East to West

We are trying to experience as many different areas of Portugal as possible during our stay here.  Having spent a great 10 days at "Gary's", adjacent to the Spanish border, we headed west and up a bit on a B road thorugh the inland hills and across to the west coast.  We had identified an area we thought would be a good stopping place for Tony and Claire (colleagues from St. Andrews days-actually Julie's boss!) to come to stay for a week.  It is 30 or so kms from Porto yet still south enough to visit the Coimbra region.

The camp site was on a spit of land separated from the mainland by a 'Ria', a lagoon.  This spit of land is a couple of kms wide and all of 20 kms long.  We were at the very end of it, near the small town of Sao Jacinto, which made it extremely peaceful.

The Ria provides the local people with fish, a special seaweed for fertilizer, and salt.  These are the main industries in the area (which by UK standards is fairly poor).  As the tide goes out each day we watched fishermen in special boats lay their nets to catch mostly squid, and on the opposite bank gather in the seaweed.  At the mouth of the Ria as it joins the Atlantic there is a huge salt extraction works.

This all sounds very industrial but actually it was quite serene and a different and more simplistic way of life than we are used to.

Still Trekking

Having been without the internet for the last 2 weeks we thought we'd better give a quick precis of the ground that we have covered, and to let you know that we are still alive!  We'll go into more detail in further blogs.

At the moment we are north of Porto in a small resort called Rio Alto.

Since Gary's we have travelled the width of Portugal and up a bit!  Been visited by friends whose flight was cancelled so they drove to see us!!  Negotiated the ring road around Porto towing, and have settled for me (Julie) to stay by myself with Benji so Peter can fly home to see his mum!

The story continues........

Casa Gary

We have already posted a blog about Easter and the washing facilities. What we haven’t really gone into any detail about is the wonderful site we stayed on while experiencing those other things.

Every one calls it ‘Gary’s’ because it’s difficult to say Asseiceira. ‘Camping Asseiceira’ means ‘camping little hamlet’. It is a small 10-14 van site just 5kms from the Spanish border NE of Lisbon. The nearest large town is Portalegre, which is 23kms away.

As we travelled towards this campsite we could have been in the Peak District, if it hadn’t been for the cork trees. The dry stone walls and the undulations of the land, not to mention the green of the grass looked like it had come straight out of an episode of Postman Pat!

‘Gary’ is a very friendly guy from Buxton, who gave up work in the UK to follow his dream…….doing something which made him happy! (Sounds familiar!)

Camping Asseiceira consists of a plot of land amongst cork, olive and cherry trees, with a small stream flowing between the camp field and Gary’s property, which also has a pool and sunbathing area. He also has 5 rooms for B&B guests, a cross-eyed cat called Clarence

 and a completely mad Portuguese water dog called Miah. Next door is a small farm where we bought really fresh eggs. The farm has 2 donkeys which pull the plough to rotavate the soil. Benji particularly liked the brown donkey.

500 metres into the village there is a very good café/restaurant which served excellent lunches, a small mini market, a butchers and a hair dressers. The village also had its own bull ring, but the fights didn’t start until the end of April, so we didn’t see how popular it was.

There were abundant walking opportunities throughout the area as each field had a drovers path next to it. One morning we set off to give Benji a quick walk before breakfast and found ourselves so captivated by the scenery we ended up walking 11kms, all before breakfast!

A baker’s van used to come to the site every morning to sell bread and cakes and pastries….delicious! On every Wednesday a guy selling fish called by the site. All in all it was pretty perfect, which is why we extended our stay there for as long as we could before being near Porto to meet up with friends.

Castelo De Vide

As well as having Marvao in walking distance from our site we were also only a 20 minute drive from the much larger town called Castelo De Vide, another place steeped in history and with a castle (hence the name!).

It’s a great place to explore any time of year but over the Easter weekend they have some extraordinary traditions, so we made a couple of trips to see them.

The town had a whole programme of events during Holy Week and the following weekend and although they were centred around the Christian celebration of Easter there were lots of other elements to it as well. All the local restaurants put on a special menu of regional dishes, there was a tennis tournament for children, the tourist office organised a 10Km ramble through the countryside and so on.

We went to see two of the events – the first was the blessing of the sheep and goats on Easter Saturday. An age-old tradition – local farmers bring one or two of their flock to the church for a blessing – they turn up in all sorts of vehicles and the priest goes around splashing holy water on them all. It was fascinating to watch - the only sad part being the farmer who turned up on the tricycle in the picture below with two sheep in the back, struggled in the pouring rain to get his vehicle up the kerb onto the square where the other farmers were, only to discover that he’d missed it – he looked devastated.

I might be wrong but I suspect he hadn’t put his clocks forward the weekend before – this is a very rural area and he would only realise the next time he came into town.

