Porto Santo, Madeira
Postcard #1 - sea, sky and sand
Hi! How’s July treating you so far?
This week’s newsletter is a trip down memory lane for me and a virtual postcard to you. I hope that reading my ramblings and looking at the sights will make up for the deviation from the usual format!
For updated pictures of Riscas, the kitten that found us last week, you’ll have to wait until we go back to Tomar, but the lady who is looking after him informs us that he is doing well and that we won’t recognise him when we next see him.
For news from the studio, you’ll need to wait a bit longer still. Until the end of July, I will be in Portugal, visiting my family and trying to resist the urge to find the nearest clay workshop. OK, fine, you got me… I resisted for 24 hours and then found a place in Lisbon, 2 metro stations away from my parents’ house, where I can just go and play with clay. No workshop, but time with clay, tools, materials and firing included. I won’t necessarily go but, somehow, the thought that I can, reassures me.
At the moment, however, I am not in Lisbon. I am on an island, off the coast of Portugal’s mainland. The smallest of the inhabited islands that make up the Madeira archipelago: Porto Santo, aka Ilha Dourada (Golden Island).
A short warning to those reading this in email: Substack tells me that this letter is too long for most email servers/providers and will likely appear truncated. My fault for including so many pictures. If you wish to read/see the full post, you’ll need to click "View entire message" and you'll be able to view the entire post in you email app. Or you can visit my Substack site or download the app and look for Clay on my mind there.
I first visited Porto Santo about 27 years ago.
After calculating that, I counted the years again and then I had to take a nap… 27 years ago. Twenty seven. After writing it down, again, I am in shock at how many years have passed since I first rested my eyes on the blue of this ocean.
I was a very different person then, and Porto Santo was a very different island.
Since that first time, I have been back again and again. Not every year but often enough that it feels like a regular thing. Mostly, during the months of September and October but not always. Since my daughter started school, we come during the Summer holidays trying to avoid the impossibly crowded month of August.
Right now, the first half of July, most tourists haven’t yet arrived and you can still walk along deserted stretches of the 9 km-long golden beach.
Back then, all those eons ago, when I first visited the island, Porto Santo was not a huge touristic attraction. Apart from the locals and the odd German adventurer, I don’t think the island received many visitors. Real estate development was just getting started and there were very few holiday houses.
One hotel, one main supermarket (nothing really super about it, it was just slightly larger than a grocery store), a bakery, a few cafés and a couple of restaurants.
One of the restaurants we went to, Teodorico1, didn’t have a menu. If you knew your way around or were lucky enough to find it, hidden high up a side track off the main road, you would be invited to eat whatever was being grilled. Meat, obviously, and I’m not even sure if there were side dishes (though my father assures me there was “salad”, i.e. a few slices of tomato on a bed of lettuce). What I remember is the espetadas, meat alternating with onion and pepper on a skewer and grilled. That’s it. And it was great. Past-meat-eater-me loved it. At another restaurant we visited, Estrela do Norte (“North Star”, closed down many years ago), you could sample the famous bolo do caco (unleavened bread backed on a hot stone) and milho frito (fried corn). There was also the place at the very western tip of the island, Calheta, where we ate lapas grelhadas (grilled limpet). This place still exists today, now a much larger restaurant/café.
From that first visit, I also remember the vastness of the sandy beach, the beautiful shades of grey the stormy skies cast on the sea, the emptiness of the streets in the small town. I may be over-romanticising it, seeing with my middle-aged eyes what stayed engraved in my twenty year old brain. It doesn’t matter. I will never forget it and will be forever grateful to my uncle for inviting me on that trip (and for continuing to welcome us here).
Over the next 10 years, after my first visit (though, surprisingly, totally unrelated to it), Porto Santo saw a slow but steady growth in popularity. Then, in the years that followed, it exploded.
Nowadays, there are many shops, countless hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés… You can rent canoes, bikes and quads, and there are organised tours around the island in one of those roofless buses.
Me, I come for the Sea, the Sky and the Sand.
And I am never disappointed.
Visiting the island today, and since my daughter was born, is very different from those first years. I remember long walks along the beach, quietly swimming in the ocean, and sitting at the bottom of the dunes with a book that would remain mostly unread as I would be content to stare, depending on the weather and the time of the year, into the blue or grey of the sea, and listen to the waves.
I would let the days pass with no schedule, no organised activities, no fixed meals… Yes, Porto Santo and I hardly recognise each other these days. And yet we are simply older versions of ourselves, different people are part of our lives, our days louder and more active. Same yet different.
I may no longer have whole days to myself but coming with my parents does mean I get to steal a few moments here and there, and for those I am grateful. On Saturday, I enjoyed walking to the nearby papelaria (stationary shop slash newspaper stand slash toy shop) for a new notebook and some colouring pens for my daughter.
And today, I will slowly make my way down the 139 steps to the beach, while the others take the car.
Not far from the soft lines of the golden beach, the landscape quickly gets browner and harsher. As opposed to Madeira’s main island, Porto Santo is far from lush and green. Its climate is dramatically different from the main island and so, necessarily, is its vegetation. Still, no matter how many times I go on walks during my visits, I am always surprised to see the variety of flowers — some large, some tiny — that grow here.
The northern side of the island stands in even greater contrast to the main island, and to its own South facing side; it’s like a different world. We usually spend the first days enjoying the beach and then take short trips around the island. This year it will be no different, and so I invite you to join me next week, when I will send you another virtual postcard. I promise you will not believe I am writing to you from the same place.
Here is the (rough) translation of the chorus above:
Friendly land
There is no other like you
Of all the jewels of Portugal
You are the most ancient one.
Porto Santo (Holy Harbour)
The name suits you
And so you are dear to me
As my dear mother.
By the way, you can listen to the full song on YouTube: “Porto Santo”, performed in the 1950s by Maximiano de Sousa, known simply as Max, a famous singer and song writer of the time (he even toured the US between 1956 and 1959 and, apparently, this song was the most loved and requested by his audience). This advertising jingle turned Fado Bolero was for a long time considered the hymn of the golden island.
Before signing off, I’ll share with you something I have been playing with during the afternoon hours when the UVs are too high to be outside. I shared it on Notes a couple of days ago, so maybe some of you already saw it…
I can’t wait to try to reproduce it on clay. I see a mug and a tray, beakers… I guess you can take me out of the studio but you can’t take the studio out of me…
As always, thank you for reading, and I can’t wait to share the next postcard with you!
Until then, have a great Monday and enjoy the rest of the week, wherever you are in the world!
Sara xx
ps: It’s not too late to send me a message with your address if you would like to receive a snail mail postcard from Portugal!
pps: Here are resources in English, if your curiosity was picked (although you can easily google “Porto Santo, Madeira” and find plenty of information): basic info can be found on Wikipedia; Visit Portugal site has some tourist information, and this pdf has lots of photos, history and interesting facts.
If you would like to see my work
I’m on Instagram, and have an Etsy store where you can find some pieces created in my small home studio.
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As I was ready to finish this letter, I found out that, although it closed down and stayed closed for some time, Teodorico has now been open again for a few years and doing rather well in its new revamped self which now includes a menu!
I’ve loved my visits to Portugal and am now inspired to explore further….. I look forward to next week’s update but meanwhile enjoy your time on the island. Xx
Silky and feathery bougainvillea! Such a gorgeous fuchsia color. That’s one of my impressions of colorful Portugal.