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Tom's PlacePhotos and reports from Albufeira, the Algarve and beyond. Click on a photo to start slide show 23 novembre Valenca do MinhoValenca (Valenca do Minho as it is often called) is a pleasant town in the far, far, north of Portugal across the River Minho from Spain. It is about 3 hours by train or bus from Porto and a bit quicker by car.
This Wikipedia article will tell you more about it.
Valenca is well worth a visit if you are in that part of the world. Its centrepoint is the castle, sitting high up on the hills, overlooking the River Minho and beyond, Spain.
The castle is in an excellent state of preservation and has enough walls, turrets, battlements, ramparts, gun platforms and tunnels to keep anyone happy for hours. Inside the castle walls are a number of houses, bars and restaurants. There is the usual tourist tat on sale of course! The newer part of town is down below and is farily unremarkable.
The train from Porto takes you through the town of Viana do Castelo, worth a visit itself I am told. The train I was on paused there for 15 minutes, time to take some pictures of the neat and tidy station and the train itself, a two car diesel unit forming the 1036 to Valenca. On this line there are six or seven trains a day, with two of them crossing over the border into Spain, heading for Vigo over the railway/road bridge. For most of its length the line is single track. It winds through wooded hills for much of its distance, reminding me of Alpine foothills.
You can get train times at www.cp.pt and bus times at www.rede-expressos.pt or www.avminho.pt The trains are local trains, a bit slow but there is pleasant countryside on the way. Sit on the left to get a good view of the sea and river for the last hour or so of the ride. No reservations are available or required but take something to drink and eat if needed!
The first thing I saw at Valenca was the weekly market. This was a Wednesday by the way. This was a real market, no tourists in sight unless you count hundreds of Spanish. There was a good line in food stalls, several offering locally produced wooden furniture, hardware including stills and the usual, piled-high, clothes stalls plus a couple selling pets. You could buy a duck, a kitten, a puppy or even an ostrich. A small one I hasten to add. The were live chickens also on sale, seemingly oblivious to their fate!
It was overcast and raining. The hills across the border were cloaked in cloud.
The castle sits high above the city, on two hills. It was started in the 13th Century but most of the present structure dates from the 17th and 18th Centuries. Very Vauban-esque, It has a series of walls in rings, one inside the other. There are star shaped bastions with excellent fields of fire at the backs of anyone trying to scale the walls and numerous gun platforms some with replica cannon pointing at Spain. Various tunnels connect the different levels.
At the entrances there are double gateways. In the gateway roof are those nice holes down which you can pour boiling oil on the invader.
The whole outside area is completely open and free to explore. There are no fences or access restrictions except for one small area undergoing an archaeological excavation. It is a bit hilly and with the rain there was some mud and wet grass to deal with among the walls.
There were a few shots fired in anger during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century but not a lot else. It is seemingly impregnable, even today.
Way down below the castle and old town is the wide River Minho and across it the Spanish town of Tuy.
There are however no cross-border buses or trains except for the two daily trains and a few buses to and from Vigo operated by VIANA - www.viana.es - but you can walk across the old bridge.
The combined road/rail bridge (the railway is on the upper level) was opened in 1886. Designed by a pupil of that Mr Eiffel, it is just under 400 metres wide. You can walk across the narrow footpath beside the roadway. A new International Bridge was built about half a mile downstream in the 1970's and connects the Portuguese and Spanish highway systems.
Certain local sentiment tells you it is 'Galicia' and not Spain over there!
It was definitely autumn, leaves were turning brown all over.
At the end of the bridge, below the castle walls, is the abandoned customs and border control post. Part of the building is now used by a local community group.
Finally, the station at Valenca awaits the train to come in for the journey back to Porto, The wagons were being loaded with wood.
Next weekend it will be back to matters Albufeira and the saga of the N395 plus the new hotel complex being built above the pier. After that I will be publoshing my pictures from Braganca. 19 novembre Albufeira N395 roadworks 17 November 2009Thee pictures were taken on Tuesday morning 17th November. Tonight (Thursday) men and machines were busy working under floodlights to lay tarmac on the stretch of road nerest Albufeira. It may not be many days before this section is open for traffic.
However as you will see from the pictures, there remains a lot of work on the section between the Health Centre and Camping Albufeira with traffic diversions in place. 16 novembre Trip to the north of PortugalThere isn't much going on in Albufeira just now, so I am publishing my photos from a trip last week to the north of Portugal.
Breifly, they are getting on with the rebuildng of the N395 road out of Albufeira. All the diversions are still in place. The sub-grade of the new carriageway past the Repsol garage looks to be more or less completed but there is still a lot of work to do before the road can properly re-open. I will try to get some new pictures later this week.
Ok so this is the first instalment of my trip, pictures from Porto and the town across the river called Vila Nova de Gaia.
I trust the picture titles and captions will be pretty self-explanatory. I deliberately avoided the normal tourist sights, or most of them, as pictures are ten a penny.
Vila Nova de Gaia is the point from which one of major cruise operators, Douro Azul, takes people on trips up the river into the wine growing (and port making) region of the upper Douro Valley. The town is building a cable car to connect the metro station of Jardim do Morro (right at the top of a hill) to the Cais (Quays) far down below. I don't know when this will be completed.
The buildings on both sides of the river have seen better days in some cases and you don't have to go far to see the shabby streets of empty and decaying buildings. Typical of inner city flight unfortunately.
