10March1995

London & Portugal: 7 March 1995
My dear folks,

This is the 2nd part of our holiday report, on the Alentejo:

07/03 Tuesday. Lovely & clear - but cold. We rose early to be on the road by 09:00. Dogueno was the name of the tiny hamlet on the hills overlooking the vast Alentejan plains where we stopped for coffee & toast. The barman & his wife shared the task. We got talking about life in Dogueno (quietish) & the excellence of the toast. This, the wife explained, was because the bread was made next-door & she took us over to show us. The baker was preparing the fire while his wife scooped out dollops of dough from a huge bowl. We watched in fascination, expressed our thanks at their hospitality, bought a loaf & pressed on.

Our next stop was the fortified village of Evoramonte, perched on a hilltop 1000 ft above the plain & crowned with a stout castle. The village was named after the Eborones, people who had occupied the area 2,000 years before the Romans arrived & fortified the hilltop. We picnicked beside the keep, looking down on the world & eating inch-thick slices of the still-warm bread covered in home-made lemon-curd. Then we explored the castle, ascending spiralling stone stairs to the roof where generations of sentinels watched the horizon for invading armies. It would have been easy to leap from the battlements to a quick death below. The Portuguese do not believe in wasting money erecting hindrances to the suicidal.

The walled town of Estremoz is easily visible from Evoramonte. We drove through the vast gate/tunnel entrance & found parking in the sprawling central square. Jones had found an English guide- book to the region, an immensely useful compilation whose author's views largely matched our own. Estremoz's wealth is its history. The old town is dominated by a church & former convent, the latter now one of the luxury hotels (known as pousadas). We stopped at ancient shop (recommended in our book) selling carpets & tapestries (& copies of our book???). After careful examination of their wares - for we liked everything - we selected a brick & fawn rug to hang on the walls of MCP & point up the brickwork around the old oven.

Thence to our stop for the next two days, a house in the midst of green fields where we met the occupiers - 4 ducks, 2 fowls, Rufus (big Alentejan dog - echoes of the Pyrenean & St Bernard) Monty & Mimosa (confident, inquisitive grey cats) Antonia (young daughter) & Margarida (proprietor). We tramped fields as the sun set in spectacular fashion - then supped outside - on bread, wine cheese & spicy sausage.

03/08 Wednesday dawned grey & cloudy. We breakfasted on Margarida Gil's toast & marmalade, very good. Thence to Evora, an hour away. The city is old, one of the first sites in Europe to shows signs of human habitation. Within the high walls, the Temple of Diana, now mainly a collection of columns, dates back to the 3rd C. The walls are Roman, Moorish and Portuguese. The streets are narrow, pavements largely non-existent. Parking is a problem. The city is full of churches & convents (many of them "ex") & museums. It's a university town too & there are lots of students everywhere, mainly female, for some reason.

It is also a city with a large barracks and lots of soldiers, some hanging over the fence staring at the girls. Portugal still has conscription. In front of the barracks, a single guard prances about in a white helmet-cum-sombrero. He clumps around stiff-kneed & pile-bottomed like a man trying to avoid great cowpats - or intent on taking the piss out of the Portuguese army. But various officers exchanged salutes without arresting him or standing him up against a wall. So, presumably, the galumphing is official.

We visited more churches than you want to know about. But one is unforgettable, the Chapel of the Bones, housed in one of the cathedrals. It was constructed in the 1400s by a monk who wished to concentrate attention on human mortality. The walls & pillars are lined entirely with skulls and bones, the skeletons of some 5000 people. It's an astonishing & morbid sight.

To inspire further contemplation, there are the mouldering corpses of a father & child, according to legend, cursed by their dying wife/mother. Over the entrance to the chapel are the words: We who are here are waiting for you to join us. We walked Evora until our knees ached and our minds blurred; then we got lost trying to leave. Sympathetic policemen, impressed to find estrangeiros with a grasp of their language, directed us out.

