26/09/2026
If things have been a little quiet around Journey Walks lately, there’s a reason.
For the past few months, we’ve swapped the streets of Sydney for some considerably older ones, travelling through Europe and, perhaps predictably, spending an unreasonable amount of time inside castles, fortresses and ancient towns.
Portugal has been particularly good to us.
At Tomar, we traversed a medieval stronghold built by the Knights Templar. Just outside town, the incredible stone Aqueduct of Pegões stretches across the landscape, built centuries later to carry water to the Convent of Christ.
At Peniche, we explored an enormous fortress rising above jagged cliffs from the ocean. Originally built to defend the Portuguese coast, it eventually became a political prison under the Estado Novo dictatorship. Political prisoners risked their lives in daring escapes over its high walls.
Further inland, along Portugal’s old frontier with Spain, places like Castelo Rodrigo, Castelo Mendo and Sabugal allowed us to reimagine medieval battles and hilltop lords defending their borderlands from within granite castles throughout the centuries.
And then there was Almeida, a remarkable star-fortress town where we somehow found ourselves in the middle of an enormous Napoleonic battle reenactment involving more than 800 military actors. That one deserves a story of its own.
Portugal is one of a kind and in many ways it feels like the land that time forgot.
And while the quaint cobbled streets and charming buildings might be what catches your eye at first, spending the time to dig deeper into when, why and how these old towns were built, and who built them, has turned each location into a kind of historic treasure hunt, revealing so many hidden layers and a greater understanding of the country.
Apparently taking a break from telling history in Sydney just means we go looking for it somewhere else. It’s a true obsession!
Here are a few glimpses from our European travels before we return home and get back to bringing the fascinating stories of Sydney back to life.