The spectacular Ponte Luis 1 carries metro tram tracks high across the river. You can walk over as well and the views are excellent.
The tram museum is at Massarelos, a few minutes walk from the Ponte Luis 1 and is served by trams 1 and 18, also buses 500 and ZM.
If you want something odd to do in Porto, visit the Rua do Almada, in the city centre. I don't have a picture as my batteries expired, but I have never seen so many hardware shops in one street. These are the kind of shops which have all but disappeared in the UK. Crammed with shelves from floor to ceiling, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of little cardboard boxes of, well, stuff. That's as well as widgets and tools of every possible description, shape, size and colour. I walked a couple of hundred yards up the street and counted at least a dozen of these places. I bught one of those little folding toolkits of various screwdrivers, cutters and pointed things, which I can take in my pocket when on the bike.
In a few days I will put up mny picturers from Valenca do Minho.
8 novembre S B Messines - a nice town and some nice walkingThese pictures were taken in and around the town of São Bartolmeu de Messines, in the Algarve about 10 miles/16km to the north of Albufeira.
There is some very pleasant waling to the north of the town, reasonably flat and very quiet. There is almost no traffic on these roads and plenty of tracks lead off up into the low hills for exploration.
Walking along, I saw a very incongruous electricity pylon sitting on top of a small hill. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw it had no wires attached. Turning around, I noticed that the whole line of pylons was devoid of wires. There was no sign of any activity, so I wonder why the pylons have seemingly been abandoned.
The countrside is pleasant but is littered with abandoned farmsteads and several more modern but also empty properties. I think there might be some bargains to be had here. Although some have perhaps been empty for no more than 30 years or so (evidence being modern electricity poles) they have collapsed quickly in partial ruin. the wells have been given up and the land no longer used for agriculture.
São Bartolomeu de Messines is a neat, almost self-contained, town in the hills on the southern edge of the large mostly unpopulated area that stretches around 150 miles to the north.
It has a small railway station (Messines-Alte) which has a passing loop on the single track that connects Lisbon with the Algarve. Five trains a day in each direction stop here.
The white buildings of the neweer part of town were gleaming in the autumn afternoon sunshine.
Next album, next weekend, 15 November probably.
30 octobre ALBUFEIRA MARINA, VIEWS ACROSS THE BAY AND MORESurgical removal of picture card successful but the card reader slot is stil not working, so had to download onto a laptop and transfer. Pain. I guess the PC will have to go to the menders some time soon.
The latest album is some pictures taken around the Albufeira Marina on Wednesday 28th October 2009. Note there are some gaps in picturre numbering.
Several people have been asking about the Crowne Plaza hotel site above the Marina. This remains derelict,, having been abandoned by the original developer about a year ago. The main hotel building is a shell with a roof but is partly glazed. Adjacent are the beginnings of the seventy or so town houses, the sale of which was supposed to have financed the hotel project. None were sold.
Local rumour has it that the Riu hotel group, who own the big hotels over in Olhos D'Agua, are seeking to acquire the unfinished building and continue work. There is still a huge amount remaining and in the meantime the site , apart from being an eyesore, is becoming a source of construction material and also a drug-users hangout.
The 'horizon pollution' caused by the unfinished buildings can clearly been seen in the pictures taken from a distance.
On the other side of the Marina a nother new development is well under way. Rather euphemistically entitled 'Farm Village' it looks to me just like any other hotel block. Certainly there is nothing farm or village like about it.
Walking right round to the end of the breakwater on the far side of the Marina gives you some very nice of views of Albufeira from the seaward side. The section between the Marina and the new lift is where it is intended to built a pedestrian path along the base of the cliffs
It's probably about half a mile from the marina car park and right round the other side. You can get a bit closer by car but there is very steep and very rough track to deal with.
On the south side of the Marina, on the hill above and between the large green boat shed and the gypsy camp, the building of yet another new 'urbanisation' is under way. About 181 new homes will be built. To be fair, the roads and services have been laid out and waiting for years, but in the present economic climate and with hundreds of apartments standing empty and unfinished, who is going to buy them especially in such an unfavourable location?
Some months ago there was a landslip on the road that leads to the fishing port and Marina reception. It has yet to be repaired and I wouldn't bet against a further fall next time we have some heavy rain. There are some large cracks to be seen in the concrete 'overcoat' on which civil engineering types among you may wish to comment.
Just around the corner from the breakwater is the very rocky section of coast heading towards the beches of S. Rafael and Gale.
Next album is intended for the week end 7/8 November when I will return to the N395 constuction project and various other works on the edge of town.
Next set of photos stuck!I went around the marina of Albufeira yesterday, camera in hand. Took out the memory card, put it in the card reader slot. Nothing. And I cannot get it out again. So it looks like some surgery is required in the morning.
Once resolved, I will post some nice pictures of Albufeira in the late autumn sunshine. 26 octobre N395 construction and moreA small set of pictures taken on Friday afternoon 23rd October. The work on the N395 road continues. Great is the chaos. Traffic is being diverted all over the place as the whole stretch is now one-way only (towards town) and the road between the health centre and the roundabout has been severed to build a new culvert for the river.. The dust-making machine was working hard.
Elsewhere, the new Sports Centre continues to take shape. This is next to the existing municipal stadium.
And the beaches were fairly busy! With temperatures hitting 80F, well above average for the time of year, this is no big surprise. |
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