Douro valley and wine country - part 2

Next day starts very sunny so we continue down the south side of the river. This time the road hugs the river passing 'wall to wall' vineyards with all the well known 'quinta' (Sandeman, Dows etc) until reaching Palau a really nice little village with a 4 star hotel. We met the tour guide of the Saga cruise boat which was moored there for lunch. We coffee'd in the superb but suitably expensive hotel, took photos of the ornate tiled railway station before moving on.

This was the most hair raising bit of driving I have ever done! First decided to see a bit of the north side of the river which started flat then turned upwards and narrowed with no turning back and no edges to the road which dropped also most vertically away on every bend.We reached a wine lodge half way up the hill, managed to turn round in the entrance and retrace our journey. This time we were on the the outside of the bends meeting local traffic coming up fortunetely not too many and not too wide! The correct road to Sabrosa was almost as bad but at least had barriers and was wider. Strangely enough there was hardly any traffic on this road for the whole of the 1500 ft hair pin ascent. Amazing views of the vine yards below - when I could take my eyes off the road.

Sabrosa was the birthplace of Ferdinand Magellan, the explorer, navigator and first man to plan a voyage around the world. He was actually killed on the voyage and did not complete it himself, contrary to popular history books. I took a GPS fix on his house to within 25yds with my Magellan 210, he would surely have been both honoured and amazed. For the record N41deg 15.891sec, W7deg 34.550sec and 1880 ft ASL

Last scheduled stop of the day was at the Solar do Mateus, the country house famous for being on that bottle of rose wine. Mostly UK tourist here, not very impressive place really, but we have been - not got the T shirt.

Onwards and westwards now along the IP4 back towards Porto. This is a 3 lane highway, two lanes uphill and 1 lane down. Never driven down a 8500 metre (5 mile) 12% gradient persued by a string of lorries before. Glad to stop the night at Amarante before the final site seeing (in Portugal) at Braga. Rosemary is cooking raditional fish stew with rice from bag/kit at supermarket - god knows what is in it. Only 1000 steps to climb at Bom Jesus tomorrow then we can hit the coast for some relaxation.