Onto the west coast of Portugal

We stay in Belmonte until Tuesday as it was such a nice place, the sun continued to shine. We moved location from the castle as a huge bonfire was being built and we were starting to get in the way, so moved into the town. The next day we were wedged in by parked traffic, but were soon able to get out.

We headed off soon after mid-day over the Serra Da Estrella mountains and down the other side. The views were amazing both en route and at the top, the photos we‘ve taken don‘t do justice to what we actually saw. The roads were a little scary at times, but we live to tell the tale!


We saw quite a bit of snow when we got to the top. It took longer to go over the mountains than we expected due to only being able to go at about 10mph for much of the way therefore we didn’t get to Coimbra as we hoped, so we parked up somewhere en route.

We headed to Coimbra first thing on Wednesday and parked up by the university, had a bit of a wander round and then drove onto Condexia. We had a walk around the old ruins and then headed to Nazare which is supposed to be a nice old fishing village. We got there about 4pm and left by 5.30pm as we weren’t impressed, it was tacky and scruffy and not where we wanted to spend Christmas eve night (apart from it had a nice sunset as we were leaving...)

So we headed down the coast to Sao Martinho do Porto which was only about 15 minutes away but 100 times nicer. We parked up on the sea front and went for a walk around and found somewhere to eat (at last!) and had a couple of drinks. Our Portuguese is getting a bit better and we at least know how to say Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Goodbye, Thank-you, Yes and No! We bought some drinking water today as we’re getting a bit low and the last thing we want is to run out of water on Christmas Day!!

On Thursday we woke to the sound of waves crashing onto the beach which was unusual given it was Christmas Day (photo shows the view from the motorhome). We moved the motorhome to a side street one block away from the sea front due to daytime parking restrictions of 2 hours and went for a long walk around the town with a stop on the way back at a beach front café for a coffee.

We found a water supply at the market, so we’ll fill up the water tank tomorrow. After some lunch at the motorhome we went for our first cycle ride, away from the town across the sand dunes. Luckily there was a boarded walkway/cyclepath the whole way or we’d have got nowhere fast - sand is impossible to cycle on!

After cycling back we had another walk around town. Throughout the afternoon there were loads of people out and about walking or driving along the sea front, the cafes and shops were very busy too, quite strange for Christmas day. We returned to the motorhome early evening and cooked our Christmas dinner - turkey, mash, broccoli and gravy with Christmas cake for pudding.

We stayed at Sao Martinho do Porto until Saturday and planned to drive to Estoril. It was a good day to drive on as it was overcast and quite chilly!

We didn't get far on our travels before noticing a large walled town on a hill in the distance, as we got closer it seemed very busy so we decided to park up and take a look.

We quickly found a car park specially for motorhomes with about 20 motorhomes already parked up. The medieval town of Obidos was well worth a visit, we took a walk around the rampards which were open on the one side with quite a long drop below! We had a wander around the old town and had a cherry liquor which seems to be a traditional drink of the area. We then drove on for half an hour or so and parked up in a town square for the night.

Into Portugal

We manage to get LPG the next morning and with a full tank drive onto Ciudad Rodrigo (an old walled town). We park up just outside the entrance - the motorhome is too tall to fit through the arched entrance. The tourist office is right next to us, but by the time we have some lunch the tourist office is closed for siesta time - we need to remember this whilst in this part of the world! We wander around for a while in the afternoon and then again in the evening, some locals are putting on a performance to music which we don't understand, but we watch for a while. We try to find somewhere to eat and manage to establish that the locals don't eat until later, so restaurants don't open until 8.30 - 9.00pm, so another failed attempt for us to eat out! We decide to get some cake from a nice cake shop to stave off our hunger until we get back to the motorhome, we won't be doing that again though, as two slices came to £7.00!

