Evora Two Days

Evora was a medieval town, well known for its Roman  influence, old walls, and a towering aqueduct structure built in 1537 by  Franciso de Arruda .It was interesting how the people built their homes under the arches of the aqueduct. This ancient town has been inhabited for more than 2,000 years and is another UNESCO World Heritage Site.  On our guided walk of the city, we viewed the remains of a Roman Temple of Diana. pictured on your right. Portuguese kings started to live in this area and convents and royal palaces started appearing. We did go see the Chapel of the Bones built with human skulls and bones that was a bit ghoulish for my taste,

We bicycled about 40 miles on this day.

Piles of cork

The next day was an optional rest day, but Susan and I opted to ride our bicycles once again out to the country to visit a Portuguese cork factory as we are in the heartland of quality cork.  More cork is grown in this region of Portugal than other.  To harvest the cork, they cut a strip from the trunk up to some of the branches in the hottest time of the year.  We rode by freshly cut cork trees as you can see by the red color on the base of the tree.  Most trees have a number indicating the year the tree was cut.  For example this tree had a number 6 on it as it was cut in 2016.  I may have mentioned before that they are not allowed to harvest that tree again for 9 more years.  As Luis our guide told us, you plant cork trees for your grandchildren as it takes 25 years until the first cutting which is low quality cork, followed by another 9 years that may not be useful until the 3rd cutting to obtain a dense cork with little veins.

At the factory we saw piles of cork stacked up high.  This place took the cut cork, boiled it for one hour, sorted the cork according to quality, and then reboiled the cork, and then sent it to another factory to be processed. The weight of the boiled cork tends to flatten it out in the stacks.  We have seen a variety of cork products, in addition to the traditional wine corks.  There are shoes, vests, pocketbooks, clothing, etc.  Much of the cork piles we saw today would be for flooring and walls.

This is a sample board of the different qualities of cork. It's hard to see but the best cork is dense and has few veins.