Jones, who went everywhere with 2 guide-books to direct our steps, thought that on our way home we might visit some ancient standing-stones a few miles west of the city, one of the numerous cromeleques to be found in the country. According to the books, they date back 5000 years. They hove into sight, surrounded by plantations of olives. We tried to absorb the scene, 95 stones, some 2m tall, covered in lichen & standing to attention. Who, we wondered, had planted them, & why. What did they look like, how did they dress & speak? My theory, I confided to Jones, is that Neanderthals one day decided to confuse future generations by piling up a collection of meaningless rocks. They must be laughing still.

For supper, we supped at a tasca (tavern) in Estremoz lined with large terracotta barrels. Its value-for-money fare had become the stuff of guidebooks. We took a table in the cellar with a good view of the inevitable TV set. The news was on. Portuguese TV news is a circus, but that's another story. The food was good, the wines outstanding, the company cosmopolitan. On the way home we got lost again. But we thought it a small price to pay for the experience.

For the second night, Rufus drove me to distraction by barking his frustration to the stars till well after midnight. When driven beyond endurance, I filled a wine bottle with water & shook it over the beast who yelped in discomfort before barking all the more. In the morning, I found something bland to write in the visitors' book - we wouldn't be going back again.

Our guide book informed us of the existence of a small plum preserve factory (the famous plums of Elvas, ameixas de Elvas) at the edge of the town. The road was closed for repairs, so we walked. At the gates the usual burglar alarm yapped furiously. But two women, the sole occupants, hurried to welcome us. The interior was lined with shelves holding hundreds of plastic bowls filled with soaking plums. Terracotta bowls which had once done the job were being sold. Jones promptly grabbed one. I selected a box of plum preserves and plum jam (both expensive, but - the book assured us - extra special) and we retraced our steps. (We tried the preserves at a celebration dinner later; they were good but nothing to rave about!)

On to the wine centre of Borba (from barbels, fish which decorate the town's coat of arms). The area is full of marble quarries and rubble mountains. Huge flatbed trucks rumble past, each carrying three massive chunks of marble. Houses are fronted with marble, benches & bollards made of marble, pavements surfaced with marble chips & roads lined with marble. We came to understand why marble is so common in Portugal. After touring a gypsy market (more dark-hued mothers suckling babes and flogging garments), we pressed on to adegas (wine co-ops) where we bought a selection. The reds are better known - crimson, full & fruity. Then we raided a big supermarket and pressed on to our destination, a remote goat farm on the Guadiana River which marks the Spanish border.

We found it at the end of a very bumpy 3 km track. Two big Rhodesian ridgebacks gave us a hearty welcome. So did Neville, the farmer, & Eileen his wife (young daughter, Rebecca, and babe, Jodie, in tow). She led us the final km to the little cottage overlooking the river & the Spanish farmsteads on the far side. Truly, this a special pace, reminiscent of Africa's game reserves. Goats & long-horned cattle wander about - so do wild pigs, although we saw none.

On the broad river below, cormorants, storks & egrets fish for a living. Huge terrapins make slow-motion love on rocks (genuine!) Flashing kingfishers dive from the branches. A robin hops around the patio. Swallows swoop about the house. Rabbits - hundreds of them - scamper across the road as one approaches. For an hour, we sat on a log-seat near the cottage & surveyed the scene below. For supper, I braaied kebabs & turkey steaks.

10/03 Friday: Rain looked likely. We set out for the recommended castle town of Monseraz on the Spanish border but lost our way in the maze of unmarked back roads & villages. In spite of getting frequent (sometimes contradictory) directions from the locals, we went astray. We slowed down several times for sheep being herded along the road by shepherds who were the stuff of legend. They wear sheepskin coats, short in front but long behind, to allow them to sit in comfort. We also passed a party of gypsies, riding on gaily-painted, horse-drawn carts. The men dress entirely in black & wear fierce, bushy beards. Additional horses trot alongside. Attached to the axle by a short length of rope or wire is a dog which runs beneath the cart. It's a case of run or die. Those we saw were running happily enough.