We wake on Sunday to freezing fog, thankfully we have plenty of gas so the heater is put on full blast. The motorhome warms up quickly. We head towards Portugal and just before we reach the border the sun starts to shine brightly. Unlike the border between France and Spain, the Spanish/Portuguese border has border control with serveral booths across the road, however we were able to drive straight through - maybe they don't bother on a Sunday! As soon as we were through the border we were waved down and given a bag of Portuguese newspapers plus a mobile phone SIM and a pair of stripy socks! Unlike France and Spain there were "Welcome to Portugal" signs to welcome us. The sun continued to shine and we decided to head to Belmonte as our Camperstop book said that there was parking beneath the castle and water available. Belmonte is just below the Serra Da Estrella which is the highest mountain range in Portugal. It was quite a steep climb to Belmonte but it was worth it as it's a lovely little town. We parked up on the main street, had some lunch then went for a wander. We found a good place to park right by the castle and found a water fountain in a small park close by. After our wander we popped to a busy pavement cafe and watched the world go by. It is a really, really warm day. We return to the motorhome and move it to the place we found earlier, fill up with water and put the water heater on to have much needed showers. Mark has bought a rechargable shaver today, so hopefully he'll be able to have a very overdue shave once it's charged up (he's not shaved for over a week as his shaver doesn't want to work with the inverter). Our new parking spot is the most picturesque that we've had so far, overlooking the Serra Da Estrela mountains with their snowy peaks on one side and the castle to the other.

Strangely Portugal is an hour behind Spain, so we're back on the same time as the UK, gaining an extra hour today. Later we try to find somewhere to eat, but as usual we give up and cook for ourselves! The town has many bars, but they only offer snacks.

Dover to Spain

We caught a ferry from Dover on a wet, windy December morning to Dunkirk where the weather was pretty similar! We spent the next 3 days driving through France as quickly as we could stopping overnight in small towns en route. Much of France was very flat with ditches instead of hedges, we saw lots of wind turbines and mistletoe as we travelled through the countryside .

By Wednesday we decided to spend less time travelling and do some sightseeing. We drove from our overnight stop to Biarritz and parked up on the sea front, we spent a couple of hours wandering around this nice coastal town, albeit very quiet in December.

We then drove the short distance from Biarritz to Hendaye (the last French town on the west coast) and parked up at an Aire with half a dozen other motorhomes, we‘ve started to see more motorhomes over the last couple of days. On Thursday we drive the few miles into Spain and take the coast road which takes us through forests and mountains and lots of lovely scenery. We’re now getting short of LPG (which we use for heating, cooking and the fridge) and wish that we’d filled up in France, luckily the weather has been milder the last couple of days so we’ve not needed to put the heater on in the evening. Hopefully we’ll find somewhere that sells LPG tomorrow, before we completely run out! We’ve now clocked up just over 1000 miles since leaving Shropshire a week ago.

On Friday we drove to the centre of Bilbao and drove round in circles in an attempt to park as we wanted to visit the Guggenheim museum, we gave up in the end as nowhere seemed suitable to park a motorhome. We drove on through Spain towards Portugal and directed the sat nav to the one place along our route that sold LPG. We arrived at 4pm to find it was closed, we eventually used various books to write down some questions in Spanish and took our scribbles into the business next door, no-one spoke English but they helped and showed me the Repsol website showing that it should be open until 8pm. We’ve decided to stay in this town (Valladolid) for the night and try again tomorrow as it’s apparently open from 9pm - 2pm. We’ve had lots of sunshine during our drive today, so hopefully that will continue. Hopefully we should reach Portugal at some point tomorrow and in another couple of days we should get to the coast.

We've made it to Dover!

We left Shropshire yesterday and travelled towards a little village near Northampton so it would be nice and easy to get the satellite fixed this morning. It took longer to fix than expected (3 hours!) but at least it's sorted and the TV works again at last. Then it was onward to Dover... a long, long drive, especially as we were hitting the M25 on a Friday afternoon, very bad timing! We had a couple of breaks (one to Sainsburys to stock up on lots of baked beans, tea bags and ketchup!) and another later to cook some food - better than the KFC we had last night :-) We finally got to Dover just after 10pm. It's a crazily busy place with loads of lorries parked up on the way in and even more queueing up to get to the ferries. We've found a place to park up near the town centre in a nice residential area, luckily one of the houses has been kind enough to leave their broadband unsecured and therefore let me use it. We're hoping to catch a Sea France ferry tomorrow (Saturday) at 12.35pm, but for one reason or another the website won't let me finish our booking, so I need to ring them in the morning... Hopefully places will still be available. If not, there appears to be plenty more sailings throughout the weekend. We'd like to arrive in France while it's still daylight so that Mark can get used to driving on the right. Probably a good idea, especially after the long day driving he's had today. Anyway, enough for now, time I got some sleep! See you in France :-)