Magan: How Foot Without Travelled A To From Ireland I On Setting Plane Portugal Manchán

Sat, 13 Jan, 2024 - 21:00

Manchán Magan

When I vowed to give up flying for holidays and travel articles in 2019 my biggest fear was having to contend with the bleak months of winter darkness. For the last 30 years I’ve spent a few weeks or months in latitudes far south of Ireland each winter and I was worried how I’d cope without them.

I still take the odd flight for work if necessary, but they are never to somewhere warm in winter, and so I’ve opted instead to take a ferry and train south to warmer or brighter skies each January.

In 2020 I went to Seville and Doñana National Park; in 2021 to Brittany; and in 2022 Sardinia. But last January, I travelled to Portugal on a journey along its entire length that I could never have achieved by flying.

The highlight of these escapes for me is always the ferry, especially if it’s Brittany Ferries, as the food is just so good — even in the self-service café — and there’s a level of sophistication to the interior design. Initially, I had feared that crossing the Atlantic in winter would be hellish, but I’ve experienced mostly calm seas and clear skies.

There were some choppy waters as I crossed the Bay of Biscay, but the new Salamanca ferry that Brittany Ferries commissioned for Atlantic crossing is equipped with computer-controlled stabilisers that managed to counteract much of the impact of each barrage of ocean, so that although the ship smashed down the face of cliff-like waves people weren’t getting sick. I just lay down and was lulled by the listing waters.

The ship docked in Bilbao which offered an ideal opportunity to revisit one of Europe’s finest modern art galleries, the Guggenheim Museum, and to try out the city’s most acclaimed pintxos bars, which specialise in Basque-style tapas that highlight regional culinary specialities.

From there, I took a train to Madrid and another west through Galicia to the coastal city of Vigo. After a wander around the cobbled streets of the old town and a siesta in the afternoon sun on a pier in the harbour, I took a local commuter train across the border to Portugal, and headed straight to Porto, a city I’ve always wanted to visit, but have never felt the call strongly enough to actually fly there for an entire holiday.

As it happens, I had underestimated Porto. It is easily worth spending not only a few days, but a few weeks in the city and the nearby Douro valley. It’s a real Rip Van Winkle city, having gained great wealth in the 19th century, but then largely fallen asleep for much of the 20th and early 21st century until about a decade ago. So, it is heaving with elaborate displays of architectural wealth and decadence.

My first visit was to Livraria Lello, an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque bookshop of art deco designs, neo-Gothic flourishes, and moulded stucco-work figures, with an outlandish spiralling crimson staircase. Its self-confidence and sumptuousness was a great introduction to the city which is replete with elaborate, ostentatious, neoclassical monasteries, churches, convents, and merchant buildings funded by the great wealth garnered from port wine, textiles, and gold mined in Brazil.

My favourite building of all was the one I arrived in, São Bento railway station, a cavernous, light-filled granite palace with soaring walls of azulejos (hand-painted blue tiles) depicting important moments in Portuguese history. Both it and the bookshop were built in the first decade of the 20th century, at the peak of Porto’s power.

To get a feel for the city beyond the wealthy exteriors I booked a tour with The Worst Tour company which specialises in revealing the underbelly of the city and the innovations that the labouring classes have devised over centuries to make the city liveable for them too. The tour is as much an exploration of capitalism and the chicanery of the elite as it is of Porto, but feels entirely authentic to the industrial spirit of the city.

Since so much of Porto’s wealth and lore is based on the port wine produced from grapes growing in the Douro Valley that stretches eastwards from the city I opted to take a train along the river from San Bento station. The Linha do Douro meanders along incredibly steep terraced vineyards and hillside villages, making for one of the most beautiful train rides in Europe. It’s worth going at least as far as the waterfront town of Pinhão to see the vineyards that have been planted and harvested by hand for centuries. The route from there onwards to Pocinho is even more spectacular.

