DAY 7 - CARRAPATERIA TO VILA DE BISPO - 21km
I’m woken before my alarm by the sound of heavy surf breaking over the guest house. It’s an aggressive wind that maintains a dull rumble but rises to roars and howls that rip through the courtyard and rattle the roof.
The Rota Vicentina is not a dangerous trail. It’s well maintained and well-marked. The dirt and sand paths might be a little taxing on a long day, but they’re at least stable and never slippery. Sure you’re constantly skirting thirty-meter drops, but the path is kept well back and you’re never inching along a cliff face or directly challenging the void.
All this to say, the one repeated warning in my guide book was wind. Opposite those cliffs is the unbroken expanse of the Atlantic. Wind has more than 4000 kilometers to pick up speed before walloping the shore.
WIND!
Apparently the wind is even worse on the northern coast, to the point where many towns close down in November in the face of it - the exception of course being Nazaré where the extreme weather is the draw.
On the occasional tricky descents over wet rocks, you could see how an errant gust could catch you just when you try to shift your balance and…
I have clear memories of days like this at Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia, where you could jump straight up and land a meter away. We did it for fun. But it impressed upon me that if nature wants you moved, at a certain point you will be moved.
That was the kind of wind I was hearing now, and it was ceaseless. Weather app agrees: all wind all day.
There’s a bit of relief once we’re walking: the courtyard must have been catching and twisting it and revving it up. Once we’re on the trail it calms, but picks up as we approach the coast again.
There’s a little lookout on a boardwalk where it hits in full force and you have to physically brace against it. But there’s nothing else for it: no sense waiting it out, it’ll be here all day. Again, on the whole we’ve had incredible luck with the weather. One windy day isn’t so bad.
We’d identified a place early in the route for a coffee but knew we’d likely get there before they opened. Understatement: we arrive at their boarded up windows a full hour and a half before coffee will be on offer. We take the opportunity to sit at a sheltered table for a little while but agree that it’s too long to wait.
The next part of the trail seems specifically designed to be threatening in these conditions. Repeated sharp descents into coves and ascents up the other sides, always on steep and scrabbly rock. Perfect setting for the tragic scenario I described above.
But for all that, the wind is never more than annoying. Yeah, it feels like repeated light slaps in the face and howls in your ears, but never rises to physical displacement.
Danger, it turns out, comes from more unexpected places, a lesson learned when Antoaneta almost steps on a snake on one of those steep ascents. It flees into the bushes before we can get a picture of it, so we couldn’t identify it to confirm precisely how deadly it was.
After that little spike in drama, the next section is an absolute slog. The steep ascent becomes a wide gravel path that flattens out onto a plateau.
No respite from the wind here, we’re the highest land around and the scrub is too low to provide a barrier. It even seems like we might be getting the tail end of a wind tunnel effect from an adjacent river valley but maybe I’m being dramatic.
Wherever it’s coming from, it is an unbroken blast. A much less pleasant memory comes to mind: filming the Flowerpot Rocks in New Brunswick and capturing time lapses of the Bay of Fundy tides. It meant having to babysit a stationary camera for six hours straight as the wind raged up from the water. It was the first time I realized wind of that force could sustain for hours. I’d always pictured it as releasing energy in effortful gusts after which it would have to die down. I guess that’s borderline anthropomorphizing. Maybe more realistic is to see it as a grand scale cyclonic system - as long as it keeps spinning, the wind will keep hitting.
Antoaneta eventually puts in earbuds to stop the shrieking - the wind’s, not mine. It’s barely worth talking over it.
The path is straight and bland. The plateau is an unbroken expanse of low plants. Everything is brutally monotonous, all the way until we meet a road for the last stretch into Vila de Bispo. One last brush with danger here as two unleashed dogs on a nearby farm start barking uproariously as we pass, and we decide to skirt the shoulder of the road until we’re well past them, braving passing trucks over canines’ canines.
Vila de Bispo is probably the largest town we’ve stopped in so far. On approach we see a sports field, a lovely-looking museum fronted by a welcoming statue, and - comforting familiarity - winding, ascending roads to the city centre. As is becoming the pattern, more grid-like outlying streets shift to tiled, narrow routes winding between beautiful white rectangular houses in unbroken rows. The tightly packed town also completely cuts the wind - finally.
We’re early to check in and we’ve made good time, so we look for a place to sit with a drink and find it across the courtyard from our guest house. It’s a simple but welcoming bar with the cheap beer and pastels de nata we need. We take an outdoor table squished into their narrow stoop and watch a parade of locals (and their dogs) come, go and sit as we nurse beers and appreciate the simple pleasure of not being smacked around by wind.
Eventually we head over to the guest house entrance. Locked door, no key: just a sign saying we should have an email with the code to get in. We don’t. Antoaneta calls them and fortunately the woman on the other end speaks fluent french. She’ll be down in half an hour. We’re in no rush, and what’s more we’ve spotted an honest-to-god Lidl on Google Maps. We’ve been getting by on charming but limited mercatos this whole time. A perfect half-hour diversion.
Lidl is a treasure horde. We stroll the overstocked aisles reveling in choice paralysis. After the success of our almond cake slice, Antoaneta gets the brilliant idea to get the fixins for trail sandwiches. I content myself with some cookies and a mini-pandoro (not to be confused with a pannetone).
PANNETONE VS PANDORO
Pannetone is cylindrical with a domed top. Pandoro is star-shaped.
Pannetione is traditionally flavoured with candied fruit, Pandoro is dusted with icing sugar
Pannetone rises for 2-3 days, Pandoro rises for 18-36 hours
Pannetone is from Milan, Pandoro is from Verona.
Pannetone means ‘big bread’, Pandoro means ‘golden bread’
Pannetone has a dense texture, Pandoro a lighter one
Google’s AI threw some serious shade at Pandoros by saying that Pannetones are ‘the ultimate holiday dessert for 50% of the Italian population’ while Pandoros are enjoyed by those ‘with a simpler palette’.
We return to the guest house to meet our host who lets us into another beautiful little room. We get a tiny private but almost totally enclosed balcony, which leads out to a multi-level lounging area and pool deck. No urge to dip in the water this time but an overwhelming urge to kick back and devour all my Lidl snacks. We spend a lazy afternoon doing just that.
In what’s becoming a comfortable routine we head out as the sun is going down to explore town before dinner. Vila De Bispo seems to spread out wide and low in a few directions, but the crowded centre of town is on the scale of any of the others we’ve been staying in. We manage a circuit quicker than we expect and head for the West end where we’d clocked a few bars for a glass of wine before dinner.
On the way we pass the police station which has decorated its lawn with the wrecks of totalled cars. Sort of like a mini-autobahn - or maybe art?
We pick a suitably dingy bar and sit outside at their plastic tables on plastic chairs having white wine that’s about as good as you’d expect. But the atmosphere is right.
Not trusting the place with a full meal we hop across the street to a cozy and highly recommended seafood restaurant where Antoaneta finally gets some honest Portuguese sardines. The little bones from the grilled fish fresh in my mind, I demure. Plus I am uncomfortably full of Lidl snacks. So I settle with a mixed salad and a side of grilled mushrooms. Not the most inspiring meal on a trip full of inspiring meals, but I’d say I only have myself to blame for this one.
