Friday 8 February - Pereiro

Where's Bertie? He's sitting on a football pitch (using the term very loosely - see photo later in the post) next to an Aire by the small village of Pereiro. Exact location: 37.4448, -7.58693.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine. Maybe not quite as warm as yesterday but still very pleasant.

As I ran out in the direction that we had walked yesterday, I noted the things that we could do to entertain ourselves if we stayed an extra day in Alcoutim, such as a walk to take a look at the Praia Fluvial (river beach) and a visit to the castle. We could even take a boat over to Spain. But there are so many places to visit and so little time, so we stuck with last night's plan and moved on, although not before a visit to the little grocery store, which proved to be surprisingly cheap for a little village store (I am, of course, judging this on UK village Co-op/Spar standards, but the prices we paid were mainly on a par with a Portuguese Lidl).

€7.80 worth of groceries. I'm not sure what this snap says about our diet. In our defence, the available selection of vegetables was very limited. They went in more for pasta, of which they must have stocked at least a couple of dozen varieties.

The intention was to head straight back to Bertie with our purchases, but we were slightly waylaid by the magnetic attraction of a cake stall that had appeared in the street. The woman running it, who presumably also bakes the cakes, tried her best, in a mix of Portuguese and French, to get us to buy one of everything, but we held firm, for the sake of our health, with just these:

Prices were not displayed, but I suspected they were going to be reasonable - €1 each was the answer.

We only had one other errand to run before we left town: a visit to the service point at the other Aire, as the one at our parking area hasn't been commissioned. We walked past that Aire the last two days and I ran past it this morning, before we drove there. On none of those occasions was there a vehicle there. Why? Because, per a sign on the service point, as of 1 January this year a parking charge has been imposed.

To charge for parking (and/or for services) is not a bad idea at all. The main thing that Alcoutim perhaps didn't think through is the appropriate price level. Aires and campsites in Portugal tend to be cheap (our most recent pay-Aire was €5 including good wifi and use of a hot shower, plus the usual services). So, to charge 60c per square metre of vehicle, per day, just for a patch of grit car park looks very expensive, particularly when you see the size of most motorhomes out here. The second problem for Alcoutim is that there are two other places, both better located to walk into the village, where motorhomers can park for free, including the unfinished Aire, on the other side of the village. I wonder what will happen: will they revoke the charge, or start charging for the other locations?

With tanks filled and emptied, a slight backtrack took us to the road to Pereiro, where we arrived to find ourselves a little underwhelmed, as on first appearances, this Aire is in the middle of nothing. However, I was hungry enough to eat a scabby dog, so we were certainly stopping long enough for lunch.

The first task was choosing where to park. It was only later, on foot, that we discovered what must be the original, official motorhome parking area. Most people, however, are parked over the adjacent wasteland. We opted to pop Bertie onto the 'football pitch' - if you look carefully at the photo below, you'll see the goal posts at each end.

Bertie is second from left.

I wasn't feeling moved to walk the local Petite Randonée route this afternoon, but in looking at the map I did see that there was a village just a few hundred metres up the road, so we wandered there. An information sign at the entrance told us a little of its history, which is basically that it's been dying since the 1950s and there's not much industry or agriculture around here. Mid-afternoon isn't the best time to judge the liveliness of a place, but save for two chaps sitting chatting on a bench, we saw not a soul*. The only commerce we saw was a cafe.

A (pretty incomprehensible) sentence on the information sign made us detour to the church on our way back to Bertie, to see if we could make out what the information was trying to convey, but we were thwarted by a locked door.

Behind the Aire is a reservoir. Based on the witness marks on the dam and the surrounding land, it's very low on water just now.

^{(*Mick has pointed out to me that this is not true. We also saw, at a distance, two chaps (separately) having a wee in their gardens. One could thus claim based on today's statistics that 50% of the men seen in Portugal are weeing in public. It is possible that they don't have their own bathrooms. There is a public toilet/shower block in the village. Or maybe they just like the al fresco facilities.)}

Thursday 7 February - Alcoutim

Where's Bertie? He's still sitting exactly where he was yesterday at Alcoutim.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and nice and warm.

There's a stray dog that lives in this parking area. There's another that must live nearby and often wanders through. They're both little terrier things, whilst we saw quite a bit of them yesterday, we heard not a peep from either. That all changed after dark, when the barking started ... and went on and on and on.

At one point I suggested that we could backtrack to our previous night spot, where we would be guaranteed a quiet night, but we stuck it out, which proved to be the right decision. At around 9.30 they finally settled down and a quiet night was had.

