Years ago the Guardian ran a piece about how journalists have a peculiar habit of making fatuous comparisons to communicate the size of things; these measurements include Wales, London buses, Wembley Stadium, and Belgium. The writer omitted other equally clichéd units of measurement, such as the height of Nelson's Column or the Eiffel tower.
I could just say that the Alentejo is quite large and sparsely populated, or adopt a more tabloid approach asserting that the province is indeed roughly the size of Belgium. Now having made one fatuous comparison it becomes impossible to resist another. When it comes to population - you could fill 128 Wembley stadiums with Belgians whereas you would require a mere 8 Wembleys to accommodate all the citizens of Alentejo.
So, if I had to describe the Alentejo in one word it would be 'quiet'. There is not much traffic, the towns on the whole are small and unassuming, though many have interesting ancient centres and ruined castles dot the landscape. The countryside is agricultural in the main, orange groves in the south, cereals in the middle and some seriously good wine from Borba and Estremoz. However, the landscape may be unassuming but it isn't boring, mostly gently undulating, with big fields interspersed with eucalyptus woods, big skies too, often blue and cloudless.
What drama there is comes at the province's extremities, in the west one of the most beautiful and undeveloped coastlines in Europe, to the east, close to the border with Spain, the river Guadiana winds through hillier and more rugged terrain; some of the valleys have been flooded to form huge reservoirs.
We have never systematically explored the Alentejo - though it certainly warrants it - instead we've tended to sample its delights while passing through on the way to somewhere else. In a way this time is no different, we are taking a week or so wandering northwards up the coast, but need to be in Sesimbre by the end of February to see the carnival, then we head for Lisbon to meet up with Gill's sister Jackie and her daughter Anna.
What we do after then is still a matter of conjecture. Perhaps drive north and visit Peniche, or maybe head straight back to Spain. Either way it involves another meandering trip through the back roads of Alentejo, overnighting in free parking places but using the municipal campsite at Serpa to empty the tank and replenish our white water.
It's a plan. As for more immediate plans, we changed those too. Originally we intended to head towards Sesimbre in a series of short hops, but that would have involved staying overnight in free parking places. The weather forecast for the next few days is fabulous, do we really want to spend the time parked on asphalt when we have the opportunity to relax in warm sunshine? So instead of heading for a night in an Intermarché car park in Sines we decided to spend a couple of days in a campsite in Vila Nova do Milfontes, then take it from there.
Vila Nova do Milfontes
I don't know what was up with me when we first visited here in late October 2018. Re-reading the blog I didn't have a good word to say about either the place or the campsite. There is an alternative site next door, but due to a sat-nav failure we ended up in the same place. I wasn't wrong about the site's failings, but this time they didn't seem to bother me. The weather was probably the thing that made the difference. It was very showery in 2018 whereas today it was summery, with deep blue sky and mid-afternoon temperatures that briefly reached 25°. Time to wind out the awning, recline the chairs and relax.
So far as the place itself is concerned, I really misjudged it badly before. The outskirts are quite bland, but the old town and its small fishing quay by the estuary are very attractive. What I dismissed as a bit grungy previously is actually quite stylish with a bit of a hipsterish vibe.
It's quite easy to get lost in the narrow streets, they look quite similar and are a bit of a maze. Gill found a good place for lunch, but we had already eaten back at van so we earmarked it for tomorrow.
As evening faded into twilight the sky lit up bright orange, the sunsets over the sea from here must be spectacular but we were cooking so only managed to hop out the van and take a snap of it through the trees.
Next day we cycled towards 'Porto de Barcos'. Like Zambujeira, Milfontes has a tiny fishing harbour situated a few kilometres north of the town.
Both are tucked into clefts in the cliffs with highly dangerous looking entrances full of rocks.
As well as having inexplicably courageous fishermen, Milfontes appears to be a magnet for suicidally minded surfers.
