Furby asked
Why could the boat cruise a bit under bridges but not its full cruise
The Douro has several dams along its course, and our boat had to get up and down at least three of them, beginning with a 46 foot lift at Crestuma which was around 90 minutes up the river. Around 2 hours after that we would have had to go up another lock at Carrapatelo and that lift would have been 115 feet. Later on another day there was a third lock to negotiate at Bagaúste and that would have been an 84 foot lift. The excess water in the river meant that these locks couldn't be negotiated safely. At one point there were 17 boats stuck on the river - 13 wanting to go upstream and 4 wanting to come downstream back to Oporto.
Day 4 - Friday April 5
On this day we should have been at our furthest point up the Douro and on a 2 hour coach ride to Salamanca but we were still moored in Oporto. Before breakfast the Captain decided to make a break for it, and I watched us leave Oporto from my cabin as it was before breakfast; I watched for what seemed like a fair distance and then got myself ready for breakfast. Off I went and remarked cheerfully to one of the waiters that I bet he was glad we were on our way. He looked at me with a doleful expression and told me that we had to return to Oporto. So I ate my breakfast, wondering what Diogo was going to come up with today.
The answer was - a damn good day! We headed to a town called Lamego and this was very good. The town is dominated by a church on a hill overlooking the main thoroughfare of the town.
The town square (really a massive rectangle) has four fountains leading up to the stairway to the church, each fountain representing a season of the year. Then, if you are starting at the bottom, you climb the 686 steps of the Stairway to Heaven and presumably feel that you have served a very arduous penance when you get to the church. We didn't have to serve a penance because the coach went all the way to the church. There are public conveniences nearby so we all used those, and an advantage of being a man on the cruise quickly emerged; we were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the ladies so we didn't have to queue for our conveniences! Diogo or one of his guides told us that the church was called Our Lady Of The Remedies, the remedy being mother's milk for the Infant Jesus. The Virgin Mary at this church was depicted breast feeding the baby Jesus and they had to get a special dispensation from the Vatican for this portrayal. Here she is!
This pic shows the first terrace near the top of the Stairway to Heaven. It's a double staircase punctuated by terraces so you aren't doing them all in one go. Right at the top on the first terrace but better viewed from the top are pillars on top of which are some of the kings of Portugal. Some of them look as if they are doing a little dance.
Some of our party, including me, went down all the stairs -there was a stone banister you could keep your hand on to make sure you retained your balance. On most of the terraces there was a big picture made of blue and white tiles which were made in a factory in Gaia where our boat was still moored. Some of the tiles are quite badly damaged and could do with restoring but I think the factory where they were made might have gone out of business. Here's a nice pic I stole of the top tiled picture.
So down we trundled, and when we got to the bottom of the Stairway to Heaven I noticed that we were right by the sign for an establishment called Presunteca where we were booked to have a wine tasting. So in I went, collecting a little platter of cheese and cold meats and my small glass of wine. What a delicious snack! I decided the snack needed a decent audit, so had another - nobody else was coming into their wine tasting shop so I wasn't taking anybody else's share. Several small glasses of wine helped it all go down very nicely.
Then it was time to wend our way to the meeting point for the coaches. The old lady Chris resumed her escape attempts, this time heading straight for the coach park where she had seen other people, not in our party, heading for. I saw tour guide Lucillia hurrying in the same direction and I wondered why she was in such haste, and shortly afterwards discovered it was to prevent Chris from getting into the wrong coach. Great hilarity for all, and Chris wasn't really embarrassed - she joined in all the chuckles.
Then we headed to Quinta da Pacheca where we should have had our Welcome Dinner on our second night; we were going to have lunch there today. Diogo was able to do all this rearranging because North Portugal has got a very good motorway and highways network with tunnels (some of them very long) and very long bridges over the valleys and most of it has been paid for by the EU. Here's a pic of the Quinta; sadly, our boat wasn't one of those moored on the river!
We had a good lunch there after a little talk about their port etc. I recall I decided the desserts required further audit - a cheescake and another confection, I forget what. I can't even remember what the main course was, but it was all good.
Then back to Gaia and the boat. We had a very good dinner and I think this might have been shredded duck in a filo pastry cylinder with nearly black rice arranged in a solid disc with other nice things packed into it. The rice was quite solid so you could eat the disc almost like a vegetable - bits of it on your fork with a bit of duck and it all staying on the fork etc. As usual my wine glass miraculously was never empty until I had finished dinner. By then I had fallen in with a group of nice people. A lady from Wigan who lived in Cumbria, so that was a good start; I made friends with them on my first proper day on the boat. She had come with her friend and neighbour, a retired lady from Yorkshire who didn't look old enough to be retired. The other chap in our little group called Mike lived in Warrington, though he had worked abroad and was brought up in Portsmouth. The final lady hailed from up North but lived mainly abroad in Egypt but was a great traveller. She was in the cabin next to me and Mike was up the other end of the corridor on our deck. It turned out I had the cabin above the Yorkshire Lass; she said that she had been kept awake by the person above her using the loo a lot during the night and flushing it, and it was incredibly noisy. I wondered if that had been me, because the flush was like a very noisy vacuum cleaner for a few seconds before it went quiet, so I asked her which cabin was she in. After dinner we checked the boat plan and decided it was me. So I told her one flush after dinner and then it would be quiet until around 06:30 next morning except for dire emergency. She was very grateful and then became highly embarrassed and hoped I wasn't upset or angry or anything. I thought that we were having a hilarious conversation and told her and of course I wasn't offended etc and I just wanted her to have a quiet night.
I digress. After dinner we all went to the bar lounge where Diogo was going to have a short quiz after giving us more information. One lady in particular had a bit of a strop and said it was all very well to visit extra vineyards but what good was that to her as she didn't drink alcohol. Nice lunches in pleasant surroundings dear, thought I, the poor man is doing his best for us etc. We had already been promised compensation for every day we hadn't sailed, but the big offer was yet to come. However, Diogo managed to do the quiz which our group won by a couple of points, and we won a bottle of wine to share. So a very good day had ended nicely; and off I went to bed.
Like the late Chaircat Midge, I am not always right.