Porto

The next morning, after a call from Hedda in Australia, we set off North. At the bus station, we decided to take a bus to Porto, directly. The bus went up North and north. This landscape I prefer. It becomes more hilly and green. Some forests have ruler-straight, thin trees. I must find out their names. Anyhow the bus worked its way up to Porto and arrived in the afternoon.
I had been told that Porto was a rather dull city, and I did not expect much.

The coach worked its way through the industrial outer areas and then, puff!, you are on the arching iron bridge, and Porto explodes in front of you, with the river winding hundreds of feet below you, and the steep banks stuffed with houses, windows, balconies, palms, overgornw gardens… unbeknown to us, we had arrived during the “RedBull AirRace”, and so Porto was holding 1 million people that day. We went into the super-ornate centre and decided, after some camp tourist advice, to go to the coast. We did not have much time, the sun was coming down. We hopped on the train and stopped at somewhere that looked rather nice, (Linda – “yes lets get off here… it looks like Italy”) called Granja. After some hopeless wondering about, and after coming across a rather concrete seafront, we had a lucky strike. A family offered to drive us to the local camp site at Espino. So off we went, and set up tent in a small campsite near the sea. Again, our 3-member team came up with a great meal, vegetable skewers and all. Afterwards we walked to the sea, through the graffitied walls and the passing train in the night and the orange lights. At the seafront we sat at a bar and had coffees. The waitress seemed offish but later bought us coffees and cake because it turned out it was her last night in Portugal – she was off to study in Switzerland, to become a doctor. The coast had that special smell that hits the bottom of your lungs, and the city was slumbering on the coast with the rail line in front of it. We went home, with the surreal sound of the circus in the next field, and slept.

In the morning, we went for runs on the beach and set off to Porto. At Porto we left our bags and wondered around the city. It is rather shockingly poor, with some terrible housing, and even some “shacks” right in the centre. We got lost in the alleys, watched the planes, walked the bridge, took a supper at a river-side restaurant. On the way to the hostel we stopped at a Shisha bar and relaxed deep into the cushions and reminisced about the trip. The hostel was clean and impressive, and within a few hours it was 6am, and time for Linda to catch her flight. We went off to the airport to have a little breakfast and say goodbye. It was sad (again!!) to say goodbye to a third of the team. We had made a good group, making direct decisions and speaking our mind. We had also been free and happy, and had had some really sweet, funny and special moments. So Linda went off back to England. She is in Corsica now with Soph, I think.