Oporto and the Minho by Maxine Jones

The day before beginning a tour of the Minho region in northern Portugal, I was logged onto the Internet looking for hospitals near the remote pousada on the Spanish border where my seven-year-old son and I would be spending our third night. For on the fourth day he was due to have stitches above his lip removed, the result of a flying leap through a glass door.

With the pre-holiday edge of excitement now turned into the trauma of looking at his bandaged face and imagining the scar he would carry, I packed our bags. "I wouldn't trust foreign hospitals," said the woman in the chemist where I stocked up on steri-strips. As the plane landed in Oporto my fears about him dissipated slightly in order to gravitate round driving the hire car. <

My son, curled up with a puzzle book on the back seat, only began to lose confidence in me after we'd stopped in the city centre for the fifth time to ask the way to the Grande Hotel do Porto. I was struck by the courtesy and willingness to help of everyone I asked, and also by the patience of other drivers who refrained from hooting. Around me I was aware of a the faded grandeur of ancient streets. Here was none of the chic of Lisbon, but the shabbiness held a more direct appeal.

The hotel was in a cobbled pedestrianised street with no access for cars. A further tour of the city brought me to the back entrance where the polite garage attendant shoe-horned the car into the tiny underground car park. When the hotel was built 115 years ago there probably wasn't much call for a car park. The charm of the Grande Hotel do Porto is that it has made few concessions to modernity. The staff, from the barman who had worked for 20 years in Lyons, to the unsprightly waiters, also seem from another era. In need of rewiring and replumbing, this is a hotel I would hate to see updated. At dinner a pianist played to a handful of diners under the dusty chandeliers.

Oporto is a kid's paradise, my son repeated. Children stroll up and down rua de Santa Catarina with their parents until close on midnight. His heart was won by a brand new shopping mall, via Catarina, with a top floor full of ice-cream shops and cafes and overhung by a giant Coca Cola bottle. Fortunately this was the only modern mall we came across, the rest of Oporto appearing to be delightfully stuck in the sixteenth century.

From the top of the baroque tower of the Clerigos church, we overlooked a jumble of terracotta roof tops, me clutching his T-shirt, fearful of the drop. Down through steep, narrow winding streets we headed towards the cathedral, stopping halfway at the Estacao de Sao Bento, the most romantic of old-fashioned railway stations. The main hall is covered from top to bottom with blue and white azulejo tiles showing agricultural and battle scene. Outside the station was a bustling market with everything from cages of dalmation puppies to irritating squeaky toys. Nearby, workmen carefully replaced a cobbled thoroughfare, both pavements lined with men scrutinising their industry while women hurried by carrying shopping. The cathedral looms up over houses whose facades are held up with rotting wooden beams. In front of them women pummel washing watched by men smoking cigarettes.

The river Douro is the key to Oporto. Ramshackle medieval houses are built alongside steps draped with sleeping cats. The almost vertical streets tumble down to the riverbank, which is lined with lively cafes and shops. Above the shops colourful washing flutters out to dry. Cruise boats glide up and down under monumental iron bridges, vertiginously high. Crossing Dom Luis bridge along its highest walkway affords a fairground-like thrill, the whole edifice shaking with each bus and lorry that speeds across. On the other side, in Vila Nova da Gaia, are the port warehouses with ancient barges moored outside loaded with barrels.

Next day we sped north along the Costa Verde. Just before Viana do Castelo, the only large resort on this undeveloped coastline, I thought I heard a strange noise from the engine. We pulled off the motorway and were soon winding up a deserted hill. A tractor driver eventually directed us to a crossroads where we found a bar and a garage. The mechanic jumped in the car and drove off in search of the noise. "Do you think he'll come back?" asked my son, just as I was weighing up the worth of a brand new car plus our luggage against a country mechanic's salary. The car and mechanic duly returned, the noise having disappeared as magically as toothache at the dentist and the mechanic's diffident politeness only slightly ruffled by his obvious amusement.

