I had not heard of the Peneda-Gerês National Park before we went there. So, I surfed the web to obtain what information I could. We were interested in hiking so thats principally what I looked for. There is only a limited amount of information on the web. And that is contradictory. Everything indicated that a car is a necessitity as public transport (read buses) is very limited.
Without a vehicle we went with low expectations. How wrong we were. We were there for 5 days (plus one each side travelling to and from) and hiked on four days. We chose to take a day off as hiking three days in succesion in high temperatures was tough.
The tourist information centre in Gerês was a great help. The staff gave us leaflets showing all the practical hiking trail options. They also, advised which buses to take to where and gave us the timetables.
Two of the trails we accessed directly from our hotel and on the other two days we took buses. The hike on the last day required us to take two buses each way. It sounded like it would be a bit of a hassle. In fact, the bus timetable is synchronised making the changes seamless. I say that as somone who lives in rural Essex where private bus companies run services for a profit paying no mind to synchronizing timetables.
The hiking was tough. That is the opinion of a pair who have just recently hiked nearly one thousand kilometres on the Camino de Santiago.
Tough hiking for a number of reasons. The trails are only just adequately marked. We went ‘off-piste’ on multiple occasions. The maps on the leaflets could be described as ‘pictorial sketches’ and are not in any circumstance to be relied upon. But the thing that made it hard was the degree of difficulty of the trails. You need a level of fitness and agility to tackle the trails in Gerês. There were parts of all the trails we walked that were very steep going up and down. The hike on the last day involved proper rock climbing for a large part of it. That took its toll on an old boy like me. And finally, there is ones’ interpretation of what constitutes a clear footpath. Many of the paths are inadequately maintained.
The truth is I loved the hiking in Gerês, its just that it was tougher than I anticipated. I would highly recommend Gerês for a hiking holiday.
We left Gerês and returned to Porto to take our flight to Athens. We treated ourselves on our one night stop over, booking in to the Sandeman Hostel. It was voted the 7th best hostel in the world and I can see why. All I would say is I would like to stay at the six that beat it.
While we were at tbe Sandeman, Sheila treated me to a Sandeman port tasting tour. The cellars where they age the port are the originals and are more than two hundred years old. The effort and detail Sandeman goes to, to make high quality port is staggering. I was fascinated and found the history of the company very interesting. Check it out on You Tube.
Wandering Boomers 