Cycling on the Portugal’s rural roads has given me some of the most thrilling rides of my life. The scenery is always changing, the traffic is minimal and the drivers you do encounter are considerate of cyclists. The country offers thousands of miles (kilometers) of wonderful cycling and plenty of weather to enjoy it.

Before I moved to Portugal in 2019, I was an enthusiastic member of a very active cycling club in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We did a lot of rides around the city and ventured out into the high desert countryside as well. There were places where you had to do a lot of climbing, but it was easy to avoid. Not so in central Portugal. There are hills everywhere! But the hills and valleys are verdant green and I’ve been able to ride beside rivers and even the Atlantic Ocean.

Autumn weather not helpful

Portugal has recently emerged from a nearly three-month spell of rain which brought flooding to several cities. At first the rain was welcome. In 2022 we had a very dry spring and very hot summer. Streams, rivers and lakes were drying up everywhere. But after nearly three months of constant rain, and serious flooding in Lisbon and Porto, people were thinking you can have too much of a good thing.

Finally the sun emerged and I was able to join two cycling friends for a long awaited ride this week. We met just outside the city of Coimbra, famous for its historic university. Our leader Graham, took us on a route he had pioneered that followed a road in a valley along the Mondego river. We could look down to the river and up at the many tiny villages that clung to the impossibly steep sides of the valley.

River beaches

We rode as far as the small town of Penacova which perches on the steep hillside above the river. Not wanting to tackle the 20 percent grade to climb to the higher part of town, we chose a cafe closer to the river to enjoy a coffee and a wonderful chorizo roll. After out coffee stop we crossed a bridge and rode along the famous N2 road on the other side of the river. The N2 is a national road that traverses the entire length of Portugal from the Spanish border to Faro in the southern province of the Algarve. It is popular with touring cyclists.

At several points along the return journey we took a detour down to one of the “river beaches”. Portugal makes good use of its rivers using the wide sandy areas as inland beaches. They are hugely popular in the summer months. I’m looking forward to a lot more riding and maybe even some kayaking on the Mondego!

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Porto is Portugal’s second largest city and a very popular place for tourists. I went there last week for the first time since shortly after moving to Portugal in 2019. Even in November, the city is thronged with visitors from all over Europe and the United States.

But the amount of tourists doesn’t detract from the city’s charm. It is built on the hillside above the Douro river. On the opposite side of the river is the city of Vila Nova de Gaia. Exploring the Porto side inevitably involves lots descents along narrow winding streets to the riverside, and then climbing stairs or narrow streets back up to the main part of the city. But that is all part of the charm.

Along the riverside on the Porto side, you will find many restaurants and bars, all of them catering to tourists with tourist-type prices. There are also many stands offering river tours. I did one in 2018 when I first visited the city and I can highly recommend it as a way to see the city by river and learn a little about the port wine trade.

On the south side of the river are the famous port houses; like Calem, Sandeman, Taylor, Kopke, Grahams etc. If you take one of the open-topped bus tours available in Porto, you can see the huge warehouses used for storing the famous port wines. Port wine as the fortified wine that we now know has a long history. Part of it is about the name of the city, which is often called “Oporto” which really means “the port” in Portuguese. The city is on the mouth of the Douro river, downstream from the numerous vineyards which produce the wines.

Touring port houses

One of the most touted tourist activities in Porto is to do a tour of the Port houses on the Gaia side of the river. This time I did a tour of the Ramos Pinto port house. It is one of the smaller houses, but the tour is fascinating. The company was founded in 1880 by Adriano Ramos Pinto (https://www.ramospinto.pt/en/verify/?next=/en/) who was initially a trader. He eventually got into his own port wine business and developed the first links with shipping port to Brazil.

The tour includes a visit of the old company office which is full of the old advertising posters, Adriano was quite a character and the artwork features a lot of naked nymphs with tantalizing glasses of port.

