasn't so much yellow as pale fawn.
There is an old English saying, "When gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion." I don't think kissing has fallen out of fashion in Portugal yet and so, if you look carefully, you will always find butter-yellow gorse in bloom somewhere in the mountains as well as a host of other wild flowers and shrubs.
To find out why we are going to Brufe, what we shall see on the way and what we find at the end of the ride, click here.
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