Thought I'd take you on a walk today. This is the walk I take whenever I go into town. Hah - yeah, right! It's actually the route my bus into town takes, because who walks when there's a bus, right? But it is the walk I sometimes take when the weather's not too hot, as it's the quickest way to town, and the most beautiful.
First we're going to walk down the road from my flat towards the sea. This area used to be a part of the protected Sintra green belt. Then, because developers don't like to see a nice bit of land wasted, some fires mysteriously burnt all the indigenous flora, and the land was sold to be turned into hotels. It's a common story in Portugal - in this dry country, it's often easier to burn your rival's olive grove than to compete with his business. When I studied in Coimbra, there'd just been a fire that could be seen from space - the firemen (who are volunteers in Portugal) had given up on fighting it, and had just concentrated on saving the houses on the edge of Coimbra, and so everything beyond was a blackened desert.
But pass the hotels, and the most amazing view opens up to you.
Not the roundabout, obviously, but the sea beyond. At this point, the coast has risen from the beaches of Estoril to become crumbling cliffs and jagged caves, and it continues to rise until it reaches Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point of Europe, a 20-minute drive from here. We turn left towards town.
Lined on one side by blue-green sea, black rocks and the dry, indigenous vegetation, the other side of the road is where exiled royalty came to hang out during the European revolutions and post-WWII. The last Italian king spent his 37-year exile in one of the grand palaces hidden behind high walls, and the Brits are represented by Princess Di, who, like Rei Umberto of Italy, had a road named after her. Following the path towards town takes us into a shallow dip, where walkers are shielded from the traffic by trees. The sound suddenly drops away, as if you'd stuffed your ears with cotton wool, and all that can be heard is the boats on the water if the wind is right, or the plop of a fisherman's line as he casts off from the rocks beneath.
A few steps down the road, the silence is forgotten as Boca do Inferno, the Mouth of Hell, thunders into view. A deep chasm in the cliff, where the sea froths its way through a narrow opening, this is partly famous for being the site of an English occultist magician's faked death in 1930. Aleister Crowley was a rather unpleasant man, and his stay in Portugal after being kicked out of Mussolini's Italy is not widely celebrated by the Catholic-minded Portuguese. His "suicide" was assisted by one of Portugal's best-known poets, Fernando Pessoa, and Boca do Inferno became a bit of a pilgrimage spot for all of a fortnight, before Crowley rocked up again in Berlin.
The day I took these photos the Boca was tame, although still noisy, echoing off the rocks; in the fiery build-up to storms, the plumes of spray can be seen from the town centre.
Onwards from the Boca. Just before a narrow bridge, on the right, is an old manor house, Casa de Santa Maria, a beautiful ramble of shuttered windows and tiny towers, overlooking the marina. It neighbours a lighthouse, typically Portuguese in its blue and white tiles.
From Santa Maria, we cross the bridge to the marina and the castle. From the road, all that's visible over the fortified walls is a couple of cranes and some mysterious iron rods - something is being built or renovated or destroyed inside. Although the castle is owned by the council, it's not often open to the public. A friend tells me that sometimes they use it for classical concerts in the summer, but she's never gone; I'm definitely putting it on my list of things to do when they next plan one.
As we turn round the corner of the sprawling castle, the Baia opens up before us. Little brightly-painted fishing boats bob like apples, contrasting with a few sleek and enormous yachts, anchored just off a small curve of beach.
The fishermen store their equipment on a ledge below the promenade, watched over by a statue known as the Jolly King - a bronze statue of King Carlos the Diplomat, the last "real" king of Portugal, who loved the sea and spent many summers in Cascais. He's caught in the act of gazing over the Baia from a ship deck, telescope in hand.
Turning left at the Jolly King, the promenade drops down to sea level, a palm-lined road popular on weekends, when there's often a festival and Santini's, the venerable purveyors of ice cream to royalty for decades, has a stall by the mermaid statue (which you can just see behind the palm tree).
The road slips down to meet what would perhaps be called the Town Square, were it not so tiny; it contains the Town Hall, decorated with tiled portraits of the saints Pedro and Paulo.
We're two minutes from my school here, and so this is where we'll stop, on the bench where I often sit and have lunch or an ice cream, scoffing at the bright red tourists and envying the browned locals, keeping an eye on the fishermen's boats for them, until they come in the late afternoon with their nets and traps.
It's a hard life...