The tour costs 15 euros and at the end visitors can taste three ports; a white, a ruby and a tawny port. Our guide told us that the white ports go darker with age while the red ports become lighter. Some of the vintage ports, which must receive that name through a special process, can be aged for decades. Once opened a bottle of decades old port must be consumed quickly. Less special type of ports can be opened and kept with a specific type of cork top.

Follow my blog to learn about daily life in Portugal. And look for my novel, “The Power of Rain” a mystery set in New Mexico, available in Kindle and paperback on Amazon

The weather app on my mobile phone is telling me that there is a chance of rain this coming week. I’m looking forward to hearing the sound of it hitting my roof, maybe even using the windscreen wipers on my car – if I remember how to turn them on.

It’s been about two months since we’ve had any rain here in central Portugal. All around me there are signs that nature is suffering as a result. Leaves on the many fruit trees are parched and drooping. The apples, pears and persimmons, normally so abundant at this time of year, are scarce and tiny. Vineyards which have been irrigated sport clusters of grapes that are already dark and ripe; weeks earlier than normal. On the vines that haven’t been watered the grapes are just wizened raisins.

This is my fourth summer in Portugal. Up to now, the summers haven’t been as hot as those I was used to in Albuquerque. All that changed this year. July was the hottest summer on record, with the temperature hitting an all-time-high of 47 Celsius (116.6 F) in Pinhão, northern Portugal on July 14. We endured many days of 38 C-plus, (triple-digit temperatures in Fahrenheit.) I don’t have air-conditioning but I was thankful for my stone house and the ceiling fans I had installed.

The blistering heat followed on an abnormally dry winter. By early July, 45 percent of the Portuguese mainland was in extreme draught. Then came the fires!

Every few days for about three weeks I would look out and see huge plumes of smoke billowing nearby. Thankfully the Portuguese firefighters, Bombeiros, respond rapidly and sound of helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft bringing water to douse the flames was almost a daily occurrence.

So now it is September and the prospect of rain is tantalizingly real. It can’t come soon enough for many people. A friend of mine who lives in the Alentejo region, south of Lisbon, depends on wells which are almost dry. She’s been forced to ration her showers to once a week and is contemplating having to buy bottled water for her horses!

Portugal, like much of Europe, has been sweltering under a prolonged heatwave for most of the past two weeks. Temperatures remained over 38c (100F) for days and soared in some parts of the country as high as 47C or 116F. With the hot temperatures came the wildfires.

Fires are common in Portugal each summer but they popped up with a vengeance in July this year. Each time I spot a plume of smoke billowing in the distance I worry. During two decades living in New Mexico I saw the smoke from several deadly fires that consumed tens of thousands of acres and took weeks to extinguish. And this spring there was the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon which become the biggest fires in the state’s history.

But the Portuguese seem to have learned a valuable lesson from a disastrous fire in 2017, which claimed dozens of lives near the central town of Pedrógão Grande. The Portuguese firefighters, Bombeiros, spring into action almost as soon as the smoke appears. Usually all signs of the blaze are gone within a few hours.

This year has been a test

Between July 5 and July 11, multiple fires broke out within 5 km to 15 km of where I live near the towns of Ferreira do Zezere and Tomar, in central Portugal. Bombeiros units from all over the country rushed to the scene, officers from the Guarda Nacional Republicans (GNR) controlled roads near the area. They even closed some major highways temporarily.

Thanks to the swift response, most of the smoke would be gone by the next morning. But as the temperature rose again and the afternoon winds kicked in, the ominous clouds of grey, brown and dirty yellow smoke would reappear. News reports attributed the new blazes to wind-blown embers which ignited tinder dry vegetation in the surrounding areas. At one point, I drove toward a nearby village and saw a line of cars stopped by the roadside. The occupants were standing watching the flames burn a hillside about 2 km, roughly 1.5 miles away.

During the evening, friends and neighbors sent messages back and forth checking on each other. Two of my friends had to evacuate for a couple of nights because the flames came within a half mile or so of their homes. I kept a suitcase packed with vital papers and other important items by my door in case I too had to leave. Luckily it didn’t happen.