Viana do Castelo has an attractive medieval centre with none of the paraphenalia of a seaside resort. After a play on the beach, reached by ferry boat, and a ride on a funicular railway which gives the best view of the town, we headed north again, not before I had earmarked a sprawling modern hospital for a visit the next day. The traffic grew sparser as we neared Spain and we seemed to be the only ones turning off for Valenca, Portugal's last outpost, a 13th-century walled fortress town. Entry is through narrow stone archways which barely allow one car to pass. The pousada is the last building in the town. Its peaceful gardens look down directly over the river Minho and across into Spain. The view from our bedroom was the same. When I opened the window a strong wind blew in from across the river and the surrounding fields, as if it had crossed time. In the morning I watched two men piling up haystacks - a magical, unforgettable place.

The main hall of Viana hospital the next morning was like a busy railway station, as we joined a long queue behind a dirt-encrusted tramp. I could feel my unease seeping through to the patient due to have his stitches out. When we reached the front of the queue, however, the official left her seat to lead us directly to a room where a doctor, nurse and an English-speaking assistant attended to us within five minutes. Ten minutes later we were back out in the sunlight heading east for Ponte de Lima.

We drove along long, windy roads with steep luscious green vineyards unfolding on either side and the river Lima flowing below. We crossed narrow Roman bridges and passed ancient villages built round picturesque monasteries and churches. It seemed that noone had been here before us save Romans and monks. When we reached our destination, Santa Maria do Bouro a tiny village near Amares, we discovered the pousada was itself a monastery, converted only two years ago from the ruins of the 12th-century building attached to the village church. The shock was to arrive inside and find a temple to minimalism incorporated within the old granite walls. The old refectory is the pousada's restaurant, delicious desserts laid out on the monks' original stone table. The rooms are the monks' cells with stripped pine floors and designer plumbing. The few guests enjoy the peace of the ancient courtyard and orange groves before sitting down to gourmet food. Our waiter was a handsome young man with scars round his mouth from a car accident when he was five years old. My son had found a hero. Most days we had the pool, surrounded by green hills and complete with discreet bar, to ourselves. The monks certainly knew how to pick their spots. Four kilometers away is the oldest sanctuary in Portugal, Our Lady of Abadia, set in a wooded paradise with gurgling streams.

A couple of nights we swapped the formality of the pousada restaurant for the cafe over the road where the owner, in his vest, worked out the accounts on a pocket calculator and whole families sat down to dinner to the accompaniment of the television, usually showing beach football. Food everywhere is abundant (twice the portions an average adult could comfortably eat), fresh (nothing comes in packets) and incredibly cheap. Vinho verde is the ubiquitous accompaniment.

The scenic highlight of the Minho region is Peneda Geres national park. The town of Geres lies 12 kms east of Bouro, passing the beautifully serene lakes of Canicada and Vilar da Veiga along the way. To the west of Bouro is the spa Caldela, also full of tourist attractions and also remarkably free of foreign tourists. Foreign number plates generally belong to emigrant workers home on holiday. Worth visiting nearby are the medieval towns of Barcelos and Guimaraes and the larger cathedral city of Braga, particularly the impressive Bom Jesus sanctuary. At Guimaraes's Saturday morning market my son and I cooed over a boxful of rabbits, until a housewife handed over her money, lifted one by its ears and shoved it into a plastic shopping bag before going on to buy a live cockerel at the next stall.

Back at the Grande Hotel do Oporto (after the waiters had checked up on how my son's face was healing) the barman wondered why people went to the Algarve more than the Minho. Maybe it's because the roads were bad, he said. Ten years ago there were no motorways. Now we have European funding. 'New motorways revolutionise the Minho' ran the headline in Jornal de Noticias the day before our departure. Seven new stretches of motorway are planned before December 2004 the news story read. I wondered if I’d be able to fit in another trip before the revolution.