Keen to reach warmer latitudes and eager to explore more of Portugal, I headed on south. I feel I can get a good sense of a place even just by pulling into its central train station; and the city of Coimbra on the Rio Mondego had an appealing feel to it. The elegant outlines of old buildings of the Universidade de Coimbra reached up to the summit of its central hill and dominated the skyline.

The city still had a lingering sense of confidence from when it was the capital of Portugal 700 years ago. You rarely get such an immediate impression upon arrival at the sleek façade of an international airport or the drab journey through the city’s a suburbs by metro or taxi.

After just a brief walk from the station it was clear that the city’s beating heart was the university, which was founded in the 16th century, and is still the most prestigious centre of education in Portugal. The students have developed their own unique form of Fadó that was sung in the alleyways to serenade a loved one, but these days you’re more likely to hear it in the cultural centre or a local bar.

On graduation days and at cultural events you’ll see young people dressed in medieval-looking, flowing, black capes, reminiscent of scenes from Hogwarts School of Magic. The Livraria Lello bookshop in Porto also looks Potteresque, and indeed, JK Rowling spent time in Portugal while creating her fantasy world. Some of its more traditional aspects appear to have made an impression on her.

I could have spent weeks meandering through the wedding-cake architecture of elegant Portuguese towns and cities, but since I was keen to experience rural Portugal I headed inland to the Alto Alentejo, the central highlands, south of Lisbon — a vast, hilly expanse of dry pastures, cork forests, vineyards and fruit fields.

This is the heartland in terms of traditional food, music, culture, and farming practises. I took a train to the Medieval town of Evora and rented an ebike so I could explore the countryside.

My first stop was the carpet weaving town of Arraiolos, where locals work in their homes or yards making hand-stitched rugs in a tradition that goes back centuries. As its over 20km from Evora and with an infrequent bus service, it would have been expensive for me to get to without a rental car, but an ebike doesn’t just make cities more accessible and explorable, it opens up the surrounding region too.

I covered 75km of countryside that day and got to visit a cork forest, a marshland, and Tapada de Coelheiros, a vineyard, that is pioneering the return to more traditional practises that increase biodiversity and aid land regeneration.

The cultural richness that is still alive in this area is truly inspiring. I got to hear the local form of choral singing, Cante Alentejano, that stretches back possibly to Moorish times, and savoured the wild game, rich stews, foraged herbal teas, and delicious sheep cheeses that have been staples of the diet here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Of course, the highlight of these winter getaways is swimming in warmish waters under blue skies. I knew that the Algarve was my best chance of this, and took a train south to the resort town of Faro and dived into the crystal blue ocean before heading back to the station to try out some of the local trains that run along the entire length of the southern coastline from Lagos to Vila Real de Santo Antonio.

This 19th century railway along the seafront is an ideal way of exploring the Parque Natural de Ria Formosa and the rural areas and fishing villages that lie east and west of Faro. You might even see dolphins from the carriage, though your chances will be higher if you hop on one of the ferries that lead out to islands and across inlets along the marshy coast.

After a few days sunning myself, I felt ready to return home, and began the long journey northwards back through Portugal and Spain to the ferry port in Bilbao. The holiday had provided everything I wanted of it. I was warm again and rejuvenated, though, of course, it had cost significantly more than a winter charter holiday.

I took 10 trains back and forth from Bilbao to Faro, which cost €370. The three nights in a deluxe ferry cabin with good ‘free’ food in the premium lounge cost €456. It’s certainly not cheap, but somehow if we are to find way of holidaying in a sustainable way we’re all going to have to alter our habits and the governments are going to have to ensure airlines pay adequate carbon taxes which are then used to subsidise the cost of trains and ferries.

Escape notes

Walking in Alentejo. Picture: Turismo Alentejo

Rosslare-Bilbao crossing €456 for three nights in a deluxe cabin. Foot passenger fares sailing March 2024 €46 each way plus an inside cabin from €169 each way. brittany-ferries.ie

Trains through Spain and Portugal: