Friday 13th November, Leaving Lisbon (again) to Montemor 80km

We repeated the previous morning, this time without hiccoughs. We caught the fast boat over the river Boa to Montijo and having done some lunch shopping in the town headed out on the main road towards Montemor. The road was of good quality with a wide hard shoulder. It was straight and flat, but reasonably busy.

The first notable thing was that we were now into cork growing country and the road led through acre after acre of cork plantation. There were a lot of storks, their nests perched high on the telegraph posts.

Wherever there were cattle or sheep there were egrets, perched on their backs, presumably picking out ticks or flies.
We passed herds of black and brown bulls with fiery temperaments, possibly bred for fighting.

As we moved further inland, there were more small vine yards and strange dome shaped terracotta pots, perhaps 20 meters in diameter, that looked like large bosoms. We later learned that these were the tradidional containers used to hold the fermenting wine, instead of barrels.

At one point we were riding passed a herd of sheep on a section of unfenced road, when suddenly out of the undergrowth burst an alsation dog bounding after the sheep, quickly pursued by, apparently, a shepherd shouting at the top of his voice. We didn’t know whether he was trying to stop the dog or stop the sheep, but it certainly didn’t appear like the sedate “one man and his dog” that we are used to.
We arrived in Montemor after a long and fairly easy ride across the plains, but nonetheless we were still tired. The turismo helped us to find cheap and clean accommodation and also recommended a good restaurant, which was confirmed by the Rough Guide.

Before dinner we went to a local bar for a beer and got into conversation with a gentleman and his wife who were travelling back from his home town to Lisbon where he lived most of the time. He educated us about the horse festival, which was showing on the television news. It is visited by thousands of people each year and looked to be a really great event. Unfortunately it was to the north and not on our route. He also recommended that we should not miss the chance to visit the fortified, medieval hill top town of Monseraz, and invited us to visit his home town, Vila de Frades in early December for their own “new wine” festival. He explained that in this region they use the traditional method going back to biblical times, of fermenting wine in earthernware pots called Talha.

We went to eat at a restaurant across the road from our accommodation whose name was “8th of March” (the local patron saint’s day). We had octopus rice, which was really good and an expensive bottle of local wine at 6euros. It was the best wine we had sampled in Portugal. Towards the end of the meal our hostess presented us with a plate of what looked like bits of deep fried meat, which was a local speciality. She tried to explain that it was something to do with the innards of the pig. Exasperated she returned from the kitchen with a sample of the raw material. It was in fact the connective tissue from around the intestines. Karen thought it was very tasty, but Steve was not over impressed.

After dinner we walked over to one of the squares where the townsfolk were having their annual “New Wine” festival. This new wine was not a nice smooth wine, but rather coarse and raw. However we joined in and downed a glass full along with a bag of roast chestnuts, as we stood by the roaring bonfire listening to the local merenge band and watched the dancing.