The Port Run – Heading back to Porto

 The point has probably been overstressed, but from that visit to Taylors in the mountains, we had a wonderful time.  The bus ride back to Lamego, the next day where we did our individual projects, and then our final night up there, terribly sorry as we looked from the utmost balcony of the staircase down on the fairylit market square, as we never really wanted to leave this place.

 Leave we did, but we did it in style, and our luck with transport continued.  We had to catch a narrow gauge train from Regua up the Tua valley to Vila Real.  A little two car diesel train was laid on as usual, but as well as the usual mix of Portuguese peasants, there was our entourage, and a group of twenty or so British train enthusiasts.  We crowded onto this little train which then strained out of the station and started to rise up the valley.  The scenery was breathtaking for the whole route, the railway wrapped around the contours instead of bridging any gap, so we twisted and turned in amongst the woods and terraces.  It lurched over rough track and struggled up the steep gradients.  But the combined weight of train enthusiasts and students with the usual was too much and at a little station 18 Kilometres from Regua, we paused, and stopped, and everyone got off, and the news filtered back that the engine had overheated.

Breakdown at K18

Although an actual station it was truly in the middle of nowhere, and there seemed no way that people could get in or out.  Our coach had left us at Regua and was to meet us at Vila Real at the other end, and there were no mobile phones to ring around then.  So, in the heat of the day, with crickets buzzing around, we stood and waited for the engine to cool down.  The driver finally decided to give it a go, and we all trooped back in like something from a Reverend Awdry story and he got the engine going.  He eased us gently out of the station and rattled along for another hour before arriving, safe and sound in Vila Real.

 The coach now started to head for Porto , but as with our trip up, we took a circuitous route.  We stopped for lunch in the lovely little city of Amarante, its neat little cathedral next to a sturdy bridge, everything from the fountains and walls to the plant pots and gargoyles made of the same brown granite.  On the wide stretch of river beside us, a few day-trippers paddled the strangest boats around, basic flat planks with two seats and an umbrella sticking up.

Amarante Cathedral

Amarante

Park in Amarante

The afternoon heat was dreadful, and we stopped at a park atop a hill, a long avenue of wide shady trees affording us some comfort from the worst ravages of the heat.  Then we headed back to Porto.  It must have been less than thirty miles, but the roads were dreadful.  Most of the gang were tired by now, but somehow, I had been left with Mike’s two little boys sitting next to me.  We started chatting as you do to young boys, them telling you the most ridiculous stuff about the toys they are playing with, but we progressed on to telling jokes.  Unfortunately, some of the best ones they told to their mother, and she was not amused when one of them went up to her and said “What’s green and goes backwards”, and then did a huge sniff.  I got told off for that.  I thought it safer to think of some old campfire songs I knew from my scouting days, and taught them “Going on a lion hunt”.  Alison in our group told me that she learnt it I the Guides as “Going on a Bear Hunt”, but it worked just the same with a lion.  You stick your tongue against the back of the bottom lip and sing.  The leader tells you what to sing and everyone else repeats it.  This great work goes like this:

 Going on a lion hunt

(Going on  a Lion hunt)

I’m not scared

(I’m not scared)

Got me gun by me side

(Got me gun by me side)

Bullets too!

(Bullets too!)

Coming to some mud

(Coming to some mud)

Can’t go round it

(Can’t go round it)

Can’t go over it

(Can’t go over it)

Have to go through it

(Have to go through it)

Schlup Schlup Schlup

 This gets repeated with a tree (one potato, two potato type movements)  and some grass (Swish swish swish swish) before

Coming to a cave etc.

Ooh its dark in here

I can feel something furry

It’s very warm

It’s got a big mane

IT’S A LION

Dum dum dum dumdumdumdumdumdumdum Swish swish swish dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum  Plop plop plop plop dumdumdumdumdumdumdum Schlup Schlup

 It then finishes with everyone vowing never to go on another lion hunt………

 You have to be there.  Whatever, the kids loved it, and although almost everyone else was supposed to be asleep, they all overheard me keeping the kids entertained and insisted I taught them Lion Hunt in a bar in Villa Nova de Gaia that night.  We got thrown out soon after.

The Port Run – Moulding of the family

 As for our lecturers, we felt at the start that we had been short changed.  Our original partnership was to have been Ian Simmons, an eminent biogeographer and ecologist, a wonderful and provoking lecturer and a hugely likeable if somewhat tangential professor, and Helen Goldie, an inexperienced, young lecturer, who was also extremely likeable.  Unfortunately, Ian had to pull our almost at the last minute, and two other lecturers had to come in.  Dougie Pocock was one of my heroes at Durham.  Slow moving but quick witted, he was involved in teaching dry social geography, but his passion, which he passed on to me, was in humanistic and perceptual geography.  Perceptual geography dealt with how we perceived space and the world around us, a topic I still wish I had more time to look into.  While most geographers drew maps to scale and found facts on their nearest hillside, Douglas showed us how we see our space differently, throughout the seven ages of man, and wherever we have come from.  The best example I remember was a Christmas card that Doncaster Borough Council sent to MP’s in London.  It drew a sketch of Britain, and had a thick line showing the M1, petering out into a cobbled road and finally an arrow saying, Donkey carts from here, finally reaching Doncaster.  Humanistic geography took it one stage further, instead of how we perceive our space, it looks at how we feel and express space, through our words, thoughts, music and art.  Although it got bogged down in its own language, I also felt it was a much misjudged branch of the discipline, and should have been more pivotal as themes such as appealing, preserving or creating landscapes, tourism, culture, roots and background are all central to the way we live our lives.  But Dougie was thrown on us at the last minute, and I always felt he was less prepared for Porto than the rest of us.  He worked in an interesting way, very pedantic, carefully and cautiously.  But he also just did what he wanted.  I remember that he said to my tutorial group one time “No-one seems to notice that I am just here doing my little area of geography for my own pleasure.  I like it, I love Durham, I need never go anywhere else, and I just hope no-one else notices that I don’t really contribute to anything apart from my own little world”. He then put his finger to his lips “ Don’t  tell anyone will you”.

 He could not stay the whole time and there was an overlap between him and Jim Lewis.  I found Jim a youngish arrogant lecturer of human geography.  He forced arguments down your throat, and reminded me of Mel Smith in looks, temperament, actions and words.  He came out to Portugal an old hand, he was a visiting lecturer at Coimbra University to the south of Porto, spoke fluent Portuguese and knew everything there was to know of the place.  But even he, who I thought I could never get to like, and I am sure he thought I was never to be someone he would have the time of day for, seemed to mould himself in the group, and as his bravado diminished he began to appreciate the cogs of the team.

 With all the tensions, age differences, backgrounds and origins, it was amazing that we ever got through the first week, but by the time we thanked Taylor’s boss and some of us got a lift back along the precarious track in a minibus, others walked and most of them drifted back to the road by boat, we were one big happy family.