41°22.3'N 008°45.9 W Tuesday 8th September

Povoa do Varzim

Another good sail, a few miles down the coast, keeping a lookout for the world's first ever trial wave turbine sausage - wave energy project. The cable for this apparently extends about 3 miles to seaward from a point on the coast about 5 miles north of Povoa (pronounced pawvwah). It had cardinal marks and yellow buoys to alert shipping - we went as close as we could but couldn't see anything. R thinks they are gone. The actual structures are about 120 metres long and bright red, partially submerged. They are either totally submerged or missing!

Povoa a good stop, unbelievably helpful lady in the tourist office who gave us chapter and verse of everything in Povoa and the universe; and showed us wonderful old photographs of the fishing community. She explained the symbols, seen in front of houses, on boats, on stalls. These symbols were used by illiterate fishermen to denote their family. An extra stroke was added for each child born and each symbol was unique to each family. It was carved into everything the family owned, including the cork floats for their fishing nets. If a ship went down, or a net lost, they would know to whom it belonged.

Povoa has a daily market that is huge - on 4 floors. Ground floor all fish, lower ground fruit, veg and meat, 1st floor had linens, cookware, shoes, knickknacks and the top floor seemed to be for little smallholders - mainly little old ladies selling a few onions and carrots, cabbages and herbs - all on a very small scale. I bought the equivalent of sort of spring greens from one. Lots of dried salt cod and other fish - seen hanging up to dry in the unlikeliest places (beach, building sites etc!). Statue of stout fishwives really upset the locals, the tourist lady was at pains to assure us that the fishermen's wives were young and beautiful!


From Povoa you can get a metro to Porto (or Oporto as it is called locally). There is a 24 hour tour ticket that costs only €5. For that you get to Porto and back, and also can use any and all of the transport within Porto - buses, trams, metros, funiculars, etc - all included for that time. So that's what we are doing tomorrow. Might be easier than taking the boat up the river - and certainly cheaper as there is a marina on outskirts that is comparatively expensive - and you still need to find a bus / metro to the centre. Really looking forward to it, have always wanted to go.

Must try some white port again.....

p.s. apparently the wave turbines are there .....good thing we missed them - thick fog out to sea now.