Day 53: Viseu to Carvalhal

April 23, 2023

If your change the map from "RWGPS" to "Map" you will better see names of places on our route.

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We reserved most of the morning to check out the historic centre of Viseu. We have long ago learned that the newer parts of cities are invariably boring and/or cycle/pedestrian unfriendly, while the historic centres are invariably interesting.

This time we left the bikes at the hotel and set out on foot. We didn't have our directions straight at first, so we stopped a young woman walking by. It turned out she worked in our hotel. We asked the way to the Cathedral. Although to be sure there was a language problem, it was also clear that the woman had no idea. We decided that this was not necessarily remarkable, because something like a Cathedral likely plays no role in an ordinary person's life today. That leaves it as a tourist attraction, so why would a local know or care?

Well, we got our own bearings, and soon came to a nice fountain in a little square, and directly after that, the medieval narrow streets that we look for.

Narrow houses with balconies, reminiscent of Porto.

We also spotted one cat, which was something. With the exception of the hotel lady, the only sign of life in the Sunday morning streets of this town.

We did also find this Black Wagtail, which could be of interest to the pussycat.

Here we have what we would consider a miscellaneous statue, since we have no knowledge of Portuguese royalty or leadership.

OK, we looked up Duarte a little bit. Duarte is Portuguese for Edward, and he was called Edward the Philospher King, for some reason. He took the throne in 1433, after his father died of plague. His mother incidentally also died of plague, and in 1438, so did he. He also had heartache in his reign, as he launched an attack on the Moors, near Tangier, and lost. His brother, Henry (Henry the Navigator - famous for exploration along the coast of Africa) negotiated a deal for the escape of the Portuguese army, in which the other brother, Ferdinand, was left as a hostage to ensure the deal was carried out (involved return of the city of Ceuta, near Gibraltar, which had been nabbed in 1415). But the parliament ("cortes") would not ratify the deal, and Ferdinand died in Fez in 1443. Talk about William and Harry - at least nobody in the current British royal family is handing his brother to the Moors!

btw, Duarte got his statue here because he was born in Viseu.

We did, of course, make it to the Cathedral, but it was a bit confusing. The building designated the Cathedral was closed and under renovation, and quite dull looking overall. However directly opposite was a grander building, the Church of Misericordia. It also was closed, so all we could do was to read the sign on the front.

Given the closed state of affairs in the vicinity of the Cathedral, there was still some excitement for us, in the form of an open souvenir shop. We got some more postcards, ones which we think are really good. I also begged for and got a fridge magnet that says Viseu N2. What I did not get were the pictured wonderful Knights Templar socks. I missed a chance to be the only one in Canada with Knights Templar socks!

We carried on, and have no fear, did find one or two open and highly decorated churches. We also found a building in the Jewish quarter suspected of having been a synagogue. For non-religious people we sure do seek out a lot of religious sites. But really, without these what would there be to seek out? (Ok, we do often also seek out Decathlon!)

The fourth building from the left is for sale. How cool it would be to live there!

Here is one church that was open to visit.

The church had a very decorative dome, and also blue tile frescoes on all the walls. The wooden ceiling was also frescoed, but very faded now.

back out in the street, we came upon an unusual statue, that depicted a man at a desk. We could not figure out who this represented, but in general, people at desks have as much or or more potential to be heroic and statue worthy as ones on horseback. Around the back of the statue was an unreadable plaque with some information, and also an interesting touch - a QR code in the brass. Maybe because it was raining, I could not read the code, but it is still a nice modern touch.

OK, more modern technology to the rescue. With the help of Google Lens, this is a statue of the great local writer . Want to know more? Ask ChatGPT-4!

The next modern touch was spotting this Citroen C-Zero electric car. It's a very low range city car, and I like it. However it is perhaps not so modern, because it is a re-badge of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV from 2010, and anyway has already been replaced by the Citroen Ami, that I pictured at Coimbra. The thing about all these models is that we are not seeing them at all in North America. Perhaps the distances are just too great there. But we do also have cities, sort of.

Our next (and last!) church on this walk was the Church of San Francisco. It had a service in progress, and I was surprised at how full the church was. When we reached the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella in 2017, we were impressed by the singing of a nun during the service. Now, here too, they had someone with a nice voice, and a good male singer was there too. Because of the crowd I never did see the singers, but I did record just a snippet of their wonderful duet.

Back through the park, we saw where they had preserved (or rather, not removed) a 400 year old oak tree. A plaque in front explained (in Portuguese) what was going on here when the tree was standing.

The park (Aquilino Ribeiro Park) also had a small lake, containing Koi, and also a running stream. We thought the park was a great thing to have near the centre of town.

"Azulejos" are "tiles" and as we have seen they play a large part in Portuguese culture and architecture, particularly when facing buildings and also as the base for frescoes. Viseu is proud of the one shown below, which forms a quite long mural, with traditional scenes.

Satisfied that we had seen the essence of old Viseu, we continued our trek North, again following N2 (and the proud owners of a Viseu-N2 magnet). In the afterglow of the Santa Comba Dau ecopista, it was a bit of a revelation that the way could be mountainous and the road not exactly bike friendly.

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Here were are on N2 again, but we could not say it's particularly scenic, or even safe.

We did find that we were again climbing a fair bit. People always say that Northern Portugal is hilly, and guess what - Northern Portugal is no longer some theoretical other place, it's where we are now! That behind is the road we descended before climbing to where this shot was taken.

We have noticed flowers here that look a little like Lobelia, but they are not.

Fields of various flowers has been a big part of our travel here.

Those blue flowers have a violet variant.

Once again we find ourselves high enough to be looking down on villages.

The climbing we have done today has been largely due to three rivers. The largest of these, with the deepest valley, was the Vouga. There is an Ecopista do Vouga which did parallel our route for a bit, before swinging off West.

The big road can not be bothered descending into a river valley and coming back out. Rather it just jumps across. But cyclists go down, down, and then up, up.

That bit about things getting rougher in Northern Portugal is borne out a bit but this sign, which we have seen a lot today.

I took this just for something to do while waiting for Dodie to catch up at one point. These flowers are everywhere hereabouts. (The picture would have been been improved had I moved my big foot.)

Cobbles are a cyclists bain, and are found in all towns in Portugal. Here, you could buy a bag of them if you liked.

If the cobbles are too fine for you, you can snap up some small boulders.

For a short time we are in an area where cobbles were a hot commodity.

Our hotel, the Palace Hotel Asturias, is billed as four star and encompasses some spa features. Just nearby is a hot spring with pool, so maybe that is part of it. A review mentioned that swimming here is possible but is billed at 20 euros per hour. The author mused that at that price they must be using holy water.

This could be a good time for us to ponder, just where is this tour headed? In the short run, it is still clear, because we remain on target. Following along the N2, we will soon hit Peso da Regua, on the Douro River. The river runs West from there to Porto, about 100 km away. But East on the river is the Port wine region. We will begin by turning East, to Pinhao. Depending on how we like the road and the area, we could make further excursions East. Or, we could turn around and run for Porto. If we do that, we will arrive in Porto about 10 days early. We are just that fast! If that happens, we will continue, probably North of Porto, on the Atlantic. We could almost make it to Santiago de Compostella, but then like some Everest climbers, we could never make it back down! Stay tuned, there is lots more to see!

Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 2,326 km (1,444 miles)

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