little things

We have a lighthouse!

| Mairead

2018 3

(Ortiguera. To the right… a little cove…)

I hope my photographs can do some justice to the beauty of the place we have found ourselves in today because I am struggling to find words to describe it… Oh and the rain has stopped.

2018 6

(…to the left… a village)

We passed this way two years ago when we first travelled in the camper van to Portugal. We stayed very near here in a supermarket car park, our first. It was grand, great for getting groceries but their 3am delivery truck was very noisy. We had no idea, just 30 minutes down the road there was somewhere as beautiful as this spot.

2018 9

(Steps to bring you down into the cove)

I suppose we could have done some research. We could have joined some internet forums. We could have at least bought a guide-book. We didn’t. So we missed it. But we got to experience it this time.

2018 8

(And behind us… a church. Does something about this remind you of old westerns on the telly?)

Mind you, getting here was a little fraught…. there was fog…

2018 1

(That’s a 130km/h motorway with a very steep drop over those guard rails…)

And a humpbacked bridge with trolls…. (can’t be completely sure about the trolls).

2018 2

(There was literally inches on either side of the van…)

Experience is funny, you never know what it’s going to teach you. We are travelling a little differently this year, we have had different experiences since the last time we were on this road and they taught us things we never knew we didn’t know.

2018 10

(View from the dining room…(!))

Like slowing down sometimes gets you there faster… when there is somewhere like here, Mairead.

Can I check your oil and water?

| Mairead

2018 2

(That’s a ginormous sign)

We now have a petrol station to add to our locations. I think this is the first time we’ve ever stayed the night at a petrol station, but I know petrol stations… My Dad ran a petrol station in Cashel for over thirty years and as young children it was one of the favourite places to visit for my brother and I. The other favourite place was the Rock of Cashel. (In case you didn’t know that’s a famous and beautiful historic site.) When we got a bit older and started working in the business it wasn’t as much fun but we did enjoy meeting people and earning money. The smell of petrol still brings back memories so I feel quite at home here. If not for the lack of language skills I could probably offer my oil checking skills.

2018 3

(Our view today)

We hadn’t intended staying here tonight. I had picked a different stop just half an hour to the east. It looked like a lovely town and we found the aire without too much trouble but we needed water again and their black water drains were blocked, so we didn’t want to chance their water. We searched the Parkings app and headed here instead. On the way we passed a supermarket with petrol station and I had a bit of a realisation…

2018 4

(Cute Spanish church in the distance)

When my siblings and I were younger and going for a drive with our Dad, he constantly had to drop into the petrol stations we passed. Either to chat with the owners or to slowly drive past the pumps and check the prices. He got great craic out of comparing their prices to his own. A favourable comparison meant his business would do better but I don’t know if favourable meant a higher price at his competitors or a lower price.

2018 5

(There’s a grove of trees beside us)

Well anyway the supermarket with petrol station (that we were passing only because the previous aire drains were blocked (I know, it’s a confusing story)) had the lowest diesel prices of the whole time we’ve been on the road! How do I know? Well, Denis has been constantly checking the prices. On Monday the fuel low alarm bell came on and do you know what he said? He said, “don’t worry I’ve been keeping an eye on that for a while, the prices are too high around here we’ll wait until we’re nearly empty.” And he drove on… So when he saw the lowest prices, he was thrilled and couldn’t pass it up, despite our half full tank. My realisation? Denis might be channelling my Dad…

From a Repsol petrol station on the north coast of Spain, Mairead.

Free Parking with the Elephants

| Mairead

2018 1

(Our view from the kitchen)

We crossed the border into Spain this morning. It rained the entire time and the spray from the other traffic was a bit miserable. We had forgotten that this part of the journey past San Sebastian and Bilbao is always a little messy as city by-passes can be confusing and chaotic and it was all that this morning.

2018 3

(Nearby village)

As some of you will know I’m a very helpful passenger. Some people say too helpful… My self-appointed duties include continuously reminding the driver of the speed limits, especially when they are lower in the rain. Suggesting the optimum wiper speeds as windshield conditions change. Making squealing noises when (in my opinion) other vehicles approach too close to the van. Insisting that the driver must never check a beautiful view. Making wavy movements with my hands when our vehicle is proceeding too close to the vehicle in front.

