A cool, hazy morning sunlight illuminates the landscape as it plunges into valleys and rolls up into ridges. Red-tiled houses with tiny personal vineyards that have been carved into the slopes billow up white smoke here and there from burning piles of prunings. The leaves of the vines are starting to wear their funeral colours but November in the Douro is still verdant in the main. The vineyards soon turn more commercial in size though they too stand quiet, browning at the edges, the work done for the year. The train chugs through them and they ebb and flow on both sides broken by scatterings of buildings. Wispy groups of tall and elegant maritime pines look down beneficently on the shorter trees huddled around their base. The train stops at empty stations in quiet towns about which the tour guide sat behind offers superlatives to his curious guests. "This town has a large hospital" - thrilling stuff. We hurtle through a tunnel, the noise and reverberations of the old carria...
The horizon leans forward...