Introduction
These photos were taken during a trip to Portugal in 2018.
The tour was taken with "Campaigns and Culture" - https://www.campaignsandculture.com
This is a fairly new company run by:
Gareth Glover, well known author and compiler of many diaries and memoirs - http://www.garethglovercollection.com
and
Robert Pocock, expert on Cavalié Mercer, good food and wine.
They were fantastic company on the trip and provided many insights and anecdotes. They had selected some excellent hotels and places to eat. My wife, who had anticipated having to put up with the military bits, discovered them to be suprisingly interesting.
I would travel with them again - and did, to Waterloo in 2018.
Gareth (with the telescope) and Robert at Busaco.
Visiting battlefields can be frustrating and photographing them moreso; a 200 year old battlefield may have changed a great deal.
Villages have grown, or even disappeared. Old roads have been abandoned and new ones cut through the landscape on new alignments. Trees obscure the terrain and views.
Roliça remains much as it was, the villages are larger but the ridge that Colonel Lake dashed at is wooded.
The area around Vimiero remains largely open with good views from the north/south ridge.
Busaco is now a national forest so trees obscure the main ridge. Wellington's viewpoint is now not a viewpoint at all.
Many of the locations along the Lines of Torres Vedras have been eroded and the stone robbed out but some have been restored.
The village of Fuentes de Onoro has grown and the graveyard is no longer visible near the church.
Gems however remain.
The fortress of Almeida is intact with little change to the town within the walls.
Fort Conception remains much as it was after being blown up by French and British. It is now a hotel and restaurant, nicely done with minimal impact on the ruins.
Fort São Vicente at Torres Vedras remains with its converted windmills, walls and ditches and is a haven for wildflowers.
Note on names, spelling and pronunciation
I have not anticipated Sir Arthur Wellesley's title and only refer to him as Wellington once he became Viscount Wellington after the battle of Talavera (27-28 July 1809).
I have mostly tried to use Portuguese names, for example, Tejo not Tagus. I have tried to show accented letters correctly, using a common font, but these may get lost or changed between systems.
Portuguese is a softer language that Spanish. In particular, a "c" before an "i" or "e" or accented as "ç" is soft. For example, we spell Sintra with an "S" and that is (more or less) how it is pronounced. However, it is spelled Cintra in Portuguese. Similarly, Roliça is pronounced more like Rolisa.
A note about the equipment used.
The pictures were taken using an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark 2. This has a Micro four-thirds lens mount and very good stabilisation.
Most of the time I used an Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12-100mm f1:4 Pro lens (35mm equivalent, 24-200). The addition of an Olympus HLD-8 Battery Grip made this large lens very manageable.