In the national park

[posted by Samuel]
We have spent three nights in the village called Caldes do Geres where Sir Nicolas Trant stayed (along with Clarissa) to recuperate from ill health. It is still a Spa and according to Tanya (who was one of the family running our hotel in Geres) this reputation dates back to the eighteenth century. Geres lies among mountains in a national park to the north of Porto. In fact Spain has a national park which meets the Portugese National Park along the frontier with the Spanish province of Galacia, which is quite close to where we were staying. So for one of our hikes in the mountains we drove up to the Spanish border and crossed over to have lunch in Spain.
We then attempted to follow the Roman road that led back into Portugal. Initially we followed what turned out to be a track leading to the fire watching tower. This had wonderful views of the surrounding hills and the river beneath.
When we had reached the high point, we returned to the border and managed to find the Roman road, which was not particularly straight or easy to walk  along. There are supposed to be Roman milestones on the Roman road but we could not identify them.

Earlier in the day we had stopped on the road and walked for nearly an hour amoung a fairly barren rocky landscape dominated by granite boulders, often piled up on top of one another on mountain peaks. The whole area is very dry. This seems to be a recent climate trend, according to people we spoke to. Twenty years ago, the climate was much wetter. It looks as if the trees and vegitation are suffering from the dry winters and fire is a major risk. When I visited Galcia, the adjoining province of Spain in 1994, it was more like Wales in climate, but the area now feels more like the South of France except that it is COLD. We had to wear fleeces indoors at night. In the mornings, it was chilly but by mid afternoon was tolerable.  Now we have left the mountains it is colder in the evenings but not chilly.

We saw ice in the mountains. Snow is apparently quite common in the first two months of the year.