After the blessing of the sheep and goats we stayed on to see the reconstruction of an eighteenth century market with locals all dressed in traditional costumes and had chickens and rabbits in baskets. Bunches of herbs, home made cakes and honey, flowers picked from their gardens, eggs and cheeses.

The second event was the Easter Sunday procession. This was a strange combination of solemnity and celebration. All those taking part in the parade – and every organisation in the town was represented – marched in a fairly formal manner, but at the same time the church bells were ringing out a celebratory peal.

The procession did a lap of the town and ended at the church where everyone went in to celebrate Mass together.

There was a “whole-town” feel to it which was very moving.

The Local Launderette

Dotted around this area are fonts which take water from natural springs.  They provide two purposes.  Firstly they are a lovely source of pure clean drinking water and secondly they serve as the local launderette!

The water that overflows from the drinking font runs into a large bath which has stone scrubbing boards around the edge.  The local women still use them to do their laundry - the lady who lives next door to our camp site has a washing machine in her house but in the summer prefers to use the communal launderette because that's where she gets a chance to chat to all her friends and neighbours.

Here's a picture of Julie using the one just outside of our site - she said it was a really easy way to rinse the clothes that she had handwashed but didn't seem too impressed by my suggestion that we could install one in the garden at home and dispense with our washing machine and tumble drier!

Marvao

On a rocky crest just across from our campsite is Marvao - we have a good view of it by day and an even more spectacular one when it is lit up at night.  It takes about an hour and a half to walk there but it is a very steep climb so we opted to take the easy way and drove to the top.

It's played an important part in many battles between Spain and Portugal and the views of the surrounding land mean that it would have been impossible for any invading army to sneak up on them!

There are only 159 inhabitants, a tourist information shop, a couple of 'pousadas' (special Portuguese hotels-special because they will have been converted from monastries or convents, etc, to very beautiful properties with amazing views over the surrounding countryside or incredible rooms and courtyards within), a souvenir shop, a museum, and a cafe, but it's wandering around the tiny cobbled streets, many with steps because they are so steep, that really transports you back in time.

All the small white-washed properties are squashed together in a higglety pigglety way most with tubs of beautiful flowers outside them. It is quite a magical place.

Camping Asseiceira

We’ve stayed at about 20 sites since we left home last August and all have had some merits but the one we are staying on at the moment is definitely one of the best.

The site itself is small, taking a maximum of a dozen tents and caravans, and it is situated in the most amazing location, on the edge of the Serra de Sao Mamede mountain range and natural park, near the small town of Santo Antonio Das Areias. The town itself has a shop and two excellent restaurants serving authentic Portuguese food. The landscape around us is stunning and there are numerous walks available directly from the site. From the site we have a marvellous view of the hilltop town and fort of Marvao and we are just a short drive from Castelo De Vide, a fascinating town with Moorish, Jewish and Christian origins going back to the 12th century. To cap it all we are only a few Kms from the border with Spain beyond which lies more amazing scenery.

There’s so much to write about that we thought it best to write lots of short blogs rather than bore you all with a long essay, so for now here’s just one photo

Lisbon

While we were staying in Evora we had a day trip to Lisbon as it was the nearest we were going to be and we couldn't tour Portugal without paying a visit to the capital.

We had a great day although of course you can't really do justice to a city of that size with a day trip.  It has a very spacious airy feel to it and everywhere was spotlessly clean. 

As you can see Lisbon still has, and relies on, its tram system, which is brilliant.

For very few euros you can get a one day ticket which means you can hop on and hop off these trams throughout the city.

It also has an impressive castle at the top of the hill which only charge 5 Euros to enter, but gives you somereally wonderful views.

We have found during our visit to Portugal that castles are very well maintained and open for the public to browse to their hearts content (unlike the UK where you're charged a fortune to get in if they are still standing and if you're not charged, it's because they are in ruins!).

We also had a wonderful lunch in Lisbon.  Portions are huge over here so it's quite common to ask for a half or a quarter portion.  You are charged accordingly to the size you require.  Peter and I had a half portion each of turkey in cream and mushroom sauce and sword fish on a bed of tomato rice.  Both delicious, both the size of a meal we'd eat at home.  It's amazing we haven't seen many large people over here.  It's obviously down to the sun and fresh air!!

To sum up....would we want to come and see Lisbon again?  Definitely, but without the dog as dragging him around a city isn't much fun for him!

Time Travel

We're staying on a small site just a few kilometres from the border with Spain which is very handy because although the sun sets at around ten to eight here it doesn't set until ten to nine in Spain.  So, every evening as the sun starts to go down, we get in the car, drive over the border, and enjoy an extra hour's daylight.