Beira Day 8 - Portas de Ródão

The trip home is an epilog: rewinding the days, playing back the highlights, and considering their impacts. This day looks cloudy, but the sun lays a patch of light onto our new neighbor Ana's garden. Before we leave, we receive the bounty; Ana stops us to give us fresh eggs from her chickens, and bags of just-picked peppers, potatoes, and onions.

The Beira Interior offers an education, not only in history and architecture, but in the land and the people. A resort vacation is a luxury, but doesn't tell a story. Try traversing a thirty-foot fortress wall, finding fresh bread in a tiny village, or sitting in a stone house under a boulder. It's impossible to have an experience and not absorb something of the place – a texture, a smell, or a color.

We try to explain to Ana that she's offering too much. How will we park and carry all this as well as our luggage? She does not take 'no' for an answer, and threatens to go get more. We will carry Portugal's frontier land home with us, and enjoy it for some time.

 

We break our drive home at the Portas de Ródão, a sharp, rocky promontory split by the Rio Tejo. Down the dirt road, there is a tiny chapel (Capela de Nossa Senhora do Castelo), and a small castle tower (Castelo do Rei Wamba). The Portas slow the Tejo long enough to form a pair of lakes on either side of the 'gate', and there is a miradouro with splendid views over the lakes and the headlands.

 

 

The over-sized information board also illustrates several birds that can be seen in the area. From the watchtower, the sign seems so big that it would interfere with the birdwatching.

There is an old legend about the Portas involving a Muslim king and a Christian queen, in love and separated by the river. Before they can run away, the queen is caught and sentenced to death. Before her sentence is carried out, she curses the people of this valley:

Adeus Ródão, adeus Ródão,

Cercada de muita murta,

E terra de muita puta,

Não terás mulheres honradas,

nem cavalos regalados,

nem padres coroados.

[Goodbye Ródão, goodbye Ródão,

Surrounded by a lot of myrtle,

And land of a lot of whores,

You won't have honorable women,

nor regaled horses,

nor crowned priests.]

She is then tied to a stone and thrown from the cliffs. But that's some curse.