Odd Obidos


One junction down from Foz do Arelho on the A8 is Obidos, a medieval walled town and castle, and, in the summer, the venue for a medieval fair. Lured by the promise of traditional food, fancy dress and a tournament, we took the kids there this afternoon.
On reflection, traditional food should have been less a lure and more of a threat. Living in the Middle Ages wasn’t fun for most people: it was all about dying young after a lift spent covered in mud and untreated sewage, eating turnips. But after a week of ‘vegetarian’ food I was getting desperate.

The outskirts of Obidos are narrow streets with shops selling tourist nick-nacks. As you get closer to the walls, the streets get narrower, the shops get a bit odder. We found our way into the traditional costume rental shop, which is a massive dress-up chest for adults (and for our two girls, enraptured by their princess dresses). There was also a full long sleeved shirt of chainmail, which I tried on, and then struggled to get off. It wasn’t just the incredible weight of the thing, it was the very real fear that, like when you stick your head through railings, the garment would travel in one direction over your ears verybeaisly, but not at all in reverse. Somehow, with two people helping, I got the ten kilos of steel off, and left, quite relieved.

From there it was a short walk to the castle gates, except we got lost and went in precisely the wrong direction. Once corrected, we went past a mad crone with a kitchen knife and brown teeth (who terrified Destroyer, who thereafter had to be carried sobbing into the town proper) and a leper, and a mad woman with a noose around her neck.

Round the corner from that were the town whores, two drunks having a fight and a man in a corset with fake boobs and makeup pancaked over his stubble. To say that the kids were frightened by this version of the Middle Ages would be a gross understatement. We went up the hill, as I explained to the girls that in the old days entertainment meant "shouting" and this was something to get used to, but it wasn’t until they’d eaten a chocolate pancake and seen a donkey walk past that they recovered their joie de vivre.

They were rather obsessed by the donkey, which was good as it went past several times, doing laps of the market. There were also two camels and a baby goat (one day old) that they loved. So my children don’t like historical reenactment, I thought, but they like animals. I, on the other hand, wished more of my history lessons had been like this. Nobody mentioned drunken fighting around women of negotiable virtue or medieval drga queen’s when I did my GCSEs, and I feel the poorer for it.

At 7:30 there was the tournament, and again the girls surprised me. La Serpiente’s look of happiness to see men riding horses and brandishing swords has only been equalled by the day she got her new bicycle. She was even happier, I think, when the master swordsman was revealed to be a master swordswoman. Then there were the traditional folk musicians, who had a dulcimer (we think – is that the handcranked version of a lure?) and lots of yelling, and the donkey went past again, and the camels, and there was a house with a fresh coat of paint that you could smear with your fingers, and basically the whole thing was wonderful and I think they forgive us the crome-encounter at the start.

We shoved them back in the car and cleared off about 9; it was a good afternoon but a terrible preparation for bed. But certainly a fun way to spend our last full day in Portugal.


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.