Another nice days weather and we had managed to break the back of clearing our land again. The three months worth of neglect while we were in the UK, had let Mother Nature get back at us! The amount of growth is what surprised us the most. We thought we would get most of the work done because there is a chance that the engineering part of our house planning may get started sooner than expected, and they might need to get around the land for whatever they need to do.
So with that effort out of the way, we decided to take a trip up to a place near Coimbra which is a partially excavated Roman town. It is called Conimbriga, and has been on my list of places to visit for quite a while now. We have visited quite a few Roman sites in the UK, but nothing on this scale. I say partially excavated, because much of it is still completely covered, with only the main areas exposed.
The quality of the finds is amazing with many floor mosaics being almost complete and these were fantastic to see. Compared to those back in England which have suffered from ploughing, it was clear that many of the floors had been relatively undisturbed.
I am always amazed at the engineering and industry that the Romans possessed when you consider how long ago it was. My only regret it that we never see these sited fully reconstructed. It’s not the same as being able to see the whole place as it was in its heyday. Imagine the skills that could be relearned and passed on, if we actually rebuilt and rediscovered what it was like to live and use the baths etc, rather that just looking from behind ropes and barriers!
Anyway, suffice it to say it was a really interesting day, and hot. It was around 29 degrees, so we made sure to use the restaurant for food and drink as well as cooling off looking around the museum.
There is also some great walks around the site, in fact one of the routes of the Caminho de Santiago and the pilgrimage to Fatima pass by the site. It was the pictures on google of a waterfall which peaked my interest and at only 8km round trip on a hot day, we set off to locate the said waterfall. We managed to navigate down the steep gorge only to find that during the hot summer months there is just a dried up river bed! We weren’t the only ones who fell for the images as a Spanish family arrived shortly after we got there and were very disappointed after managing to get their kids all the way there.
Our Portuguese Life 