Jones had noted a restaurant in her guide book, & we found our way there. It was closed - a great disappointment to my beloved who had decided that it should be the culinary high point of our visit. Instead, we drove on to the next town where 2 more restaurants were recommended. The first we found was open & excellent. What a feast, first of little delicacies (petiscos, one of which I failed to recognise) - then of generous main courses. It was close to 4 p.m. before I called for the bill which, as so often, seemed to have more entries than I could account for. So, in friendly fashion, I asked the restaurateur to run through it. This he did, mentioning in passing pigs' ears starters (that had mystified us. I had spat out the only one I tried. Jones, always more adventurous in such matters, had consumed several). Anyhow, the bill was in order & what we hadn't managed to eat, we took away for later consumption. It was pouring outside, huge drops that exploded in water bombs.

Next to Alendroal, a wide-avenued little town spread out beneath its castle & keep. Jones wanted to rescue a piece of marble from a tip to take back with her. But the rain & mud discouraged her.

I stopped at a quarry to check on retail sales. Vast saws were slicing panels from blocks of marble. Marble panels of every size were stacked halfway to the horizon. Retail sales were possible but problematic. On to the next quarry! Here I met a gentleman from the Algarve who was only too pleased to show me what was available. We emerged from the warehouse with two boxes of marble tiles for MCP's bathroom floor. Jones was pleased; she was even happier when we later found a tiny tip & rescued her own little piece - for a cheese board, she says. The farmer joined us in the evening for some conversation & red wine. He told us horror tales about the hunters who had invaded his farm for years until he had managed to have it declared a reserve. The Portuguese, like other Mediterraneans, are crazy about hunting & spend several months a year shooting everything that moves. They're a curse!

11/03 Saturday, this time we found our way to the village of Monseraz which loomed up from the Alentejan plain - just as the guidebook said - like a castellated mountain. It's a jewel, a tiny town contained in high stone walls which have seen centuries of bloody history acted out around them. The streets were made entirely of the local slate, laid vertically. The walls were built of the same stone, set horizontally. Two streets ran the length of the town; half a dozen cut across it. The houses were painted in identical white. Children played irreverent football on the broad patio outside the main church - full of dusty, gilded saints, hands clasped, heads crowned with silver halos. We made our way up steep, cramped steps to the roof of the tower overlooking the village & a dozen other towns. Immediately below was the bullring, now used for an annual festival of singing (although bullfighting remains a big local feature. The Portuguese tease rather than torment the bull and do not kill it)

We lunched in nearby Mourao in the Adega Velha (the Old Taverna), under an ancient arched roof & surrounded by 8ft high terracotta vats from which our host tapped jars of red & white wine - both very good. As on the previous day, I imposed upon my host to be allowed to recharge my computer notebook's batteries. Our cottage overlooking the Guadiana is a darling, but lacks electricity. Indeed, the main farmhouse runs a generator only for a couple of hours at night. Apart from that, it's candle or gaslamp. We got lost again going home. We filled our glasses with the last of the 12-year old whisky and crept to our look-out point to watch the evening fall.

12/03 Sunday we came home, reluctantly. Jones spent a full hour restoring the cottage to a state of spit & polish. I did my share. We dropped the keys off at the farmhouse, where we bought several bottles of marmalade & honey. A large heifer grazed on the lawn, a few metres from little Rebecca & tiny Jodie. They were clearly used to each other. We had proceeded with great caution, treating heifers (beefy, long-horned characters) with great respect. The goats presented no threat, moving about the farm as if they knew exactly where they had to be each hour. I saw one up on our gatepost, balancing on his back legs, trying to chew the leaves off a tree.

The Quinta lay warming itself in the sun. The flowers looked wonderful after rain; our guests were well. I set about painting the interior of MCP. Jones plunged back into her garden. At dusk she brought me a macieira & coke, a restorative elixir of wonderful potency. We showered in the fierce hot water produced by the solar heater in the balmy March weather. England would not know the likes for months. Then Jones produced a chickeny supper that looked vaguely like the remains of the remains of the chicken we'd first feasted on two days earlier (Jones is not one to throw things away) but it tasted pretty good.