along the coast [en]

Image of Vila do Conte riverside

Yesterday I was visiting Vila do Conde. I used to pass there many times when I was a child, when I was a teenager too (so it was about visiting memories as well I would say), and actually I think that I haven´t noticed before the peculiarities of this cute town, I don´t know exactly why, just didn´t happen I guess. I went on bicycle trying to take the way along the coast. Well, several times there was no way, there were some roads for sure not meant to be used by bicycles (my site totally massacred me), and a road not for bikes shouldn´t be allowed to exist ;O)

I´ve seen some amazing still very typical and preserved fisherman spots, small villages still not vanished in the fury of globalization and European Union policies to exterminate traditional and familiar scale fishing. There´s something of very touching in those images, still deeply connected with some roots and identity that is getting harder and harder to find, still they were there, and the colours, the boats, the religious sentences wrote on the boats, all traces of a Portugal that I´m afraid someday not be able to find except in memories and perhaps old pictures. Of a Portugal that someday I might not be able to share with those I love, to show to my kids (if such catastrophe – poor kids – happens ;O)

There should be some road for cycling along the coast, because it´s really worthy to see, or shall I say: really worthy to sea. And sea is the verb present in every sentences and thoughts.

Hmm, I would love to write a bit more but for now I must go …

Vila do Conde it self is also very worthy to visit, very pleasant town, nicer than Póvoa for sure, this one invaded by skyscrapers and the awful bullfight ring, where time to time they dedicate them selves to torture innocent animals … really a tremendous shame … a terrible dirty spot in the image and culture of my country.

No matter what, bullfights must be abolished, I hope that one day this society will became developed enough to give that step, unfortunately that´s not the most evident tendency. I guess that´s what makes this places, elements, ethnography even more precious.