Now the fun begins: driving Roman roads in Portugal

Before leaving this part of the world, I really wanted to go further up the river to where the grapes are grown, and because I'd heard that the river itself was worth exploring. There are trains which go up it - they had gone all the way to Spain but now stop just short of the border - but they don't follow the river very closely at the beginning, aren't very useful if you want to hop out and wander around on a whim and taking photos through grimy train windows is less than optimal. On the other hand, the advice I received was that the best part of the river was up near the Spanish border but the road doesn't go near the river there whereas the rail line runs along its banks. The solution was to rent a wee car - a diesel Ford Fiesta for 31 euro for 24 hours - but dump it along the way and swap for the train.

I really had no desire to just get on a motorway: this was very much about the journey rather than any destination (which turned out to be just as well), so declined the kind offer from Avis for a toll pass, which would have only cost a couple of euro. Instead, I took the minor road that ran, more or less, along the south bank of the river: every few kilometres there was a sign indicating this was a road built by the romans. The rest of the signs were not very helpful - in the numerous villages I had to pass through, I could not see the river so at several intersections was reliant on roadsigns but they would only indicate the next village, rather than any name I could recognise: it turns out my intuition was pretty good as I never made a false turn. These little villages tended to have no parking spaces, so people would just stop their vehicles at random points and quit them to do whatever it was they had to do, and it was rather a narrow road, possibly not widened since the romans built it - all in all, it made for an interesting drive (particularly as I had no idea what the road rules might be). But it was wonderful - I liked the wee villages clustered along the river and the way they optimised the use of the rather hilly terrain through terraces and saw my first quinta not far out of Porto. Obviously, since I was driving, diving into a quinta to taste some port was not an option (although I suspect most were closed for the winter anyway).

Quinta de la Rosa, Douro Valley

Quinta do Noval

It was in Pinhão that I dumped the rental car outside the railway station - I couldn't see any signs indicating there were parking restrictions and I had to just hope that it would be safe there until after dark. The railway station had a wonderful set of tiled murals, but I couldn't hang about because the next train up the river was due to leave. I can't say it was the most modern or fastest train I've been on, and there were only a handful of passengers - maybe half a dozen in total made it the whole way to Pocinho, which is the end of the line. The river between these two towns (apart from the fact there was a railway line running along it) was pretty remote - hardly any signs of habitation, although every so often a road would snake over the hills to connect a quinta or the occasional hotel to the outside world.

Pinhão Railway Station

Technically, Pocinho was my destination, but apart from the station, a few houses, some sort of processing plant across the river and a very closed social club for railwaymen, there was nothing there: very much the end of the line.

End of the line @ Pocinho

I had about an hour's wait before the train headed back, and was very much at a loss for what to do, so after taking the five minutes to see the sights, I just got back on the train - mysteriously, there were quite a few more people leaving than had arrived. Things did not go very well on the journey back to Pinhão: it was very dark, so I had only just been able to work out we had arrived in Pinhão when the train was on its way again. Luckily, a family as well as a couple of other solo travellers had also failed to get off at Pinhão: they could alert the conductor to the fact we were still on the train (he really should have been able to work it out). This led to prolonged phone calls by the conductor - he arranged for us to get on the next up train at the next station: 35 km down the line at Regua. At least there was time at Regua for a quick snack and a beer before finally arriving in Pinhão. My travails were not quite over: I was staying in a quinta on top of a hill outside Pinhão and had created detailed directions for myself, but they didn't seem to correspond very well to the realities of the roads leading out of town. I knew I had about 9 km to go: it turned into a process of trial and error, going up a couple of roads for 12 km before I found the right one.

Luckily the receptionist at the Quinta Manhãs D'Ouro was able to put together a scratch meal of delicious local cheeses, breads and charcuterie and pour out a couple of slugs of port for me to enjoy: in fact, the evening ended up going so splendidly that I deemed it to be New Year's eve.