The road to Penamacor from the regional capital, Castelo Branco, leads north-east, with little deviation, for about 50 kilometres of flattish agricultural land and scrubland. On the way, it passes through a few sleepy villages before reaching Penamacor – Escalos de Cima (which sounds to me more like an hors d’oeuvres than a place), São Miguel de Acha, Pedrogão. Or, rather, it splits each of these small villages into two parts, and, in so doing, rather destroys the character of each.
Fortunately for us, Penamacor perches on one of the foothills of the Serra de Malcata, a national park in which once roamed Iberian lynx; if the park authorities are successful, the lynx will be reintroduced in the wild, having been bred in captivity. I would ordinarily be very enthusiastic about this endeavor, but having your infant grandson potentially living in open country only a couple of kilometres from the edge of the park tends to change your perspective somewhat.
However, the advantage of being perched on a hill is that the through road skirts the hill, and does not touch the village, which makes living in, and walking up and down, the village a much more pleasant experience.
The disadvantage, of course, is that the five-minute walk back from the China shop (see last week’s post) to the house involves either ascending a cobbled street at an incline that seems to be about 1 in 2, or climbing 93 (yes, I counted them) steps, and then still being faced with a short stretch of 1 in 2.
As Bernice and I first drove from the airport to our new home, we noticed that each of the villages that we drove through sported at least one pavement bench. Sitting on each bench we could see a regulation pair of elderly gentlemen, straight out of central casting. In addition, another couple of male seniors would be standing on the pavement, watching the world go by (not that much of the world was going by), or making their leisurely way home from their local café or bar. After the first village, we remarked that we were surprised to have seen no women. This was rectified in the second village, where we saw one elderly woman making her slow and painful way home, carrying a basket laden with fresh produce in each hand, and another scrubbing her front step with a long-handled brush.
This was a pattern repeated every time we travelled the road. We were both reminded that, when we were in Nepal, years ago, if we ever spotted someone in the distance coming towards us bent double under a bundle of firewood about three times their height, when they came close enough to identify, they would turn out to be a woman, and never a man.
All of the men we passed on our drive, and indeed all of the men in the village, seem to be aged between 60 and 90, and almost all of them, in November, were dressed identically, in (usually quilted) dark blue or black anoraks, and (often tweed) cloth caps. This is tremendously heartening, because, as you can see, I fitted right in. (Can you tell which twin has the Toni?)
Driving around the village on the first couple of days was a slow process, for two reasons. First, there are several streets that are open to two-way traffic, not because of their width, but because the likelihood that two cars will enter the street simultaneously from opposite ends is so small as to be negligible. This is fine for theoretical statisticians; however, if you happen to be the one car in 100,000 that enters the street from one end just as another car is entering from the other end, and if, as you may remember, you are driving an unfamiliar manual car that is approximately one-and-a-half times the width of the Kia Picanto you are used to driving, then theoretical statistics suddenly becomes a less fascinating subject, as you pray that the other driver is a local who has spent his life navigating these streets backwards.
This meant that, until we decided, fairly quickly, that there was no point in driving around the village – however hard it was raining – and certainly no point in taking a short cut through a narrow street, I spent some time pausing at the top of winding alleyways, wondering whether they were one-way (and, if so, which way) and then, having decided they could conceivably be two-way, assessing the chances of my James-Bonding it back up the street in reverse if necessary, and desperately trying to remember whether we had taken out that extra collision waiver insurance.
Our worst experience in narrow streets, however, was not in Penamacor, but 100 miles further north in Guardia, on a hilltop in the Serra de Estrella, Portugal’s highest mountain range, which even boasts a winter ski resort. Located 400 metres higher than Penamacor, Guarda is, as its name suggests, a fortress town. (I keep telling you Portuguese is an easy language – as long as you get them to write it down rather than speak it.) It has been, since medieval times, the first line of defence against an invasion from the East. The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleonic forces in a skirmish here during the Peninsular War and has a street named after him. Parts of the medieval town wall, and some original streets, survive. Bernice and I drove there one day, both because it boasts the nearest decent toy shop to Penamacor, and because we thought it would be interesting to walk around the old town. Our plan was to do our shopping (at a mall on the outskirts), then drive into the town, park as close as we could get to the medieval town, and continue on foot.
For one of those Greeks who were always attempting to defy the gods, I have a perfect punishment: he should be condemned to drive around modern Guarda, until he rejects a parking place, saying to his wife: ‘We’ll just go on a little further; there’s bound to be a closer spot’, only to discover that the spot he rejected was only 200 yards from the old town, and, infinitely worse, that the only way forward in the car is to drive into the old town, where all parking is prohibited, and where the streets rapidly grow narrower and narrower, and are all one-way, until he reaches a hairpin bend that he feels incapable of manoeuvring the car round, since he is driving a car he is unfamiliar with that is considerably wider than the Kia Picanto he is used to driving,
Fortunately, one of the national characteristics of the Portuguese is that they are not just back-seat drivers, but also back-street drivers, and enjoy nothing more than guiding drivers into parking spaces, or, in my case, expertly guiding me round the hairpin. My particular guide stood a yard in front of the bonnet of the car, and functioned as an air marshal, only without the table-tennis bats. The negotiation was so nerve-racking for Bernice that she eventually left the car and walked in front. Of course, once I had successfully rounded the bend, I had to drive on another 200 yards before a niche on the passenger side of the street was recessed enough for Bernice to be able to position herself in it, breathe in, and open the door just wide enough to squeeze herself back into the car.
If you were hoping for a fascinating account of the old town, I am sorry to disappoint you, but, when we eventually managed to extricate ourselves from the alleyways, and found a parking space near the top of the town, it was so cold, and the rain so driving, that we gave up, ate our sandwiches in the car, and drove home. In fact, it was quite nostalgic, reminding us of many summer picnics in Wales.
The second reason why driving around Penamacor was initially a slowprocess was because of pedestrian-crossing etiquette. Penamacor boasts a couple of pedestrian crossings. (This smacks of delusions of grandeur, to be honest.) In Israel, the law requires drivers to stop and give way to any pedestrian standing at a pedestrian crossing; in the last couple of years, police have enforced this law very enthusiastically, and the penalty is a fairly hefty fine. As a result, (and because I am a really nice person and, to be honest, never in much of a hurry these days), I am very careful to give precedence to anyone standing at, or, indeed, loitering close to, a pedestrian crossing. Naturally, when I first saw a local at a crossing in Penamacor, I didn’t hesitate to stop in order to let him cross. Apart from anything else, this pedestrian was so advanced in years that I was not sure whether he would live long enough to cross if a driver didn’t stop for him soon. Of course, I was also anxious to make a good impression as ‘that nice man with the funny little hat who is such a courteous driver’. Unfortunately, what I did not know is that in Portugal, or at least in Penamacor, it is the driver who has the right of way. Whether this is because the average pedestrian in Penamacor has nowhere important to get to until a week next Thursday, or it is just common courtesy, I haven’t yet been able to work out, but, after 30 seconds of waiting, I decided that life was too short to keep this up, and blinked first. I can’t be absolutely certain, but I think that, when I drove back 20 minutes later, and even though there was no traffic on the street apart from my car, the same man was still waiting at the pedestrian crossing.
I will be curious to see whether he is still there when we return to Penamacor in a week and a half’s time.
If you’ve had enough of my musings, don’t forget that you can get a clearer picture of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s life in Portugal by following, subscribing, liking (and maybe even sharing) their youtube channel.