Beja: The Promised Land

January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 | Mairead

Mapa

(We got a map, Lar!)

We’ve been in a bit of a wilderness. Still on our journey south, in search of warm air and bright skies. From time to time we find them. Then we can’t find a place to stay… We found both in Beja, a very old town in the Alentejo region of Portugal. That (very big) region stretches between the Atlantic sea and Spain and from above the north-east of Lisbon to the Algarve.

Portugal Mine Village

(Oranges growing by the path in the mine village!)

Being in the wilderness has had some surprising bonuses, but first some surprising downsides… We found a great camper van parking area in Grandola (it’s west of Beja, if you’re plotting our journey, Sally – btw in primary school we used to plot the routes of huge cargo ships travelling the world) within walking distance of a big supermarket (where they sold Kerrygold cheese… we didn’t even know there was such a thing) on one side and a small town on the other. All was well until six am when the truck drivers arrived to start their day. Trucks make a very loud noise when they start up. They were all gone by the time we were having breakfast.

Beja Street

(Street in Beja)

The following night we thought we had the perfect spot, a camper van car park near an old mine museum, closed when we arrived but would be open in the morning. To add to its attractiveness there were two other campers parked when we arrived. It was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farmland, roads too potholed for big trucks, perfect. Well… it had just got dark when Jimmy (name changed) arrived, I thought he was from one of the other campers but it turned out he was a down on his luck Dutchman needing the train fare to Lisbon… He didn’t like Anchovies but he had some ham and cheese instead.

Beja House Tiles

(Lots of houses have tiles on the outside)

Then we arrived in Beja. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, the reviews of the site were not glowing. But I needn’t have worried. There are toilets with toilet paper and soap and paper towels. There’s electricity. There are no trucks. There is no sign of Jimmy. The main bonus of travelling through the wilderness is that on the other side you are so happy when the basics are covered. The wilderness has lowered our expectations. I was wondering why that was a good thing and I think it’s because our expectations force us to fulfil them. If we don’t fill them then we are dissatisfied….

Even if we already have enough of everything, Mairead.

Portugal: Day 1 Part 3

January 25, 2016January 24, 2016 | Mairead

(Love this! And it’s exactly the right size for the roads)

So…We found a campsite in a forest full of birdsong, the wi-fi wasn’t great, we set off in search of mobile wi-fi, drive on little roads. me I’m nervous, the perfect Phone Shop is closed…Denis has another idea… we drive up and down the steepest roads in the world (might be slight exaggeration.) Eventually we find a place to park and another shop but still no wi-fi sim thingy and as we stand in front of a McDonalds sign Denis has another idea…

(Scary bridge… into Lisboa)

Let me pause here to tell you something I understood at that precise moment… Before we left Greystones one of my friends asked how could I spend so much time with my husband in a small camper van without wanting to kill him. I didn’t have an answer, because sometimes he is very annoying and I am often very annoyed with him and I think of ways I could hurt him (just kidding… kinda). I mean if it were up to me we would never have left the bird filled glade. I would be smelling lovely after my shower and I might even have a book in my hand. But funny thing, he doesn’t stay very annoying for long and on some occasions, like that moment as we were looking at the “lying” McDonalds-one-minute-away sign and thinking about the long list of things that went wrong today, he’s not fazed he’s still coming up with new ideas and I think… I’d like to be like that, maybe he’s not so bad…

(Sure it is, right here… Seen in Lisboa)

His idea didn’t work but weirdly it didn’t matter anymore. His idea? The lovely assistant at the last shop had said there was another shop, at the train station, they would definitely have the wi-fi sim thingy. We thanked her but having experience of the cobbled stoned streets we knew we were never going there. Until Denis has his latest idea… Denis thought the hospital would definitely have a taxi rank. We could easily make the sign of a train to the driver and there would be a taxi rank at the station to return to the hospital (whose name was amazingly easy to remember and pronounce – Padre Americano!)

(We’re finally here!)

With the help of two (very friendly, very helpful) taxi drivers we explained where we wanted to go (yes I said Choo, Choo and made train wheel movements with my hands!) But when we arrived at the train station we couldn’t see any shops. Immediately (seriously, within seconds of arriving!) a man waiting for his train called to us in perfect English “Are you lost?”

(Lisboa during the day)

Let me pause again to say… you might be a little suspicious of a stranger at the train station offering help (no? just me then…) but remember, all day long we experienced very friendly, very helpful strangers in this strange land. So I choose trust instead of fear and said, yes we are lost. He directed us to the Phone Shop. Of course he did.

