Golf monasteries, Portuguese breakfasts and the Dallas Cowboys

As I write, Mark is dreaming of that golf, stuffing his face with ham, cheese, pineapple, melon, cheese and a bread roll, all while watching the Cowboys play. The game started at 2am last night, even he went to bed before kickoff (just). We’ve gotten into a weird pattern of staying up until 2am, waking at 9:30 and going for a long walk with River and then, back home for coffee (me) and breakfast (Mark). It is ridiculously hard to adjust to all the people we love being awake when we aren’t. Today it is pouring rain, real English kind of rain under silvery skies. It was like this yesterday too and driving was even more treacherous so today home looks really good. In all honesty, Portugal is in a State of Calamity, as they charmingly put it, so restrictions have been increased until the numbers go down. Staying home is the default.

Why we were out yesterday involves the above mentioned golf monastery. Mark’s delay in finding a course to join has been his shoulder but it feels better now and he has narrowed his choices online so off to Penha Longa (Long Crag) he went last Thursday. On arriving home, he tells me we are going on a road trip the next day and looks really excited. Well, I appreciate a pretty golf course and all but my permission is hardly necessary. He mentions River is not only welcome but can come on the course! Hmmm, that is oddly enticing. He then cracks and tells me about the 14th Century church on the property that I’m welcome to wander through, dog in tow, and for me that is irresistible. It’s a twenty minute drive up to the mountains, I guess you’d say. Beautiful treed canyons and winding roads through many barrios (villages that all run into each other to make up Cascais parish). As we make the turn to Penha Longa, the buildings disappear and we drive through a quiet forest, as green as green can be, every iteration you can imagine of one color. We reach enormous gates with deep yellow stuccoed walls. The guard remembers Mark and waves him through. Portugal and its’ security obsession – it is not closed to the public though!

Well, it is breathtaking, truly. We weave through the trees, lovely streetlights on the path that follows the road, and then the vista appears. Pebbled parking in front of a very old, very large, very rustic, mango hued and white building. I don’t have great pictures of the outside so I will remedy that at some point (actually since I’m taking the pictures, none of the pics are great, lol!). A small green park with soccer goals stands to one side, evidence of sport. The golf course is just visible beyond the building, a ludicrously green velvet shaded with strategically appointed trees. But it is into the building Mark wants to go, almost beside himself with anticipation (yes, Mark!) so he tries all the doors and we eventually find a small quite unobtrusive door, old and shiny after centuries of wax. He knows his way around enough that you’d think he’d grown up in this rambling jumbled building – that amazing Boy Wonder sense of direction at work – but he knows exactly where he’s taking me first, follow me he insists as I try and peek into all the rooms and various hallways. I trundle along behind him and River mouth open in wonder. The tiling! Coffers sit everywhere, battered and beautiful, obviously used often over the centuries for storing and moving goods. Odd chairs are here and there, some so aged I’d not sit in them, but there are others, upholstered and made for book reading. The wall sconces are red and so simple they are almost modern. But those change as we near our destination, they become more ornate, faded gold and bubbled glass, electric now. And then we are in the church itself and I am gobsmacked, absolutely gobsmacked. I have not been in a church like this for decades. It isn’t fancy really, more rustic but faith exudes from its walls, hundreds of years of belief in the divine and the wish to bring that belief to life, to inspire, possibly to manipulate, but always available to those that choose to feel its words and spirit and find comfort. Tears fill my eyes, the emotion quite overwhelming. Yes, the figurines are garishly coloured, doll like, but as they make me smile, they also make me incredibly happy, like the crazy coloured plastic flowers that cover the sandy graveyards in rural New Mexico. The carvings of the saints are more pleasing to our austere modern eyes and I work out their names in the old Latin script. Oh, what a place. Mark asks me to take off my mask because he wants to see my beaming face. And I can sit here any time I want…with my dog.

There is too much to say about this lovely place in one blog so there will be more posts. Mark took River and I in a golf cart around the first eighteen holes, gorgeous, difficult, all you want – it is hilly, very steep in places. The bunkers are wicked and the water hazards are reputedly major after Autumn with its rain. You can just see the sea from up here, it shimmers under the usual cloud bank. And there are another 9 holes, the Monastery course, which winds through forest, 16th century garden ruins suddenly appearing out of nowhere, an aqueduct stands and Penha Longa looms in the distance, a craggy rock topped with a cross, the namesake of this wonderful place. I could tell Mark was transfixed and yearning to play the course he had now ridden twice but not tackled. He arranged to play the next day. He came home with paperwork in his hand. From the beginning, Penha Longa had appealed to him, the course would have had to bad for that feeling to evaporate but that wasn’t likely. It’s in the top 30 courses of Europe. And he loved the monastery for me, a place I could read and be quiet for hours. Rooms to explore, walled courtyards to troll – this is a place for both of us. I hope we get to share it with some of you.