Saturday 14th September
On Saturday we took a long train ride up the Douro valley. It involved an early start to get into Porto for the 09:25 train which would take around 3 hours to get to it's terminus at Pocinho; 40 minutes to look around (more than plenty enough we discovered) and then 3 hours back.

For the best views the right hand side of the train is recommended and we bagged seats with a big window to look out of. The first hour of the journey wasn't much as we headed out through Porto's suburbs, the landscape becoming more rural as sweetcorn fields and grapevines replaced tiled terraced houses.

Finally the Douro came into view in a grand sweeping motion from high up on a hillside and from now on the track hugged the river and the views were fantastic.

After 2 hours we reached Regua where we mistakenly got off as our tickets made it look like we had to change trains, we jumped back on the train we had just got off with a minute to spare but by now had lost our window seats. We were still on the right hand side though and could see some of the view and over the next few stops enough people got off for window seats to come free. The views were of terraces of vines running right up the hillsides and as we headed further up the valley olive tree plantations also started to appear. Every so often the buildings of the wine farms (quintas) broke the ranks of terrace, the name of the house spelt out in big white letters the same as on the port houses in Porto.

The river narrowed through gorges and then windened into lakes above the hydroelectric dams. Tour boats pushed against the current and the river was well marked with red and green navigation buoys. The train ran right by the river, over bridges and through tunnels only crossing it once close to the end.

For the last 20 minutes of the trip we had a carriage to ourselves as the landscape became less cultivated, the earth dry and brown with scrubby bushes beyond the olive trees and vines. At our terminus at Pocinho most people got off the train and onto tour coaches; just a few of us set off to wander the town which took all of 10 minutes. A couple of bars and a cafe at the station was pretty much all there was.

For the return we got window seats for the whole way back, we even got a close up view of a forest fire a few hundred metres from the track, the whole height of the tall eucalyptus trees in flames. Luckily the wind was blowing away from the tracks and nearby houses.