Viana Do Castelo Fri 28th Aug - Sun 6th Sept

Fri 28th Aug Baiona - Viana do Castelo PORTUGAL!


We woke up to a fair old breeze and I must admit I had a few reservations about going but I had promised we would sail whatever the weather as it was only a 33 mile trip! The wind was fairly on the nose on the way out to the headland and the swell was about 4 metres which in my book is plenty. It all came OK though as once we got around the headland the wind and swell was going along with us. It was still very roley but not horrifically so. The auto pilot even held out too which was good. We got down to Viana do Castelo which is the first port in Portugal very quickly indeed as we never dipped below 7 knots the whole way there. Getting into the harbour was a bit hairy as there were kite surfers and wind surfers playing chicken with the boat or at least that is how it seemed! We called up the harbour to let us through the swing bridge to the marina but all I got was a ‘no no’. We were just tying up at the waiting pontoon when the harbour guy came on his bike to say he would open the bridge and we would get through. This was all great until we got through and realised it would be our first time of tying up ‘stern to’ with a pick up line. We had a bit of an audience shouting advice which always makes it a bit more stressful! The result being that I managed to wrap the pick up line around the keel! This was actually good though because at first we thought I had wrapped it around the propeller….. TO say Ali was relieved is a bit of an understatement.

We found we were tied up on the pontoon right next to a bar/restaurant, a bit of luck there we thought but soon realised that night this was not so. A band started playing on a temporary stage about 5 metres from our boat at 10 pm Portuguese time (11pm Spanish time!). The music was of the variety that you used to hear on the ST Clair during the summer months, extreme cheese! We had Steve and Malisa from one of the other boats onboard for a dram and they informed us it was definitely not as bad as the karaoke the previous evening! Thank goodness we missed that one.

The next day we decided to go up the hill to the church at the top to see the view. We decided to walk up after a re-energising ‘Café con Leite grande’ and a cake each (only 3 euros for the lot!) We walked up through the trees and unfortunately it became apparent we had taken a wrong turn when we could get no further than a rabid looking dog and a wall. The girls weren’t too impressed so we took them down to the funicular railway that gets you to the top too. There were stunning views of Viana from the top and it was a lovely day so the hilltop was packed. We had a look around inside the church but there were signs saying silence so we didn’t stick around long with our incapable of silence girls! The church was very impressive and you would think it was at least a couple of hundred years old but it was built in the 1950’s.

We went for lunch at a canteen style café which was also extremely good value the only surprise being that the meat dish turned out to be rabbit, not chicken as I thought I had ordered. It was still good and we told the girls it was chicken.

We went over to Steve and Malisa’s boat for a drink as they were leaving for Leixios in the morning. We had an earlier night as the previous on as there was no band to contend with and therefore no need to drink ourselves into a stupor to get to sleep!

We spent the next few days just wandering around and seeing the sights.

We hired a pedal cart for an hour which I think you were only supposed to drive around the park but we decided to go from one end of town to the other on it. We got some strange looks down around the fishing harbour. We went to the beach on the Sunday to cool down as it was boiling.





We had a very interesting trip to look at the ex hospital ship the Gil Eannes which serviced the Portuguese fishing fleet working the Grand Banks grounds near New Foundland. We followed a route around the ship that took you to each and every part of it even the engine room. There was a simulator you could have a go on for a small fee and Ali tried to take the Gil Eannes down the river into the harbour but failed miserably as there were two little monkey pulling the wheel this way and that!





There was an international folk festival on in Viana whilst we were there too it consisted of dance and music troops from all over the world, Angola, Czech Republic, Greece etc etc. Ali and Alisha went up the first night to have a look and he said he was very impressed especially when the Venezulan ladies whipped off their long dresses to reveal very skimpy dancing costumes!

We thought we might leave Viana but we were informed that the Tulloch visitors that we were expecting in the Algarve at the end of September would not be coming until the first week of October. A quick look through the almanac made it quite obvious that the marinas in the North of Portugal are about half the price of the ones in the Algarve - another reason to hang around here for longer! We also found out that the Canadian family were gaining on us and due to arrive in Viana that week so the girls made us promise to hang around until their (and our) pals arrived.

Friday is market day and it means that impromtu stalls pop up all over the place, which include lots of ladies selling various fish and shellfish out of wheel barrows. We stayed well away from any of them selling mussels as we had seen the day before two guys getting mussels off the marina wall at low tide and I would definately not want to eat them!

The familiar red and white flagged boat Atmosphere arrived on Wednesday afternoon and the girls screamed all the way back to the marina when they realised who it was. It turned out to be Olous’ birthday too so a few beers and some fizzy wine was consumed by the adults whilst the kids ate cup cakes. Vicky had baked the cup cakes on the boat so now Kaylee is feeling really hard done by that she didn’t get a cake when she turned four as I had told her that people didn’t get real parties on boats - oops!






The kids spent the next few days ranting around together from boat to boat and over to the play park.





We went back up the funicular again because we hadn’t realised we had missed the 50 yrs BC
ruins at the other side of the hill. We got there just 15 minutes before they closed for lunch which was a bit disappointing although we realised that all four kids together probably wouldn’t have wanted to look at a pile of old stones for much longer than fifteen minutes!



We hired go karts for them to race around the park and took them to the beach up river to go swimming and to cool off.


Ali and Olous spent a fair amount of time cycling down to the metal working workshops and both ended up purchasing bits and pieces of metal. Ali got a long pole which he made up into a whisker pole for the jib to help us with the down wind sailing along the coast here. He also says it will be great for the windier bits when we cross the Atlantic, but I know he is only joking! He thinks persistence will win the day eventually.

We stayed in Viana until the weekend when some of the folk festival acts were actually doing street performances during the day instead of only starting at 10pm which is too late for the kids. We went to see the Angolans and the Greeks, the kids loved it some of them even joining in with the dancing.

Viana had turned out to be a great place to spend some time and had been recommended to us by Stuart Owers from Unst so thanks for that! There were loads more museums and things we didn’t go into with the kids but for the culturally inclined it would be a fair enough holiday destination. The Northern Portuguese pride themselves on the fact that it is still the real Portugal unlike the over developed Algarve in the South. We left for Leixios on Sunday morning as soon as the tide had risen sufficiently for us not to ground in the marina!