Storyline: Portugal by trains
Tue, Jan 24
(this post jumped the queue)
As everywhere here, a swirl of tuk-tuk drivers surrounded the site’s exit vying for a tired tourist. It wasn’t the main entrance/exit so no buses or taxis to compete with them.
Not many people exiting there either. It would have taken us probably half an hour down the road to get back to the town centre. However, we noticed an old worn sign “Historic Centre”, pointing to a path downhill. It indicated 1,095m. The start of it didn’t reveal what was coming. We walked behind 2 workers with a wheelbarrow. One in front lifting the wheel and one at the back pushing it. They eventually stopped and began spreading the gravel over a place that didn’t look any different from the rest of the narrow path. “Sintra?” we pointed down. They nodded. The path after them curved steeply down, but judging by the two workers it was a maintained trail. Not long after fighting roots, trying not to fall we saw another 2 workers trying to build steps. “Sintra?” we asked again pointing down. “Yes, but quick… We are closing it.”, said one meaning they were closing the stairs down for maintenance. Not that we could walk on them anyway. We squeezed by, continuing downhill. After a short but steep slope we noticed a narrow wooden bridge. Everything here is narrow so I shouldn’t keep saying it.
We sighed with relief until I noticed steps uphill after the bridge. Well, there is no other path so this must be it. All the trails are up and down hill at this place. After a while the trail turned downward onto another very steep and slippery slope; me holding the occasional tree and remembering my student years when in the summers I filled the mountain guide role. The path eventually led us to a vertical mossy rock wall. Later it will take us lots of effort to wash our hands from the green mossy grit. But for now, we had the support of the wall.
There were some steps at places, mixed with high boulders, tree roots and mud. But we were going down. Half way along the wall we noticed two rock-climbers. We asked if this is the way down as though there was another way. At that point we were afraid that if the trail continued this way for much longer, we’d have to sleep on these boulders. There was no way we could go back up. Not even a slight chance.
The guy who was belaying was very helpful. Thanks to him I can now write this and laugh that at our age (I’ll be 70 this year) we could endure such an adventure. “Keep going down”, the guy said. “You’ll reach a point where the trail forks. Keep by the rock to the right. Down the hill there is a gate. Sometimes it’s closed. If this is the case, come back to the fork and take the left. You’ll reach a chain link fence. There will be a gate there. It is not closed. Just that it will take longer.” That was of great help.
Further down the rock we met another climbing couple. The girl at the bottom didn’t know anything about gates and so.
“We always come from the top”, she said. We continued down still using our hands on the rocks for balance. Eventually we reached the gate. It was closed. At that point we realised how lucky we were to have met the first group of climbers. I could imagine the despair going all the way down and seeing the road from a closed gate. It was a gate built into a gap in the rocks, so we would not have been able to climb over it. We turned back up the steep boulders, trees, rocks and occasional stairs to a platform with a slightly noticeable trail to the left. We took it and shortly after reached the chain-link gate. After passing the gate the slope wasn’t that steep.
We eventually descended to a more “normal” path for these hills. Not without trial and error we descended down to a road. It was still light. Our legs, were hurting but we were safe. Aside from the two photos Alex took with the climbers, we were too busy with survival to take photos or videos of this trail to the historic centre. We walked by a pizza place and stopped for a bio-break and some refreshment.
There was nothing better than those garlic toasts with olives, roasted bell peppers and a drink. Sangria for me and beer for Alex. They even had blankets to warm us up. Shortly after, we found the train station and managed to get on the 4pm train to Rossio, Lisbon. This is how our journey to Sintra ended. How it began comes later.
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