Last night we joked about waking up in the night because it
had stopped raining but that is exactly what I did. I woke to hear the rain
starting to ease and it finally stopped at 03:15. That was 21.5 hours of
continuous rain – there was genuinely not a single break in that time. It
started raining again after a minute but finally stopped half an hour later –
the silence was deafening!
A week ago I booked two English language tours at the Coa
Archaeological Park for today. This is Europe’s most important open-air
Palaeolithic rock-art and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We had seen the
paintings and engravings in the Pyrenean caves earlier in this trip and so we
wanted to see what the Coa Valley had to offer. With yesterday’s rain we thought
that the trips may be cancelled but we were incredibly lucky as we were able to
visit both sites without getting wet.
We had to be at the Coa museum for 09:45 and we drove down a
2 km road from Vila Nova de Foz Coa to one of the ugliest modern buildings we
have ever seen. The concrete blockhouse is in a beautiful position overlooking
stunning countryside including the confluence of the Douro and Coa rivers.
Entering the building feels like going into a dingy prison with high walls of
unpainted concrete sections and virtually no lights. This might have been
slightly more appropriate if it was meant to evoke a cave setting but the art
here is in the open air. After descending massive concrete steps into the
concrete bowels of the building we found reception and the receptionist lit by
a desk lamp, without which we would not have been able to see her. We paid for
our combined ticket for the morning visit and museum (€12 each) and at 10:00
were greeted by our guide. There was only one other visitor who was Portuguese
but said that he spoke English so he was happy for the whole tour to be done in
English. The guide apologised for his poor English but, as long as he was on
his subject, he was fine.
The museum is high above the Coa Valley and the engravings
are by the river so the visit is accomplished in a 4x4 Land Rover. A security
guard greeted us when we got to the Canada do Inferno site next to the river
and then there was a half kilometre walk to the first engravings. Visits here
are planned in the morning as that is when the light is best for viewing the
art. Unfortunately the weather was overcast, so some of the more subtle
engravings were very difficult to make out. Others were however very clear and
the guide traced out the lines of many animals – mainly aurochs, deer, ibex,
horses and goats. As with the paintings and engravings in the Pyrenees, the
engravings were superimposed on each other and only some of the rocks were
chosen for the artwork. The drawings started in approx. 20,000BC and the last
were in 10,000BC when climate change meant that hunting would not have been as
good and it is thought that man no longer visited the area. Hunter-gatherer
people made the engravings and they drew the larger animals that they hunted in
the place that they hunted them as they were drinking at the river. Most
unusually in art of this period, there are many engravings in the Coa valley
that show a form of animation e.g. a horse with two heads showing the head up
and then down in the act of drinking. Our guide told us that artistic style of
the engravings had very similar characteristics to the drawings and engravings in
central Spain and the Pyrenees. It is thought that the same people moved around
these areas following the animals.
We returned to the museum building where we visited the
museum itself, rather sparse but interesting, set in high concrete rooms
together with some strange modern art. We followed a sign to the restaurant
down a bleak staircase further into the bowels and met some Portuguese
schoolgirls who stopped to ask a question. We couldn’t help them but soon
afterwards we realised that they were asking where the restaurant was. At the
bottom of the staircase was a dark concrete corridor that lead to a space with
two large metal doors, no natural light and virtually no artificial light. We
thought that we had arrived at the toilets until, through the gloom, we saw on
one of the doors that said ‘Restaurant – Open’. The architect of this build
should be shot or at least locked in a windowless concrete room. We opened the
door, closely followed by the two schoolgirls, and found ourselves in a lovely
space with huge glass windows overlooking the rivers, vineyards and the
countryside. We went into the restaurant rather than the café, opted for the
‘menu’ and had a fantastic meal overlooking that tremendous view. The ‘menu’
consisted of bread, olives, olive oil followed by a two large grilled pork
chops with mushrooms, garlic baked new potatoes and vegetables, followed by a
pudding (cinnamon-baked apple or tiramisu with chocolate ice cream) and coffee.
Oh, plus a glass of local wine and all for €11 (£8). Everything was top quality
and we will definitely come back for another meal if we are ever in the area,
even if we aren’t visiting the museum.
There is an interesting background story to the discovery of
the engravings. The Portuguese energy company EDP were building a dam in the
Coa valley (we passed part of the workings this morning) and ignored an
archaeologist’s report that said that there were Palaeolithic rock engravings
on the site. When the report was published and bought to UNESCO’s attention, a
public outcry followed, though EDP contested the dating of the engravings.
There was a public campaign (‘The carvings don’t know how to swim’) and
investigations by UNESCO and a Portuguese archaeological association proved
that the Pocinho dam built on the Douro had already drowned engravings at Coa.
There was huge pressure on the government to cancel the project but it was only
after a change of government in 1995 that it was finally cancelled. UNESCO
awarded Coa World Heritage status in 1998. Also in that year the water in the
Pocinho reservoir was deliberately allowed to drop by 5m to allow for
archaeologists to look for engravings below the water line. Many hundreds of
engravings were found and there are probably many hundreds more under the
further 5m of silt caused by the dam.
In the afternoon we drove the 16 km to Castelo Melhor where
our next trip started. There were six of this time plus the same guide. He
drove us 5km down a very bumpy dirt track past huge vineyards (we were in the
Douro wine / port area) to the Penascosa site. This is 4km further up the Coa River
from Canada do Inferno and here there is no effect from the Pocinho dam, so the
river is at the height that it would have been in Palaeolithic times. It was
much easier to visualise animals drinking at the river here as there was flat
land beside it which would also have provided pasture as well. The lighting was
better than this morning and the engravings were better and easier to see. The
guide explained that many of the later engravings (10,000BC) were done as very
fine lines and can only really be seen at night with torch light illuminating
them from below. They run night visits in the summer but not at this time of
the year.
On then to our overnight stop at the Torre de Moncorvo aire
through some lovely scenery that would have been even lovelier if it hadn’t
been dark!
Photos: The view from the Coa museum at the confluence of
the rivers – the Coa river joins from the bottom right, hidden below the hill;
The view from the restaurant; As we waited in the Land Rover at Castelo Melhor,
this lady walked up the main street – great balance and she obviously didn’t
trust the weather; Some of the Duoro vineyards see on the way to Penascosa; One
of the Penascosa engravings, slightly enhanced to make it clearer – there is a
goat in the centre with its head to the right and also a larger horse with its
head in the top-right corner.