(Quick digression: As I type this the church bells in Alcoutim are chiming 5pm at the exact same time as the bells over the river are chiming 6pm - rendering both of them pointless, from this position at least, as you couldn't count one set of chimes if you tried. The Spanish chime repeats a minute later, which is useful - as long as you know it's in Spain.)

Today a 10km walk to the north of Alcoutim filled our morning nicely, and on our way back we would have stopped for lunch at the grill on the riverside, except their menu doesn't currently involve anything that's not meat, which ruled it out for me.

So, lunch was sandwiches made with jaw-breaking bread (the local bread is a rustic affair, which is tasty, but doesn't half have a tough crust). By the time we had finished that, all of Bertie's 7 neighbours from last night had left and he was all on his lonesome.

A German couple has since arrived in a caravan. I've no idea what the legality is in Portugal of parking a caravan up in place like this, but we have no objection to them being here. Aside from anything else, they've provided some fine entertainment this afternoon. How anyone can possibly spend so long faffing around with positioning and setting up, only then to decide to reverse the process and start all over again a few feet to the side is beyond me. I sometimes feel that we go to extremes to try to find the most level spot, but I doubt that we ever shunt back and forth for more than a minute. Even in places where it's appropriate to deploy levelling ramps the process doesn't take more than a few minutes. So, two hours spent positioning and fine tuning did seem beyond excessive, even if fun to watch (particularly the drama when the positioning of a wheel chock went awry).

Our other entertainment of the afternoon was a look around an exhibition of the work of a local artist at the library, which was well worth popping in to see. Maybe it would also have been worth going into the castle and taking a look at the museum there, but we couldn't find the enthusiasm for that today.

Wednesday 6 February - Alcoutim

Where's Bertie? He's sitting on a patch of wasteland/maybe-an-Aire just on the south side of Alcoutim. A service point has been 90+% constructed here (it's missing just a tap head and an approach ramp) , but there are currently no signs that it is going to be completed; however, its presence would seem to indicate that this is an official motorhome parking area. Exact location: 37.46830, -7.47110.
Weather: Some high level cloud but otherwise a lovely shorts-and-tshirt day.

I'll just chuck this photo in for my sister, who will appreciate seeing a tin tray in such good condition.

It was an earlier start than intended. My alarm clock almost always stays set for 0730, which would have been fine today, except that my phone had decided to switch its connection to a phone mast in Spain, just across the river, where the time is one hour ahead. Thus, I was rudely awoken at 0630.

That's not to say that we were on the move early. A leisurely breakfast gave the sun the chance to start warming the air (it was 8.5 degrees in Bertie when we woke up this morning, so the outside temperature was significantly lower than the forecast 9 degrees). Then off I set on foot for the 6.3km to our next destination, whilst Mick drove. A cunning ploy: after the last couple of hilly runs, this one would be net downhill. Unfortunately, 'net downhill' doesn't mean 'all downhill' and many an undulation was to be found, although all of gentle gradients.

I was running on the road, but it's remarkably quiet. Only five vehicles passed me, one of which was Bertie. There's no pavement, but there are arrows painted on the tarmac at regular intervals indicating where to cross so as to always be visible when negotiating the many bends.

I may have been on tarmac, but the surroundings were still lovely. This was my first good view of Sanlucar, which sits across the river from Alcoutim.

When I'd asked Mick to meet me at this parking area, I didn't know if we were going to stay or continue on to the Aire on the other side of town, but once here we couldn't see any reason to move. The village centre is conveniently only a few minutes walk away, along the river and Bertie was nice and level with no immediate neighbours.

In fact, for most of the day, this large area has been giving the appearance of a 'British Enclave' with just four vans here, all British. We've become a more multi-national contingent this evening, with a French van one side of us, a German the other, and a Nederlander beyond that. Quite why they all felt the need to huddle around this corner when there's oddles of space just over there ==>, I don't know!

There doesn't seem to be an awful lot to Alcoutim, but it's a pleasant village, with the narrow, cobbled streets that you would expect in an old settlement in Iberia. The waterfront and the views over to Sanlucar are particlarly nice. It is possible to get a boat over to Spain from here, but unfortunately the cross-border zip wire (yes, really!) doesn't seem to be running at the moment.

With our last loaf of bread having been bought on Saturday, the remaining chunk was getting to the point of only being useful as a wheel chock, so it was good to hear that there is a little shop in the village. We managed to locate it too, even though it disguises itself well, and once it had reopened after its 3.5 hour lunchbreak, we paid it a visit. It may well get some more of our custom before we leave, as our last supermarket shop, which was meant to provision us for 7-10 days, was a little lacking; we're not going to starve, but the fresh veg drawer in the fridge is looking like a plague of locusts has been through.

