Europe
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Around Northern Portugal: Lamego-Amarante-Braga
As you approach Amarante by the road from the main A4 motorway, you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about, for at this point the absolutely lovely old town is hidden behind an array of modern structures, traffic islands, concrete and steel. Walk no more than 200 yards from the bus station, turn in to Rua 31 Janeiro, pass the lively traditional tabernas and head towards the São Gonçalo Bridge, and yet another enchanting town quickly reveals itself. And oh wow is it lovely. Almost impossibly lovely. The Rio Tamega flows slowly through the centre – serenely slowly, except now and again when it skips over…
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Into The Douro Valley: Porto To Pinhāo And Back
“Philip, Michaela, welcome”, calls the beaming guy on the narrow pavement, all broad smiles and outstretched hand, “I am Luis, welcome to Pinhāo”. The fact that the owner of the hotel is out in the street to meet us, in this picturesque riverside town dwarfed by vine clad hillsides, ready with information about his town scribbled on a Post-It note, is the most perfect of welcomes. “Pinhāo, the authentic heart of the Douro Valley” reads a sign by the water. “The birthplace of port wine”, boasts a weathered awning above a shop window. Pinhāo sits tucked into the offside of a sweeping bend in the Douro where a tributary enters…
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Porto: Too Many Reasons To Be Cheerful
As twilight descends on the wide Douro river, the roof mounted lettering on the tops of buildings on the opposite bank light up to reveal Company names advertising their famous wares. Some of them are familiar – Sandemans, Cockburn’s, Taylor’s, Dow’s – others less so, but regardless of whether we know them or not, they are all big names in the business which is literally synonymous with this city. Porto isn’t just cheerful, it’s also full of cheer, contributing significantly to our and every other visitor’s alcoholic intake with its proud history of wine production relentlessly pushed at every corner. Reds, whites and vinho verde from the Douro Valley, port…
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A Tale Of Two Cities And A Kebab
It went something like this, you see. When we arrived home from the Philippines in late March, it meant that I would be spending my birthday at home instead of abroad for the first time since COVID (remember that?). So we looked at a quick city break, homing in on either of two European cities which had been on the wish list since ever, Porto and Mostar. But neither was straightforward. Easter airline prices were inflated enough to take Porto out of the equation, simply too many sovereigns for a quick city break. For Mostar, it was more a case of logistics, it’s too time consuming to get to for…
- Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, Independent travel, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, Wildlife
Biding Our Time
“Wasting my time, resting my mind And I’ll never pine For the sad days and the bad days When we was working from nine to five” Lyrics from “Biding My Time” by Pink Floyd We’re in a bit of what you might call a hiatus. It’s been a strange year, one way and another, with the whole of January at home to deal with a property matter, then our Brazil trip interrupted by the sad news of Michaela’s Dad’s death and our return to England for the funeral. Of course, we then reconvened our trip and enjoyed ten weeks of Brazil, the southern states of the USA and a little…
- Brazil, Central America, Europe, Greece, Independent travel, North America, Photography, South America, Thailand, Travel Blog, USA, Wildlife
Countdown To Rio
It’s that time again. Never mind counting the days, we’re just arriving at the stage where we’ll be counting the hours until we lock the doors behind us and head to Heathrow to start our next great adventure. The exotic, vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro awaits, one of the world’s greatest carnivals about to begin, romantic sounding locations like Copacabana, Ipanema and Corcovado soon to be on our doorstep. It’s a little over a week until the journey begins. After waking up on New Year’s Day many thousands of miles from home in each of the last two years, this feels like a late start for us and the…
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Storm Ciarán & Friends
By Tuesday the TV news is full of it. Never mind the wars raging in both Europe and the Middle East, there is, it seems, a storm heading towards Britain which is akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse powering across the Atlantic to wreak devastation on our forlorn shores. Storm Ciarán, somebody somewhere has decided. With Ciarán due to enter the fray Wednesday night into Thursday, we bring our plans forward by 24 hours and make the 350-mile 6-hour drive to Cornwall ahead of those “essential travel only” messages which will no doubt soon boom across the nation. We hole up, batten down, listen to the wind as…
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Dubious Saints, Mutant Sheep & Castles In The Air: Cyprus Unfolds
The downpour is so intense that we don’t really want to leave the boat, but we have to get back to the apartment somehow so it’s heads down and off into the onslaught. “Goodbye”, shouts Captain Bayram as we head off, adding, “remember, tomorrow there is worse rain, very bad”. He isn’t kidding either. By the time we return next day from a rather fruitless trip on the dolmus out to Lapta village, the streets of Girne are rivers, floodwater several inches deep racing down every slope and finding every shortcut through town. It’s an outrageous deluge which lasts for hours and has locals laughing and scurrying for cover in…
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Into The Northern Half Of Cyprus
So here we are in the northern half of this partitioned country, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a self-declared independent nation recognised as such only by Turkey itself. The region is accepted by the UN as not being under the control of the Cypriot Government; Cyprus is the only EU country with a section not governed by that organisation’s laws. Despite loosening of controls on the partition line, there are still restrictions in place, which is how we come to be in our current situation. You see, we had the very good idea that it would be interesting to travel through the two separate halves of Cyprus, to…
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A Few Days In Magical Seville
It feels like a significant point on this journey as we head into Seville, drop the rental car off at the airport and get a ride into town. Apart from a night at the ferry port, Seville will be our last stay in Europe before we swap continents and head for Africa, this is the last of our Spanish cities as well as the point where we hand back the last of our rental cars until Morocco. All in all, it feels like a bit of a watershed moment. Our long journey through Spain is nearly done, a journey which started in Catalunya, took us through Zaragoza and into the…
