13th July - Portugal's West Coast

Sunday 13th July

Sitting here now we find ourselves in the beautiful Praia de Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal. It’s the 20th of July and I have no idea where the last week has gone. The last I knew we were in Madrid and now we find ourselves in the beautiful Algarve! We spent a few leisurely days and nights moving west across mid-Spain after leaving Madrid and crossed over the Portuguese border on the 13th.

The last week has been a complete blur, we have been basically just moving on each day from beach to beach on Portugal’s stunning West Coast and our time here has been fantastically cheap so far. Motorhomer’s won’t find any official stopover’s or Aires as you do so frequently in France, but we have had absolutely no problem parking for free at every beach we have visited, including Nazare, Santa Cruz, Portinho da Arrabida, Melides and Sagres. Each location has had a large, free and mostly empty car park directly on their respective beaches. How else could you wake up each morning with a view of different beach, and spend each evening watching the sun set over a different sea?

Lisbon was well worth a day trip, and even there we were able to park Eric for one day and night for just 1.20 Euros in the nearby town of Queluz, the next town on from Amadora which was actually a nightmare for parking. It was a manned car park next to the station, which 24 hour security - if we were in England we’d have needed to take out a small bank loan to stay there for more than a day. Lisbon itself isn‘t large, for a capital city. It has a metro but to be honest it doesn’t need one, and we were never likely to use it at 8 Euros for 10 stops, especially seeming as our train from Queluz only cost 1.30 Euros.

The city centre is full of drunks and beggars which spoilt our experience a little. The beggars were very persistent and very irritating after the first two or three - I know that sounds harsh, but they never leave you alone. They come up to people sitting in Café’s and Bars and families enjoying a meal, they follow you down a street - it was a bit sad really.

It wasn’t all bad though. The views overlooking the city and the ocean from the ‘Castle of Jorge’ (I think I‘m right with that name…you can tell I've researched this well can't you?!) are stunning, and although you have to pay 5 Euros to get into the castle you can just walk 2 minutes down the road next to the Church to experience the same panoramic sights for free - and there’s a bar, so it’s win win.

So far we have used Portugal as a resting zone. This last week has been our most relaxed by far after spending a lot of time on the road in the previous two weeks down from the Northern tip of France all the way down to Madrid, we feel we’ve earned a bit of a rest even though we probably haven‘t. The good news is we haven’t even begun our attack on the Algarve beaches yet, we’re only at the beginning, and of course after that we have the Spanish Costa’s and the south of France to err… ‘brave’.

Sun, sea, sand, cerveza…Ooh it’s going to be a tough next few weeks, I can sense it.

Parked in a campsite in Spain, just to prove to my Mum that we have actuallydone some washing!

Monsanto, Portugal, up a large hill.

Parked in Bathalla, Portugal - large gothic Cathedral in the distance.

Our view of the sunset over the Atlantic, from the Motor Home.