(Lisboa at night)

Inside a very friendly, very helpful assistant (I am not kidding, she went out of her way to help us, to apologise for her English and to tell us about another shop) gave us the bad news… although she did indeed have the particular sim, in fact three of them, they were all out of date and she couldn’t reactivate them. We thanked her (in Portuguese, our pronunciation getting better with all the practice we get to thank people here!) and left to get our taxi to the Padre Americano hospital.

(Table for two at a balcony in Belém, Lisboa)

Ok that was it, Denis was all out of ideas, we’d failed again but we were surprisingly upbeat…. there really was nothing more we could do, we’d done our best and now it was time to stop. Back at the car park in warm and cosy Ruby we broke open a bottle of Spanish wine and had tinned salmon sandwiches (one slice of bread each, almost carbohydrate-free) for dinner. We could start again in the morning but for now it was time to sleep.

(Can you see that red bridge in the background? That’s how we left Lisboa… do these people have no fear?)

The next day was different. Travelling by big wide motorway we arrived in Lisbon (called Lisboa) after lunch. Our campsite is situated right beside a motorway exit in a big park. There are lots of birds here too. We went into Lisboa on the bus and queued in the mobile phone shop for an hour. They had the mobile wi-fi sim thingy.

We have the internet! But I’m just listening to the birds, Mairead.

Portugal: Day 1 Part 2

January 24, 2016January 23, 2016 | Mairead

(Light at the end of the tunnel?)

Ok so to continue from yesterday….. We find a campsite in a forest full of birdsong but the wi-fi isn’t great, we pay for the night and set off in search of mobile wi-fi. We drive on little roads. I’m a little (=a lot) nervous. We find the perfect Phone Shop…..the shop is closed…

There’s a very helpful hours-of-business sign that says it’s closed on Thursdays. Yep, today is Thursday… I feel the rocking start again. But that’s when we discover something beautiful… the Portuguese people are very friendly and very helpful. The lady in the shop next door stops what she’s doing to tell us something… which we can’t understand. But eventually we do understand – there’s another shop in the town. We decide to regroup and have a coffee before walking to the town to look for the other shop. The lady in the coffee shop teaches us the Portuguese for two medium white coffees – in case you ever need to know, it sounds like Duos Maya Let, again very friendly and very helpful. We set off with renewed hope….

(As I said in an earlier post… there are no photos from this time – above from the beautiful northern coast of Spain)

Until… we accidentally turn right instead of left leaving the supermarket car park. Fifty minutes later, after even narrower roads. my humming now joined by little squeals, we arrive back at the supermarket. This was a very low point for me and the exact moment when we decide to find a way back to the nice wide motorway and forget entirely about returning to the beautiful bird filled glade….

(Nice motorway)

The atmosphere lifts a little and it seems this day will be fine….. and on route to the motorway there’s another town, it seems bigger, there’s an entry for it in our camper van parking book… Denis has an idea! We’ll try again – we will go to the camper van car park and walk or take a bus to the nearest Phone Shop. Excellent idea….. Not really.

(Fond memories of the nice barman and the free food in Borio)

One hour later, after roads much steeper, much narrower, with slippy cobblestones we give up the search for the camper van car park and go back to the motorway plan. You will find it hard to believe (well, I did) but we try again at the next bigger town! And can you believe it, the exact same cobble stoned streets (much steeper than Patrick’s Hill in Cork city) await us there?

By now it’s getting dark, I am meditating (or is it a catatonic trance?) but Denis loves a challenge so he persists and finally finds a camper van car park. We park up, close the windows and go for a walk. I have an idea that walking will get rid of my newly acquired nervous tic. Soon we spot a sign for McDonalds and we are again filled with possibility. All McDonalds have wi-fi… we’ll be able to get online and work something out. The sign says it’s just one minute away, great. So we walk in the direction of the arrow….

(Ashleigh’s adorable dog, Max – animals help you stay calm, don’t they?)

We never do find McDonalds, we pass a big hospital and ten minutes later another sign saying McDonalds is still one minute away…. Then we spot what might be another supermarket. (We don’t know if it is or not because we don’t know what the supermarkets are called in Portugal and we don’t have internet to google – maybe computers are bad for us?) But it is a supermarket and YES there is a Phone Shop! I am overjoyed because I had begun humming again. The shop is open and the assistant is very friendly, very helpful. But… she does not have the mobile wi-fi sim thingy…

We leave smiling at the nice lady but feeling a little crestfallen. The McDonalds sign is lit up now but we would not be fooled by it’s promise of wi-fi only one minute away and we walked back past the hospital. There was food, light and heat awaiting us in Ruby. We’d be just fine.

