Portugese Journey

I found this a slow read. It is a book that covers a lot of ground, and it does so at a measured pace. A lot of the travel of the author and his wife in Portugal is by foot, and the naturally slow pace of their travel perhaps sets the slow overall pace of the book.

For me, it misses some excitement. It doesn't have the ebb and flow of pace which holds interest, it is, unfortunately a bit flat. There is an amount of journal, or diary to it, and occasionally it falls into the trap of ‘we travelled there, found a place to stay called X, where we ate Y for dinner.'

They meet some interesting people, visit some interesting places, and a lot of the food they describe sounds great, but the book does feel like it could have been edited down and made a bit more punchy. The journey also just sort of ended as they reached Chaves. There was no real buildup or crescendo, although by that point it was not a surprise given the tone of the book throughout.

There is no doubt it is an extensive book, but I was a little surprised, having spent around 3 weeks in Portugal about 15 years ago (that was a surprise when I worked it out) that I couldn't pick up on more mutually memorable places, buildings and towns. I will have to dig out a photo album and view against the authors route to find out whether we just found different things interesting, or whether there was genuine mismatching of our routes.

For me somewhere between 2 and 3 stars ( ie between “it was OK” and “I liked it”), but I have generously rounded it up because it was ok, with moments of better, but for me was just a bit slow.