What volcano?

By April 10th we had driven northwest to a very quiet and peaceful site about 40 Kms south of Porto, Sao Jacinto. We were expecting our friends Tony and Claire to come to visit us from 16th—22nd April, and knowing that they had been working very hard, were very happy with somewhere where they could just chill out, (emails had suggested that a very peaceful site was the order of the day), this site seemed to dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s.

On the day before their arrival we were making final preparations for their visit when another English couple staying on the site told us that they had just heard that an Icelandic volcano had erupted and the resulting ash cloud had caused the closure of all UK airspace.

Now as we have already said this site was ‘peaceful’ and where as most other sites we’ve stayed at have had some sort of internet connection--this site didn’t. With our limited Portuguese and the site managers limited English we managed to work out where the nearest internet café could be. We turned up there only to find it well and truly closed.

The manager had told us of another one in the other direction, so off we trotted and eventually found it.

Sure enough the headline news was about the volcano erupting in Iceland and that due to the ash cloud forming there would be no flights in northern Europe. We also picked up two emails from Tony & Claire, the first saying how much they were looking forward to seeing us, the second saying that there may be a problem with their flights.

At this point we felt really flat……nobody could have foreseen a geological problem happening which would disrupt in this manner.

With not having internet on the site we were now relying on text messages for any future updates.

The following morning we received a text saying “Stansted airport closed, looking at alternatives.” We had been really looking forward to Tony and Claire coming, but were accepting that we had to face reality and just move on. Flights were grounded and knowing their very busy diaries we wouldn’t be seeing them in the near future.

Then, just after midday, we received another text which said

“At Dover, catching ferry, can you text the exact address to put in the SatNav”.

Surely, we thought, they’re not going to drive – maybe they’re going to catch a train or get a flight from a French airport……so we texted them back to ask them how they were travelling, (Tony has a motor bike which he often uses to travel to France, but I couldn’t see Claire agreeing to travel all the way to Portugal as pillion passenger!)

Our response to them said ‘Gobsmacked, car? bike? Train?

They texted back saying ‘car’, and that’s what they did! – 17 hours of driving over two days, well over a thousand miles. They stayed with us three nights and then drove back again. Completely mad, but typical of them – there was no way they were going to let a volcano prevent them from spending time they had already earmarked as being with us.

We tried to give them a chance to chill out for a while but also managed to fit in a bit of sightseeing including a day in Porto which deserves a blog entry of its own.

One of the highlights of their stay was the Monday evening when we decided to have a bonfire on the beach and watch the sun set into the sea.

Off we trekked along the path to the beach (2km) with food, a couple of bottles of wine and some kindling to get the fire started. No need to take any wood as we knew the beach had plenty of wood of all types, washed ashore by the Atlantic waves.

The fire was enormous, the sunset magical and all in all it was a fantastic evening that we will remember for a long time to come.