Images from the End of the World
Here, along with the text of a previous entry, are some photographs of Sagres .
Sarges was once considered to be the End of the World. Here, the seemingly endless ocean thunders into sheer cliffs over 100 feet high.
Across the bay at the Cabo de São Vincente, the Romans thought that the sun would sink hissing into the sea at the end of each day.
But Sarges was also the beginning of the age of exploration.
Henry the Navigator Prince set up residence here in the fifteenth century and founded the world’s first nautical academy. Magellan and Vasco da Gama went to school here, as did Bartolomeu Dias who discovered the seaway to the Indian Ocean in 1488.
The surviving north wall of the once mighty Fortaleza high on a clifftop dominates the scenery.
It is a pity then that the fort itself should be up for a special award for worst developed historical site, if there was such a thing. The ancient walls are obscured by a coat of ugly concrete in dire need of a coat of paint and more concrete buildings are found inside. Only a few remnants of the once seminal school of navigation remain scattered on the site. Still the imposing walls of the fort offer some startling views:
A cobbled path leads around the windswept, rugged clifftop to a modern lighthouse at the tip.
Fifteenth century cannons still face menacingly out to sea.
Below the fort, surfers play in the waves. The beach, a bay of golden sand surrounded by spectacular jagged cliffs, is deserted as everybody is in the water.
I go down to sit on a rock and watch the sun fizzle into the ocean beyond the rim of the world. If I had a board, I would be back tomorrow.
Denni