May 14. Porto to Peso da Regua

 Our cabin is very comfortable and I'm really hoping nobody notices the hole I put in the wardrobe door when I hefted our metal suitcase.

After breakfast we were treated to a bus tour of Porto. So we traipsed across the pier into the set of big buses - most people on this tour are pretty old and slow. From the accents so far I think they're largely English. Probably because it's a slow moving crowd we were just dropped at the cathedral and then the group walked the short distance to the train station and back. Well, most people did, Lynn and I wandered off because we've seen most of that.

The standard system for tour now is that you have a little radio receiver with an earpiece charging in your cabin and when you're on an excursion you wear it round your neck, while your guide has a transmitter. Lynn refuses to ever use one. It's pretty crackly and when the guide got further away I found I was listening to some other tour group entirely. Anyway, it was all fairly painless and we were back on board before the ship unmoored at midday.

Because we were moored right at the mouth of the river we had to pass through the town, which was pleasant.

In the afternoon the scenery was all steep valley walls and wild forest. After afternoon tea we passed through Carrapatelo Lock, which seems to legitimately be the tallest lock in Europe with a rise of about 35 metres. It looks like there will be a few more big locks to come. At the top there was very little room below the bridge that tops the lock. The bridge cabin at the bow, and a lounge at the back, both collapsed down to half height like a poptop caravan.

It was only late in the day that vines started to replace the forest. In the evening we stopped and were bussed to a winery, Quinta da Pacheco, for dinner. For the (unlikely) alert reader, this is indeed the quinta where we had lunch four days ago. The conversation and tendency to sing along to the music confirmed the passengers are mostly English.

A quirk of the Douro is that ships aren't allowed to travel at night, so we remain moored at Peso da Regua. This is why we get some time underway during the day and why during some excursions the ship will continue on while we're ashore.

10 May. Douro Valley

On the road again, this time a two hour drive north to the Douro Valley. All good motorways and the minibus is pretty comfortable, so we read and dozed until we got to a winery at about 11am. Unfortunately it got colder and wetter and is now kind of grey and damp, which may be typical for the region. The Quinta Pacheca is large enough to take coaches and give guided tours, after which we got a wine tasting and a platter lunch. We wandered around in the wait until we were picked up again.

Then an hour on to another winery, this time the Quinta de Val Moreiro where we're staying the night. We got here late afternoon and have nothing else planned for the day. There's a decent sized hotel spread up the hillside run by Vila Gale, which is where we stayed in Coimbra too.