Letter from northern Portugal

Tuesday morning last we gave the dogs a hug, waved Anne and Ian goodbye and took the road to Guarda in northern Portugal where we checked into the Residencial Santos, the interior design of which we liked a lot. It was all great stone walls, floating timber staircases and nooks to sit and browse. Pity that they'd given away the special room we'd booked.

The residencial was just around the corner from the old city, which featured the usual large square and towering cathedral. The area had a tired look about it, as if it had succumbed to the economic crisis. Several of the shops had signs seeking new occupants.

The square was clearly a popular gathering area. We seated ourselves at a cafe to watch the world go past. Jones clicked away with the camera. That was before I discovered that I hadn't brought the second half of the cord to recharge the battery.

I particularly liked this picture. The two girls sat exchanging news for a time in that intense way that women have, before consulting those all-important mobile phones.

In the centre of the square two large dogs lay sleeping in the afternoon sun, ignoring the commotion of traffic and passage of pedestrians around them. They were obviously very much at home on what they considered their turf. They were not so fast asleep that they didn't spring to life on the approach of another large dog,

a handsome retriever sort.

The pair of them followed the retriever - here hidden behind the car mirror - hackles raised, for several minutes, making it clear that he was anything but welcome. I feared the fur would fly.

But the resident canines contented themselves with butt-sniffing, huffing and puffing, and having the final word at the urinal. As dogs are wont to say, he who pisses last pisses longest.

As usual, we wandered the streets of the old town.

Shops came in three classes: empty, selling upmarket women's clothes, or given over to supplying refreshments of one sort of another. One street featured a string of restaurants. They weren't doing very well. We were the only clients in the first we visited, and shared another with one other diner.

A big new shopping centre on the outskirts of the city had clearly stolen much of their custom.

Just around the corner from the residencial, stairs led up through an ancient tower, in the corner of which was this unusual shrine.

Guarda is the highest city in Portugal and liable to extremes of weather. We found the October evenings surprisingly mild and I wished for either a fan or an air-conditioner to stir the air in the room at night. The best we could do was to leave the window open, inviting in the street noise as well as a breeze.

What the residencial also lacked was private parking. The nearest free parking, about 50 yards away, was much sought after, with drivers sitting and waiting for a spot to come free. We were lucky on the two days we stayed in the city to find parking with relative ease.

From Guarda we crossed the Spanish border to visit Ciudad Rodrigo, a city as ancient and brimful of violent history as any in this region. The central square is a good place to start, with coffee and a map donated by a helpful Spanish tourist. The map didn't help much nor could we easily distinguish one yellow stone building from another.

The old city lies totally within the battlements that, sadly, failed to protect its inhabitants from the French in 1810 or the British two years later. Both attacking armies pounded holes in the walls before sacking the place. Being sacked was something that the inhabitants, down the centuries, endured too often for comfort.

In one of the squares, a Spanish film or TV team was making a movie. Dirt had been scattered around to hide the cobbles and actor priests went through their lines in front of the camera while the rest of the team and the public huddled round.

It's a world neither of us misses.

Ancient stone animal carvings - dating back several thousand years - are a feature of northern Iberia, with religious and iconic symbolism. The pig is particularly popular, a much prized walking larder. This specimen might have been carved yesterday for all the impact the millennia had made on him.

From Guarda we drove north to the little town of Mirando do Douro where I'd made a four-day reservation at the Estalagem Santa Catarina overlooking the Douro River and a hydro-electric dam. The view speaks for itself. The road to Spain ran across the dam before coiling up the hillsides in both directions.

"Estalagem" is a class of comfortable hotels, generally set in the countryside. Ours was certainly comfortable - spacious and laid back. Our only complaint was about the spring-loaded doors that slammed all day and half the night - a failing that I pointed out to the management.

The second day of our stay in Miranda brought thousands of Spaniards streaming across the river into the town on what, we gathered, was a Spanish holiday. They descended on Miranda for its textiles; there are dozens of shops selling them - linen, blankets, towels and clothes. Most visitors clutched bags of purchases.

Just above the hotel lies the walled old city, where numbers of Mirandese still live. This gargoyle dating back a few centuries, indicated that the residence was a house of easy virtue - or at least a venue where instruction was available in the arts of love. What's new?

We had puzzled over the double signage in Miranda in what appeared to be Portuguese and Spanish. It wasn't Spanish, the museum curator explained, but Mirandese, a language close to Spanish which, she said, was spoken in the surrounding villages and had been recognised as Portugal's second tongue.

From Miranda it's a bit over an hour to Branganca, where we headed as ever to the historical area. By this stage, our camera battery had given up the ghost and we were dependent on my mobile phone for pictures. A large statue at the foot of Branganca castle paid homage to Alphonso the 1st (or 2nd?), who evidently did something useful.

It was almost certainly something to do with chasing out the Moors, although the Christians waged bloody wars among themselves for control of their dominions. Little wonder that people built walls so thick and high in the hope of protecting their interests.

Our final Spanish excursion was to the city of Zamora, a city much warred over by Christians and Moors for the better part of three centuries. The citadel has been restored most attractively, and the ancient castle with its keep was a magnet for scores of visitors, who paraded around its ramparts.

This area of Portugal and neighbouring Spain is marked by the construction of unusual stone walls. Large stones are set in the earth as pillars, with smaller stones subsequently packed between them. There's no sign of concrete to bind the stones. Even so, the walls seem to shrug off the years.