Where's Bertie? He's back at the Aire at Vila Real, where we spent three nights last week.
Weather: Sunshine and showers, but mainly sunshine. Quite breezy, but quite warm.
It was a bit of a disturbed night last night, with rain and wind battering us. By daylight, under a blue sky and with the wind having calmed, only the huge puddles in the rutted parking area remained to tell of the overnight storm.
We have become accustomed over the last eighteen months to moving only very slowly forwards when we're on tour. However, it's not normal for us to find ourselves backtracking to somewhere we only left a few days prior. Until yesterday we had a vague plan that involved another move slightly west before heading inland to perform a clockwise loop, at the end of which we would have found ourselves back in Vila Real. Inspecting the map whilst waiting out the rain before lunch yesterday, it occurred to me that, due to the location of facilities, it would be better to do that loop anticlockwise, even if that meant backtracking 20km or so.
Admittedly, we could have bypassed Vila Real, stopped off at the Aire at Castro Marim to fill and empty, then headed straight to our next destination, but instead we opted for another night here. The surroundings are nice, the strolling possibilities extensive and the facilities good.
After the half hour drive to get here, Mick jumped out at the office to pay our tourist tax, then let me through the barrier, after which I popped Bertie in pretty much the same spot as he vacated last Sunday. Mick then disappeared, only reappearing over an hour later. It turned out he'd found another British Hymer of the same model as Bertie and had got chatting.
In a display of extreme laziness, it was afternoon by the time I stepped out into the fresh air for the first time today, but we soon put right the lack of exercise with a walk to the beach - a good couple of miles each way. With the wind having picked back up by then, it wasn't a day for beach walking (I'm not a fan of crunching sand), so we didn't stick around once we'd peered through the blown sand to the view along the coast.
Weather: Sunshine and showers, but mainly sunshine. Quite breezy, but quite warm.
It was a bit of a disturbed night last night, with rain and wind battering us. By daylight, under a blue sky and with the wind having calmed, only the huge puddles in the rutted parking area remained to tell of the overnight storm.
We have become accustomed over the last eighteen months to moving only very slowly forwards when we're on tour. However, it's not normal for us to find ourselves backtracking to somewhere we only left a few days prior. Until yesterday we had a vague plan that involved another move slightly west before heading inland to perform a clockwise loop, at the end of which we would have found ourselves back in Vila Real. Inspecting the map whilst waiting out the rain before lunch yesterday, it occurred to me that, due to the location of facilities, it would be better to do that loop anticlockwise, even if that meant backtracking 20km or so.
Admittedly, we could have bypassed Vila Real, stopped off at the Aire at Castro Marim to fill and empty, then headed straight to our next destination, but instead we opted for another night here. The surroundings are nice, the strolling possibilities extensive and the facilities good.
After the half hour drive to get here, Mick jumped out at the office to pay our tourist tax, then let me through the barrier, after which I popped Bertie in pretty much the same spot as he vacated last Sunday. Mick then disappeared, only reappearing over an hour later. It turned out he'd found another British Hymer of the same model as Bertie and had got chatting.
In a display of extreme laziness, it was afternoon by the time I stepped out into the fresh air for the first time today, but we soon put right the lack of exercise with a walk to the beach - a good couple of miles each way. With the wind having picked back up by then, it wasn't a day for beach walking (I'm not a fan of crunching sand), so we didn't stick around once we'd peered through the blown sand to the view along the coast.
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