Then Denis had another idea.

To be continued… again, Mairead.

Portugal: Day 1 Part 1

January 23, 2016 | Mairead

We have arrived in Portugal!

(1 Km to Portugal)

Since last we spoke we’ve been travelling long days and sleeping short nights in car parks! There’s been rain and sun and a tiny bit of snow. We’ve had lovely experiences. In France walking at night by the river Vendee in a small town called Fontenay-le-Comte. In Spain we met a lovely barman in the town of Borio in the north west who gave us free food and talked about the great time he had at the Cliffs of Moher and how bad the Irish drivers were! Borio reminded us of Greystones and of the camper vans parked at the harbour, that inspired us to go on an adventure.

(Some snow in Brittany)

Once we crossed the border into Portugal we decided we would take things a little easier. We would travel only two hours a day instead of eight… We would stay in campsites. We would take it easy and go slowly. It was not to be…

(Very good price!)

On Thursday we set off from our car park home in Borio as soon as first light and plotted a course for a small campsite in the north of Portugal. It was in the middle of nowhere, birds sang, trees grew, somewhere close by water babbled. We paid the fees for one night and I was looking forward to my first hot shower since the boat. There was one small problem – the wi-fi was less than ideal and Denis needed to get some work done. No problem, he had researched the possibility of our own mobile wi-fi system so we left the lovely birds and the idea of a hot shower and drove off the short distance to the nearest small town.

(There are very few pictures of this first day…)

Things got weird after that… To set the scene, we no longer had internet access which meant we were back to basics. Ask directions – we had two words of Portuguese, hello and thank you… Read a map – we didn’t have a map but we did have sat nav so not completely without hope. The the first sign of weirdness: we could not find parking in the small town. Really! There was nothing wide enough to take Ruby without blocking the street. Sure, no problem at all, we’ll go on to a bigger town. Now, at this point without a map we didn’t know the geography of this new land. But we soon found out by experience that it was mountainous. To navigate the mountain the Portuguese road builders had built winding roads. I am grateful to them, of course I am… but I would love it they had made their roads a little wider, actually, twice as wide would be best.

(My favourite roads are WIDE roads)

Each time we met a HUGE truck I would need to rock and hum gently (Ruby’s steering wheel is on the right hand side, the Portuguese drive on the right hand side, meaning I, as the passenger, am closest to the HUGE trucks…) By the time we arrived at the bigger town I was rocking frenetically and humming loudly but like an oasis in the desert there appeared a supermarket with loads of parking. (We know it’s a supermarket because it’s the French chain Intermarche) I take a moment to unclench and Denis takes a moment to enjoy the silence before getting quite excited to see a sign for The Phone Shop – the place his research indicated would provide a sim to give us mobile wi-fi. Ok this was going to be fine, I’m fine. So in we go. It’s not as big as it looks on the outside but big enough for our needs – we spot the shop.

The shop is closed….

To be continued, this post is getting too long, I’ll finish the story tomorrow, Mairead

First Steps to Portugal

January 17, 2016 | Mairead

(From a lovely little book called One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Robert Maurer)

We’re travelling again. This time, Portugal. We’ve never been to Portugal. It’s a long way, the sat nav says it will take 17 hours from our landing in France. It’s a bit difficult for me to imagine a journey of 17 hours, I think driving for two hours is long. Happily we won’t be travelling the entire 17 hours in one go. We’ll stop and go a few times.

(Travelling along the M11 towards the port of Rosslare)

We’ve known since we returned from the last trip that we would be going again in January. I have never liked January – it’s cold, it’s dark, there are grey skies and lots of rain. This year there was even more rain. What’s to like about that? Leaving it behind is a good thing, right? Right, but a funny thing happened this January.

(Our cabin, leaving Rosslare for our sailing to France)

This January everything seemed better… Yes there was rain. Yes there were grey skies. Yes it was cold (not as cold as usual.) But there were also blue skies and dry days, there was even sunshine! Was there sunshine last January? How come I’m noticing sunshine this January? I don’t know for sure but I have some thoughts…..

For now, we are about to dock at Cherbourg and do something we’ve never done before – experience France in January. I’ll be aiming to send you a couple of posts a week, so, talk to you soon, Mairead.

Travel stories

Month: January 2016

Portugal: Day 1 Part 2