Campervan Therapy

So, we follow the red and yellow signed circular trail around Covas. We walk under huge ancient oak trees, cork oak and Portuguese laurel. Willows and poplars line the Coura River.

Eventually we cross the bridge and take the forestry track across the hillside to the old dam’s ruins.

The sandstone track weaves through shrubs and trees that are suddenly Mediterranean rather than Atlantic in influence.

Wild cistus, mastic and Mediterranean pines, the ground littered with fat cones.

The sign takes us on a detour to the old dam workings, the second dam built in the whole of Portugal, and points down a zig-zagging dirt track. Soon I’m slip-sliding down the slope which is made into a natural slide with fallen eucalyptus leaves.  I resort to a strange sitting-shuffle over the boulders and then, as if that’s not enough, I have to climb down a ladder in the rock face.

Soon, we’re standing below the wall of the old 1912 dam’s relief channel. It’s a ghostly place, the incongruous industrial ruins in among tangled undergrowth and under towering trees.

Himself is in heaven, studying the dam and what I think is a creeper winding through the brambles at first but, he informs me, is a mineral insulated copper clad cable, or, as he is a one for acronyms, MICC.

I’m preoccupied though as a mysterious tail disappears between the stones on the wall. Rat? Lizard? Or, as we came across earlier, the longest snake we’ve ever seen in the wild? A quick google suggests it could be a Portuguese Viper, then again maybe not. I’m so obsessed by the tail that slithered into the rocks that I miss my technical one’s fact file on MICC. Some may call it a lucky escape, but I’m transfixed by the ladder I now have to climb up onto the tall relief channel – it’s attached to the wall by the hole where the dreaded tail disappeared.

Eventually, I climb up. Once up there we trace the channel along until there’s yet more scrambling up ladders and we’re on a walkway suspended over the river as it enters Coura Gorge. Himself saunters across the walkway, desperate to hunt out the dam’s industrial heritage.

I follow, only to freeze half way across as the trees clinging to the cliff-side disappear and there’s a sheer drop to the rocks and swirling water below. Soon I’m cursing myself for my usual fit of amnesia. I’ve got vertigo, so why do I always find myself following Himself out onto a cliff edge and then having to be rescued as I stand, legs shaking, clinging onto, in this case, random ferns?

So it is that we have to retrace our steps, and follow the signs back to Covas, and I recover my equilibrium at the sights of the vine-tunnels over the paths lined by stout stone walls, kiwis scrambling over garden fences, hens pecking in the dust, vibrant purple morning glory and red roses over archways.

The final remedy for such an adventurous afternoon is coffee and the delicious Portuguese custard pie, Pastel de Nata, in the local bar.