(Portugal)…I decided to get off the main E-4 motorway in northern Portugal at the town of Mirandela. There was no rhyme or reason for this, just that I had become bored, even though as far as motorways go, Portugal has to have some of the world’s emptiest. I was heading into the lonely region of Tras-os-Montes, all those esses pronounced with drawn-out esh sounds. I took a lonely road, and then I took a lonelier one and found myself in a space of a short time in two villages not even on my map. The first was named Soeima, the second Gebelim. There is little information to be found on them, other than the first has a population of 180, the second, 259, and that the name of Gebelim derives from an Arab word jabalain, which means “between two mountains.” The village’s crest was wonderful, two intercutting mountains and a black boar beneath two olive sprigs. A Roman bridge is in the area, and its church is dedicated to St. Martin.
It did feel that this region hugging the inside of the Spanish border was twice removed. Firstly, it is in Portugal, not Spain; secondly, it is difficult to get to if you do decided to make it to Portugal, as inevitably one first goes to either Porto or Lisbon. This is a realm where bear and wolves still exist and the locals play a form of bagpipe, together with their cousins in the Spanish province of Galicia to the north, called a gaita, played by a bagpiper called a gateiro and made from the wood of fruit trees: apple, cherry and olives.
The mountains I was passing through had the name of the Serra de Bornes, which added to the sense of the imposing country I was in. I strolled around both Soeima (the subject of the photograph above) and Gebelim. This is the land that tourists want to see—stubble-chinned ancients trying to pull stubborn mules off hay carts parked beside stuttering fountains and widows dressed in black shawls and headscarves tapping across cobblestone lanes with canes. 
A considerably larger town was Mogadouro, which has both a castle and a church and a name suggesting I was nearing the area’s famous wine-producing valley. When Mogadouro first got its start, the Douro River was a narrow river with occasional rapids. Today, it has changed dramatically, with heavily terraced vineyards and a series of dams that flooded the valley and allow pleasure craft on wine-tasting adventures access all the way into Spain and its Duero River (same river, different spelling). After a very comfortable night at the new Aquapura Douro Valley hotel (www.aquapurahotels.com/douro), I went back to my idea of remoteness and visited two monasteries a little farther west, in the villages of São João do Tarouca and Salzedas.
To reach the first I went through another little village called Mondim, where nearly every house is undergoing renovation. This is because the wife of the most successful Portuguese banker is from there, and together they practically brought the village. São João lacks the money but is blessed in other ways. Its cathedral with ruined Cistercian monastery (although some priests do live adjacent) dating to 1113 boasts a nationally famous painting of St. Peter by Gaspar Vaz, a student of Grão Vasco, also known as Vasco Fernandes. A very similar painting hangs in a museum in nearby Viseu. It is noteworthy for its depiction of Portugal’s then king dressed in pontifical purple, his face made to resemble a peasant, with rough features and a bold statement that where the regal power lays so does the religious.
I almost tripped over the tomb of Pedro Afonso, who as well as being the Count of Barcelos (where the country’s famous painted roosters are carved in tribute to the legend of an accused murderer being spared at the eleventh hour) was also the illegitimate son of the country’s King Dinis and the author of a work on the old enemy Spain entitled Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344. I like the idea of history books dedicated to just one year and written by someone not from the country chronicled. I think this should be encouraged. Have the history of, say, Canada chronicled by someone from Swaziland or Papua New Guinea, who may or may not have been there. Portugal’s noble laureate in literature, José Saramago, came here and wrote in his travel book on the country, “In spite of which, the traveler knows he has never been here before, knows he has never visited São João de Tarouca, has never crossed this tiny bridge, never seen these hollowed-out grassy riverbanks or the ruined building in front of him, or the arches of the aqueduct (and now, as he writes, he is not sure he has seen them this time either), this short incline leading firstly up to the church door, then down again to the town.” On the way to the second monastery, I stopped in Ucanha, which has a relatively steeply arched bridge dating to the 12th century that crosses the River Barosa.
Part of the bridge has a stone roof under which is a long line of stone seating where monks from the monastery in Salzedas used to sit and collect tolls from travellers. In the church in Salzedas the wooden pews where the priests lined up also had seating, ingenious wooden protuberances that would allow the priests to spread out their cassocks over so it still appeared as though they stood throughout the long masses. The monastery at Salzedas is more fascinating and crumbling than the one in São João and like so many times experienced by Saramago, I, too, had to search for the villager who had the responsibility of holding the key.
When he arrived, it solved one of my long-standing questions as I have travelled around Iberia—where do all the old men who stand around outside cafés and churches comes from? Well, here was living proof that there is a steady stream of up-and-comers biding their time to take the place of the nonagenarians. He was pleasant, and as the heavy wooden door creaked open, we stepped into a musty quadrant of chipped stone, invading plants and broken paving slabs. It dates to 1168. Supposedly, there is a renovation project under way, has been since 10 years ago, it’s just that no one has got around to doing anything yet. An English couple owned one room off the quadrant, I was told. There was nothing special about the room, any more so than the calm, decayed wonder of all of it, so I asked why they—anyone—would want to own this particular spot. The guide had no answers, and then it turned out that the owners’ family came to Portugal in 1752.
It is true that many of the grand port- and wine-producing families of the area (if the room is owned by one of these) originated in England, and the Netherlands, and tend to marry to members of other vintners, but it seemed odd yet magnificent that they would be described as English when there would be in most probability little difference between them and anyone else in the area. Salzedas also has a crumbling Jewish quarter. It is small, three or four minuscule alleys and a heap of rooms piled on top of one another. The sewage system smelt as it would have done—or worse—than when the monastery was built. Only one small flat looked as if though it had had some attention. When you stepped out of the quarter back into the square in front of the church, the light was blinding.