Aircraft bring water to extinguish the fires

The drama in my area of central Portugal lasted for about four days. During that time planes and helicopters rumbled overhead all day long, carrying precious water from a nearby reservoir to douse the flames. I say precious, because Portugal is in a drought situation. Everywhere the lakes, rivers and reservoirs are seriously depleted.

Thankfully, the fires have now calmed down. A friend of mine who lives near a forest that has been mostly obliterated was deeply grateful to the Bombeiros when they told her that her home was safe. The Portuguese regard their firefighters, most of whom are volunteers, as heroes. I wrote about them in a recent article in Portugal Living, the online lifestyle magazine I’ve been freelancing for.

I have been living in Portugal for almost three years now and I still hesitate when I come to an entrance door and see the sign ”puxe”. You see, the letter ”X” in Portuguese is pronounced ”sh”, so if you say the word ”puxe” it sounds like ”push”, but really it means pull!

The Portuguese word for push is ”Empurre”. To the native English speaker, this is so visually confusing. So I stand at the door and think ”push or pull?”

One of the other words that just seems weird is the word for dog; ”cão”. It is pronounced “cow”, or more correctly, pinch the top of your nose as you say cow and you will get the proper nasal sound that is used when you see the letter combination ”ão” in a Portuguese word.

Portuguese is full of nasal sounds. Bread is ”pão” which sounds like pow, again, holding your nose. Hand is ”mão”, pronounced mow, to rhyme with a nasal sounding “wow”.

You get the idea.

I’m fortunate to be one of those people that loves words. Learning languages is kind of a hobby with me. Some people like knitting or quilting or cooking. I like learning how to communicate with people in the countries I visit or have the good fortune to live in.

In my experience, the English speakers who come to live in Portugal tend not to become very proficient in Portuguese. Probably because many Portuguese are only too willing to speak English. Often when they say they only speak a little, you find they can quickly wax eloquent on all kinds of subjects. The Portuguese are good at explaining things in great detail.

English speakers often say that people who speak a different language talk so fast. We forget just how fast we normally speak. Try watching an evening news broadcast on your local TV station. We also forget how many variations of English there are. Think about the differences between “British” English and ”American” English, and then break those huge generalizations into the innumerable local accents in the UK and the US. Add in Canada, Australia and New Zealand–remember listening to Jacinda Ardern– and you’ve got a vast range of linguistic variations.

I went to University in Dublin, Ireland, and a lot of my friends were from Belfast. I can’t even begin to try to give a phonetic rendering of how people from Northern Ireland say ”cow”! Watch ”Derry Girls”.

It’s been a long journey with a lot of ups and downs, but seeing my novel finally up on the Amazon website is a thrill! It’s a mystery set in the fictitious city of Las Vistas, New Mexico where hotshot reporter Elizabeth “Digger” Doyle has a nose for exposing intrigue at City Hall — And there’s plenty of that in a city where politicians are cosy with developers whose projects damage the environment.

I’d like to thank all the friends who helped encourage me to keep writing, and those who read the manuscript and gave me invaluable feedback. All those comments helped me keep working to come up with better ideas and to polish the writing.

A bit about the author

I’ve wanted to write ever since I can remember. When I was a little girl I used to tell my brother stories as we walked the few blocks to elementary school in El Cajon, Calif. I had freelance articles published when I was a student at Trinity College Dublin. I got my first real job as a journalist when I lived in Norway, writing and editing for the English language newspaper The Saga Weekly. Later, when I had children, one of my favorite things was to make up stories for them at bedtime. They always preferred my made up stories to books.

I was fortunate enough to land a job as a staff writer with the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico’s largest daily. During the 18 years I worked there I wrote thousands of stories covering an array of business, political, environmental, police and feature topics. Some of the shenanigans I observed provided the initial inspiration for this novel.

It is now available in paperback and kindle format from Amazon. If you live in Portugal you can get it through Amazon.de. I hope you will enjoy it!

And you can find out more on my Amazon author page.