After spending quarter of an hour or so watching their antics, I realised that the main current ran diagonal to the shore, carrying the surfers away from the big rocks, still it was clearly not a place for beginners. I remembered a poem by Thom Gunn about surfing that I'd come across as a teenager, it's odd how some things stick with you. Of course I had to Google it.
We decided to look at the town's beaches before heading to '18 e Piques' for lunch. Unlike Zambujeira where the beaches are semicircular in big rocky coves here they are more extensive lining both sides of a broad estuary.
You can see why Milfontes has developed more as a small resort, still it's all very low key.
We managed to nab the last outside table at the restaurant. It did simple food, but very well. I had a 'grilled sandwich' - a toastie as we would say. Gill chose the quiche with salad.
Both were spot on, accompanied by two 'imperials' of Sagres (250ml) and pingados afterwards the bill for both of us was €12.
I could see us spending more time on the southwest coast of Portugal in future. It is consideredably less crowded than Spain, maybe it is a couple of degrees colder on average, but there is still a lot to explore, and because much of the Alentejo is low lying, the temperatures holds up inland, whereas the high plains of Spain can be be bone chilling in the winter.
Comporta
We woke to rain and the news that Russian forces had invaded Ukraine. It cast a shadow over the rest of the day. Maybe before the advent of 24hr news and smart phones travellers could disconnected themselves from what was happening in the world. Not so now, you would have to be much more self disciplined than we are to resist the temptation to peek every time your phone goes ping.
'The world is too much with us late and soon,' Wordsworth wrote. Big events have shadowed our travels from the outset. In 2015 on a remote beach in the Peloponnese we watched USAF F15s head towards targets in Syria while refugees poured into eastern Greece fleeing the conflict. The following year we wended our way along through Costa Tropica in glorious late autumn sunshine while I sympathised with my American Facebook friends after Trump's narrow victory. Brexit's first mention in the blog was in May 2016 - pre-dating the referendum; it made a whole series of appearances as the tragicomedy unfolded over the next four years. None of these things though have the same potential to upend the world order as we know it as the events of today.
There has been another occasion when
major nuclear powers invaded a sovereign country on a dodgy pretext, but that was Iraq and outside of Europe, so we tend to conveniently overlook it, especially since it was the West who were the aggressors back then. This feels different because this time it involves a direct stand off between NATO and Russia within the borders of Europe, and for children of the cold war like us, that feels depressingly familiar and quite disturbing.
After a month of sunshine a proper rainy day came as a shock, we had a bit of everything, drizzle, fog, the occasional flash of lightning and protracted downpours.
The refineries, big power station and port cranes at Sines looked dismal in the mist, especially as they appeared suddenly out of nowhere in an otherwise empty, unpopulated landscape.
We shopped at Intermarché and ate lunch in the car park. We had intended to stop overnight in Santiago do Cacem but with the rain coming down in sheets we pressed on to Comporta, which meant we have now got a bit ahead of ourselves, but the big sand spit at Troia looks interesting, it has a short bike trail, Roman ruins and lots of pine covered dunes. Perhaps enough to entertain us for a couple of days before we take the ferry across the Sado estuary and head for Sesimbre.
Next day the sky had cleared by mid-morning. We needed to find some bread for lunch. It was trickier than anticipated as Comporta is well down the road to gentrification.
Its traditional industries are still here to be seen - rice growing, fishing and wine - but clearly the place is also an up-market weekend retreat for wealthy Lisboaistas and ex-pats. Eventually we found a mini-market among the boutiques, wine shops, and estate agents. It is one of those villages where it is easier to purchase a stylish frock than some bread buns.
This clearly hasn't gone down a treat with all the locals as the place was covered in PCP posters. Unsurprising when a building plot for a villa was on sale for €I.3 million.
However my lasting impression of the place is unrelated to the dubious contention that all property is theft; I will remember Comporta for a different flight of fancy - as stork central.
There were big untidy nests everywhere, in trees, on chimneys, pylons and the arches of the church's belfry which had been purloined as a kind of stork squat.