An interesting bit of history

It seems as if half of Portugal is for sale, whether buildings or just land. With so many of the properties we've seen being in this sort of state, their chances of selling seem slim.

Tuesday 5 February - just north of Montinho das Laranjeiras

Where's Bertie? He's sitting in an elevated parking area next to the River Guadiana a couple of kilometres north of the village of Montinho das Laranjeiras. Exact location: 37.42242, -7.45474.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and very pleasantly warm, with barely a breath of wind.

I didn't properly think through the order of things this morning. First I decided to delay my run until we had moved to our new location (in the hope it would be flatter!), then a while later I remembered there was a mains-water shower at our disposal and that it would be rude to forego the opportunity to use it one last time before we left the Aire that has hosted us for three nights.

It was a relatively short, but very scenic drive to get here, mainly following a nice flat road along the river. It was only right at the end of our journey that we started to climb, which I suppose I should have anticipated given that the description of this car park included reference to panoramic views.

It is a stunning, and very quiet spot. This is the view from in front of Bertie, looking over the river to Spain (where it's an hour later than it is here):

After coffee (the new stove-top percolator is working out well, incidentally), I didn't grasp the opportunity to use the 'I've already showered, I can't run' excuse, but bit the bullet and headed out. The surroundings were lovely...

... but the descent/reascent was tough in both directions. At 200' over a 4-mile run, it would have been negligible, if it hadn't all occurred within such a short distance at the beginning and end.

Making Bertie smell all fishy by cooking salmon for lunch (hopefully eating oranges this afternoon will have cancelled it out), we suddenly found our quiet little parking area to be proving popular, with a dribble of small, new-looking cars, most of them carrying more people than can comfortably fit in such small models. The English, American, German and French accents/languages confirmed that these were all tourists in hire cars. We passed the time of day with a Canadian couple who are just coming to the end of a seven-week trip, unfortunately timing their return home to British Columbia just a bit too soon to miss the coldest bit of winter.

As evening has snuck up, the stream of view-snappers has dried up, leaving us, for the moment at least, all on our own. So, it seems you don't have to venture too far inland to find somewhere that's not completely overrun with motorhomes.

Monday 4 February - Fonte do Penedo/Alcaria

Where's Bertie? He's still at the commercial Aire that sits between Fonte do Penedo and Alcaria.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine, with cool nights (we found ice on a puddle in a sheltered spot today!), but with afternoon temperatures getting into the teens. The wind has now dropped to almost nothing.

There's not a lot to report, but I thought I'd just pop my head in to say that we're still here!

We're still enjoying sitting in this elevated spot, overlooking miles upon miles of undulating green surroundings. Yesterday's activities were mainly running with a bit of walking just to stretch the legs in the afternoon. Today's main activity has been walking. I've penned a few words about those outings on t'other blog, but I'll reproduce the same photos below:

Saturday 2 February - Fonte do Penedo/Alcaria

Where's Bertie? He's at a commercial Aire that sits about half way between the tiny villages of Fonte do Penedo and Alcaria. It costs €5 per day to stay here, including the usual services as well as wifi and shower. Electricity is available for €3/day. Exact location: 37.33187, -7.46828.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine but a strong northerly wind making it feel cooler than the daytime high of 13 degrees.

We had Bertie filled and drained and his parking ticket paid by just gone 0830. After a pause at Lidl, inland we went, heading north into a strong northerly wind, on a road that took us up and down many a lump in the landscape. It was only just gone 0930 when we arrived here at this small hilltop Aire that sits in open countryside, between two villages.

One of the views from the Aire, looking down at the reservoir at Odeleite.

The plus point of the Aire being at a high point in the landscape is that it has 360 degree views. The downside is that there is no shelter and today was *really* windy. Going outside was a battle not to lose control of the door, and once out there it was just a battle.

Bertie's up there

By the time we thought about the exposure we had already paid up for three nights, but fortunately we also knew that the wind was forecast to drop during today (which it has) and then further over the next couple of days.

There's no ambling around town and stopping for coffee or lunch to be had here, but, as well as the views, there are oodles of tracks cutting through the countryside, including some marked routes. In particular, the GR15 and the local PR4 run within a very short distance of the Aire and this afternoon's explorations took us on a circuit that used bits of both of those routes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm going to have the option of a running route that doesn't involve some unrunnable ups and downs.

.... interlude...

A break was had between the last paragraph and this one, during which I went and sampled the shower. My first mains-water shower in 3 weeks and it wasn't a disappointment. Powerful, hot and unrestricted. What a fantastic end to the day :-)

Friday 1 February - Vila Real de Santo Antonio

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.