Peneda-Gerês - Rio Homem Excursion

As part of our efforts to find good photographic locations, Ann and I decided to explore a part of the Peneda-Gerês that we hadn’t been to before,  This trip too us through the park’s namesake town - Gerês - and right up to the border with Spain.  

Like all good adventures (well, not all I guess, but it happens more in Portugal than in other places I’ve been to) I made a wrong turn at one point and took a trip up a very windy back-back road.  It was, of course, a road on the map - but definitely not the road we wanted to be on.  After about a 20 minute drive, we decided to see where we actually were and, of course, had to turn around.  But at least we know of another area we can go to to just get away from things.

Back on our main trail we hit an area with an abandoned building and a nice parking area, so we stopped.  It turned out to be the first real crest of the mountains, Portela de Leonta,  where water on one side flows to one river, and the water on the other side flows to a very different river, that does not connect with the first.  This is where we made the images that were in the last blog post. 

You can see the steep hillsides that make up the valleys in this part of Portugal.  It’s incredibly beautiful, but very difficult to photograph well.  

The thing Ann and I really appreciated though, was up here the trees were very different than where we’d been before (where there is a whole lot of Eucalyptus) and that gave us some opportunities to photograph trees similar to the ones we had in Oregon. 

It was a lovely cool morning with rolling clouds, so we has patches of sun and shadow pass by as we photographed.

We’d traveled to this part of the park to explore the area beyond this point.  Unfortunately a sign here said that there was no parking along the road between this Casa and the parking area at the border.   We could see why, with a beautiful mix of trees along the road as we passed by, and what looked to be a beautiful trail along the River Homem not far from the border.  We hit the parking area at the border and measured the distance back - roughly 1 km - so we could easily park and hike in when the fall comes and the leaves change.

So we headed back down the mountain and took a café break in Gerês.  I’d plotted ourselves a potential route that took us along the side of the mountains until we would hit the next major valley and we decided that the day was still young enough to try it.  I often plan for a variety of routes, knowing that sometimes photo shoots do not pan out (like that day did).  I was definitely glad I did that day.

The route out of Gerês took us up a steep, switchback route along the mountainside overlooking the town (not that I was looking in that direction because the road was rather narrow and I didn’t want to go plowing into anything coming down the hill).  At one point we passed by a sign that said “Campus de Futebol” and a side-road that looked like it ran straight down the mountainside and I said to Ann, “A soccer campus, up here?”

Well, we eventually stopped climbing and suddenly came to an open area with a lookout, so I pulled over.  From the lookout you could see that, indeed, there was a soccer field perched on the side of the mountain.  I guess if you look at Gerês at the bottom of the valley, there really isn’t any place to put a soccer field down there.  As I’ve said, the valleys in this area are steep V shaped, that leave very little in the way of flat low-lands until you leave the mountains.

The view in the other direction from the viewpoint showed what that’s like.  You also see what is so common here in the north of Portugal, dams.  Most of Portugal’s power comes from hydroelectric, despite the plethora of windmills that are appearing.  There seems to be a dam or two along every major waterway in the north.

As the road swung around the mountainside Ann and I finally found what we were looking for.  Accessible areas that are relatively flat that we could hike out into and explore with our cameras.  And, for once, there were actually parking areas along the road.  This was a place certainly worth coming back to under better photographing conditions.  So we marked the location on a map and continued onward.

Indeed, there were several areas between Gerês and Campo Gerês I think we would enjoy taking our time to photograph.

As we left our trip along the M533, we came across an ancient Roman milestone erected around 250 AD that marks mile XXVII of the Via Nova Roman Road.  It was in the intersection with the N307, so we pulled off into a parking area and went into the circle to photograph it.

We sure didn’t get stuff like this in the US . . . .

We’d parked in the parking lot of an Ethnographic Museum so we decided to take a step in to look around.  At the shop there we hit pay dirt.  Not only was I able to get a couple of detailed maps of the park (one a very good topographic map with trails), the guide had some great advice about how to explore the Homen River where we’d been earlier in the day.  It involves parking where we’d turned around, but he told us about a nice trail that runs behind a big sign that most people miss.  He said it was one of the nicest hikes in the park, with a nice mix of Beech trees and the river.  

It was getting to be around lunch time, so Ann and I decided to travel over to Ponte da Barça for lunch.  Ponte de Barça is on the Lima River, upstream from Ponte de Lima, which we’d visited on one of our trips last year before the lock-down started.  And just like Ponte de Lima, it’s famous for its bridge built in the Middle Ages (the 1400s).  

Not far from the bridge we found a restaurant along a creek and manage to grab a window seat with a good view.  The waiter said their specialty is their meats, which are all local, so we both passed up on the seafood dishes and went full carnivore.

The waiter was right.  Oh, unbelievable.  The best meat dishes we’ve had . . . well at least mine was!

So we finally found a couple of areas that we can set out to explore with cameras.  I would call that a successful exploratory trip.

Ann and I are heading out again this weekend to explore yet other locations - parts we’ve been to before, others new.  Hopefully the rains let up a bit and we get a chance to make some photographs.