We had noticed there was a bike trail running south from Troia at the tip of the peninsula. We decided to drive up in the van then go for a bike ride, also possibly spying out the times for the ferry to Setubal for tomorrow. Though the Troia peninsula looks like one big nature reserve on the map in reality the upper third of it is a swanky private resort. The place is as good an example of a commodified landscape I have seen outside of Florida, complete with a big golf course and stylish villas protected by fencing and CCTV. A lot of thought had been put into preventing an attempt by a feral motorhomer to spoil the view by doing something as vulgar as parking.
We drove 17kms.up to the tip, around a roundabout and then back to the area autocaravanas at Comporta where we had lunch.
Yesterday while browsing the nearby area on Google maps I noticed a 'tourist attraction' down a minor road about 7kms from here. It appeared to be in the middle of the salt marshes that run along the southern shore of the Sado estuary.
I have a thing about estuaries. From reviews and photos it appears Porto Palafita da Carrasqueira is a collection of ramshackle fisherman's huts on stilts linked by dilapidated walkways. Not in itself unique, but built on a scale that was almost grandiose. Is it possible for something to be both ramshackle and grandiose? We had to go and find out.
In the end the bike ride we took to Porto Palafita proved far more pleasing than the one we failed to manage earlier at Troia. Not just because of the site itself but the ride through the forests, fields and esturial marshes, along empty roads, through straggling old fishing villages with whitewashed single storey cottages was truly delightful. The only disappointment was when we stopped at the Gulato Comporta, described as both a Gelataria Esplanada and an ice cream lab, the owner popped out to explain that they only opened at weekends in the winter.
The other highlight of the day was social. After a month where all face to face interactions have been strictly transactional we managed three brief chitchats in a single afternoon. It turned out the Belgian couple next to us, as well as being well travelled motorhomers, were big fans of Lindisfarne, When they discovered that we were both born near Newcastle upon Tyne the woman became inexplicably delighted and even sang a snippet from 'Meet me on the corner ' to prove their status as Lindisfarne super-fans.
Next a British van turned up and owners wandered over to say hello. Things hummed along nicely at first when the topic of conversation centred on the local storks, however, when the pair mentioned they had just stayed at Alcacer do Sal, Gill enthusiastically began to to talk about the statue of Pedro Nunes outside the town hall. They looked perplexed. Helpfully I tried to explain how Nunes' pioneering development of Euclidean spherical trigonometry made navigation across oceans much safer in the 16th century and today's sat navs still work using geometry developed from the Portuguese mathematician's work . They smiled weakly, backed off and beat a hasty retreat, probably convinced we were both at best harmless eccentrics, but quite possibly dangerously insane.
Later we had a perfectly sensible conversation with a Portuguese couple who were visiting Porto Palafita with their two teenage children. The man had brought his kids to see the place because his uncle used to be a fisherman here and took him fishing in the estuary when he was a boy. The couple now lived in Suffolk and worked on an American airbase there. Their kids had been born in the UK and regarded themselves as Anglo-Portuguese. We chatted about how Brexit had made things complicated for them and how it had prevented Sarah and Rob staying in Lisbon long-term. I do find it easier to get on socially with people who are closer in age to my kids rather than in their sixties like us. Maybe it's the effect of working in further education colleges for over 30 years where most of the people I mixed with were younger than me.
Today we packed up and prepared to head towards Sesimbre to see the carnival next week. The Belgian couple wandered across to bid good-bye while we faffed about at the service point. They were experienced motorhomers and gave us some good tips about places to stay in south west Ireland, useful when we head there in late May. They seemed like nice people, but every time I talked to them I got a blast of random Lindisfarne my head - yesterday assailed by 'Meet me on corner' - the bit about the lights coming on and promising to be there; today it was the turn of the Fog on the Tyne to be all mine, repeatedly. I could become quite ill if it doesn't stop soon.
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