Portugal Road Trip 2024 – The House & Hydro Tour

Highlights From This Trip

• 5 Days
• 15 Locations Explored
• ~650 miles driven
• ~300 photographs
• Explored lovely houses (quintas) in northern Portugal
• Visited various hydro power plants, ranging from ruins to retro

Portugal Tour: The Third!

I kicked off the 2024 adventures with a five-day springtime road trip around Portugal. This marks my third trip to Portugal, after amazing trips in 2017 and 2022.

Beautiful abandoned POrtuguese houses

This tour focused on houses, tucked away in the rural regions of northern Portugal. Most of these vacant abodes are called “quintas”—large houses and estates in the countryside, or on the outskirts of a town. Typically they are usually found in the wine-growing regions. In fact, they often have their own vineyards contained within their sizable grounds.

Some of them have beautiful, hand-carved wooden furniture. I especially loved this mirror, set against red-painted walls and traditional decorative tiles.

A sad revisit to The President’s Palace

As the sun set on the first day of this tour, I headed over to The President’s Palace to wrap up the day’s shooting. I visited this location during my first trip to Portugal in 2017, arriving to find the owner there and several workers clearing the grounds. The owner proudly told me of plans to renovate this palace and gave me a tour of the house before leaving me to take my photos.

I had seen some recent images, that showed the palace in pretty much the same state as during my first visit. For some reason, the renovation work stopped. Walking around on this visit, I couldn’t help but think of the woman and her husband. What had happened to make them abandon working on their dream home? It was saddening to see the buildings had also been vandalised, with a fair amount of graffiti scrawled on the walls.

remnants and ruins of Portugal’s hydropower stations

This time, I had some more industrial relics on my route itinerary. Firstly, beautiful ruin with an almost uninterrupted floor of green plants. I think the plants are periwinkle (Vinca); sadly, the purple flowers were not in bloom. Poking up from the plant carpet were rusty turbines. The second hydroelectric plant, a hall with two turbines. A sticky sludge that, left behind by frequent flooding, blanketed this floor. I could even make out the tidemark that the floods had left, from a telltale muddy line around the wall around 3m above the floor!

The final location of the trio, was certainly the most interesting and well preserved. This one had a simple turbine and an abundance of angular control panels along the walls, as well as a console. Downstairs, there was an interesting transformer and even more control banks! The perfect place for a little selfie.

My film choice for this trip – Kodak double-bill!

For this trip, my camera bag was extra heavy! I brought my Zenit-E fitted with my most recent lens attached, a Mir-20 (20mm). This bulky, bulbous-fronted lens adds considerably more weight to the already hefty metal-bodied Zenit. I loaded up some Kodak Portra 160 for this trip.

I also brought along my medium format, Moskva 5 loaded with some Kodak Gold.

More behind-the-scenes photos from my Portugal Road Trip

I also made a re-visit to one of my favourite Portuguese locations, the Medical Research Institute. Some other interesting abandoned places I explored include a dome-covered wine cellar and an abandoned school.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this road trip blog! Here are the rest of the behind-the-scenes snaps and preview photos from this trip, see you next time <3.