Cais de Gaia

This guide to Cais de Gaia in Porto follows the flat-bottomed rabelo boats that once ran the Douro's worst rapids, twelve men to a crew, up to a hundred barrels of Port lashed to the deck, no engine and no brakes. It traces Baron Forrester, the wine merchant who charted the river's every treacherous bend and drowned in the Valeira gorge in 1861, and the terracotta-roofed lodges stamped with names like Taylor's and Graham's that the surviving cargo was carried into. Stand at the quay's edge and picture the boats slackening their sails after two centuries of tar, sweat and spilled Port.