Portugal’s west coast

We hit the coast at Navaré, some way north of Lisbon. It’s early season but already there were plenty of visitors, although we later realised that this was the weekend effect. As soon as you get to the coast it’s clear that there’s a lot of sandy beaches and even more pine forest, stretching north and south for miles.
The campsite was almost empty, save for a little gathering of motorhomes. We left them alone and instead slept in the Landy, on the hill at the top of the site.

We have a routine which works well when it comes to minimising mozzie bites. This is that just before retiring, we close the doors and windows and spray “Raid” in there to let it do its work whilst we get washed. Then we can climb in and open the rear windows where we have insect blinds (see previous blog for design and construction details) safe in the knowledge that the mozzies have been dispatched.
Just before bed we had an entertaining view from the top of the site, of a motorhome being towed out of a sandy rut by a tractor. He’d found the soft ground of which there’s a lot. After giving both drivers lots of advice (from on high and out of earshot) about how to handle the tow, it was off to bed. Five minutes after “lights out” there was the dreaded whine of a mozzie. Now you can’t ignore this; mozzies don’t go away when the doors are shut and they do bite and they do whine in your ear. So we had to locate it and remove it - not easy, but it was done.
So to sleep…and then there was another mozzie and another and another. So it continued on and off and even at six o’clock in the morning I was woken by a whine. So there’s something about Navaré mosquitoes that the clever people at Raid have yet to learn, after all this is the Greek version.

It was just as well that I got up early - that lovely pine clad, sand dune hill on which we had parked was actually a huge ant hill. Small ants are better than large ones somehow but even so, they had started to get into everything. The first lines of defence were already breached with ants into several of the “Really Useful Boxes” (see previous blog for more details) and they had discovered the honey jar and balsamic vinegar bottle but hadn’t yet managed to twist the tops off but with ants all they need it time. So it was a close shave and required a fair bit of emptying and cleaning of boxes. I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done to minimise the chances of ants getting into stuff except to keep it as high as possible and check it frequently.
For the rest of that day there were ants running all over the Landy (outside mainly). They are very determined creatures.

The town of Navaré is really two different settlements, connected by a very modern cliff cable tram thing - none of the restored Victorian cars here! As with all of the Portugal we’ve seen, there are incredible contrasts in buildings and their condition. These two are right on the front yet currently unloved.
On the southern side of the town is a huge tract of semi-sheltered beach that stretches as far as Africa it seems.

The sand was piled-up against the foreshore and a couple of bulldozers were slowly moving it back to the sea but I fear its a Forth Road Bridge painting type of effort. We had a wander along the front and then up and down a few back streets before the obligatory coffee. Then we drove up the hill to the top (Sitio) where, having found a small car park, we were then enthusiastically shown into a suitable space by a guy wearing a hi-vis vest. He was clearly a parking attendant, or was he... and anyway does it really matter - I parked in a space that he found for me and he earned €1 for his trouble.

The view from the top is stupendous, even more so when you know that you are standing on a rock slab that has been severely undercut and one day will no doubt break off. No worries - not today it won’t! This is the old town proper I think and it’s a maze of little streets with a huge main square dominated by a church where a wedding was taking place and a small gathering of market stall holders many of whom were trying to sell thick knitted jumpers - a tricky task in the heat.

As it’s the coast we decided that fish should be the order of the day and we had lunch at the restaurant with the best view down the coast. Plenty of Portuguese day trippers joined us and I imagine that the chatter was all about Eva Carneiro's constructive dismissal against Chelsea and their national hero José Mouriniho. Oh how the waitresses were laughing at the friendly banter coming from the menfolk in the restaurant. After all, it’s a commonly heard phrase in Portugal “you daughter of a whore”.
After lunch we were lucky to see the restart of a small classic car rally. Various models of cars from the 70’s featured, including an Escort Mk 2 Sport in fine fettle and guess what - a Fiat 850 Sport Coupé. Yes!! Have a look at this...

For those that don’t know, this was identical to our third car and was the one in which we started these road-trips. In 1978 we travelled around the whole of France for a month and a year later Holland and the Ardennes. It was amazing to see this model, again looking exactly the same - except that mine was bright red (what else?). How we got our camping gear into there I don’t know as it’s rear engine and the bonnet boot is tiny. My Dad made a super wooden box which we put on the roof and that held a lot of stuff.
On the north side of Nazaré is the surfing beach that picks-up very large waves - I think they claim one to have been 23m and they hold a world championship stage here I think. Today there were no surfers but it still looked decidedly dodgy considering that there was no-one else in the water and no lifeguards yet on duty. So the bodyboards stayed in the roof box.
We moved a little further north and inland to a campsite in what’s really Claudia’s back garden. She and her husband had developed this little site over the last sixteen years having moved from Bavaria (“Verr else? It’s zee best part of Germany”). Claudia thinks that she’s still in Germany and it took most of that evening to read the sheet of rules that she handed us at check-in. It was however a nice place to stay and they had made a great job of eradicating the mozzies.

On the site there was a Dutch couple travelling in a tiny caravan pulled by the best Mini 1275 that you could ever see. It was in pristine condition having been restored twice - with a bit of work on the engine (larger inlet valves giving more power) and some sort of customised gearing too which I didn’t understand.
At this site we were a few minutes from Pedrógão where we spent a very interesting Sunday afternoon. See the next post...