After Porto, we needed some rest and relaxation and spent two nights in a small campsite in the town of Vila Chã. It’s right by the sea, well near enough to see the sea in the distance from the gate.

It’s a beautiful place, very simple, there’s no big supermarkets (although there is an outlet shopping centre 3km away) there’s no big shops, there’s very small cobbled streets and lots of tiny cafe/bar/restaurants. There’s also a boardwalk that runs along beside the sea.

We’ve been here before, I think it was 2019, when Denis’ laptop failed and we stayed here while we were waiting for it to be repaired. We waited a week, a long glorious week of me walking the boardwalks taking pictures and not much else. I saw the small fishing boats come in every morning. There’s a long tradition of fishing here and as we heard from Clara in Porto the Portuguese love eating fish so they have no trouble selling their catch.

This is a perfect place to come after the busy city and we needed to do the washing. Not exactly glamorous but I love to be able to hang the clothes on the line after washing and because of the warm weather they will actually dry. And it didn’t take very long until a washing machine full of clothes was dry. It’s funny how something like a load of washing can play on your mind because you have to plan to be at a washing machine (did I mention, there’s none in the motorhome?) so it’s a little bit more tricky.

There’s the tokens you need to buy and the instructions you need to read (different every time) and there’s the queuing if all the machines are full. Then you need to be in a campsite if you want to hang out your clothes and some campsites don’t have washing lines. We did recently pass a petrol station where there were washing machines outside and beside the washing machines were clothes lines! Yes! And a woman hanging up her sheets! I have never seen that before. Also maybe it could only happen in Portugal? Is it only me who thinks someone would steal your sheets? Maybe I think about theft too much…

On my way back from hanging out the washing I passed a barbecue set up outside someone’s tent, and there were three fish propped up on a small barbecue, cooking. I did not have the courage to stop and take a picture of the three fish. They smelled absolutely gorgeous and I don’t usually like fish but if someone had offered me just a little bit of that fish as I passed I would’ve taken the hand off them (in other words, I’d have said, Yes, please!)

Which is kind of strange so maybe I should just buy some fish and cook it on the barbecue. Or I should just learn how to cook fish on the barbecue. I think it’s the whole fish on Friday thing?

When I was a child we had to eat fish every Friday we couldn’t eat meat, well sometimes we would have a fried egg instead but it was mainly fish. Does anybody remember that? I think that put me off fish, except for anchovies, I love anchovies on pizza. I’m hungry now… possibly even hungry enough to eat some fish.