2018 6

(Gondola at the safari park)

My assistance is not always appreciated though… so lately I have been considering a kind of toning down of my helpful tendencies. This proves to be easier said than done as it has turned out my main motivation for helping is self-preservation… it turns out I am attempting to prevent a terrible accident where I go up in a ball of flames and career down a 100 meter ravine. The constant vigil is exhausting as I am on high alert and I don’t even have a brake pedal. I did suggest to Denis that we could invest in an extra pedal but he wasn’t keen so I had to come up with another option.

2018 4

(Fence around the elephant enclosure)

It turns out when I’m a passenger I run the ball-of-flames-and-100-meter-ravine accident on a kind of continuous YouTube loop in my mind. I do that so that I don’t lose focus of my main concern: self-preservation. My new plan is to preserve my sanity and turn off the video loop. Every time it starts into it’s ball of flames, I stop it and have a look at the nice view. Then it starts again and I stop it and take a nice deep breath. Every time it starts I stop it again. It definitely makes the driving (or is it passenger-ing?) more enjoyable. I had been doing grand until this morning with the trucks and the rain but never mind I am a work in progress.

2018 5

(Our elephants)

So tonight we are at a safari park… with free parking. We took a walk earlier, to see the elephants…. yes now we have elephants! We got drenched on our walk but it’s so lovely to be surrounded by nature that we didn’t mind and now we’re snug in the van looking out on a lake with some ducks.

It’s a long way from the motorway. Mairead.

Beware of the… stationery

| Mairead

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(Seen at roundabout near Saint Lô. I think it means being here changes your point of view)

We have a bit of a routine going and while the weather is encouraging us to move along, that is what we are doing. We set our alarms for 7am this morning and by eight we were first in the door of our supermarket (it’s ours now). Bonjour! (from the lady on the checkout) Bonjour! (from us). It is absolutely lovely the way French shopkeepers say hello as you walk in the door. I had forgotten all about this ritual. It makes me feel very welcome and I like that.

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(French coffee…)

Back on the road within 20 minutes. Then we spotted a Boulangerie with parking spaces big enough for Ruby… Bonjour! Bonjour! We sat down to our first French cafe au lait for me and espresso with chausson au pomme for Denis (thanks to two friends, the one who knows food intake and the one who knows hypnosis I am a complete star at the moment regarding my intake of pastry products!) and pondered the fact that these independent bakers get up each morning to make exquisite (tasting and looking) pastries, cakes and breads while cheaper supermarket products are available all around them. (This particular one also made great coffee.) It has to be down to the French people supporting them, I suppose. No wonder they greet us so warmly, they probably appreciate us. You’re welcome.

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(Stationery…)

We’re at another supermarket car park tonight, very close to the border with Spain. When we arrived Denis had a client call and then we had lunch and visited our new supermarket (this one’s ours now too). In fact having lunch before entering a supermarket here is a top tip for protecting oneself from the pastry dangers and the even more dangerous large-bag-of-Magdalenes dangers. We survived.

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(Absolutely. No. Lines.)

I do probably need some protection from the stationery dangers though because I don’t know how it happened but I arrived out with a lovely sketching notebook (no lines, sigh) a tube of clear glue (no solvent…?) and a pack of blank cards and envelopes! That makes three blank sketching pads, six different glues and about fifty card blanks in my travel kit… don’t anyone tell Denis. I do intend to do some craft making while we are away so none of that glue or paper or card will go to waste…

Hmm, maybe I have a problem… Mairead.

It’s raining today

| Mairead

2018 3 2

(Not actually a casino…)

It’s raining today and has been since the middle of the night. We are near Bordeaux, in a supermarket car park. We drove for a couple of hours in foggy misty rain to get here and I went for a nap as soon as we had settled. It’s still raining now and because it’s a Sunday the supermarket has been closed since before lunch so not a lot happening around us. We do seem to be near an airport because I can hear low flying airplane noise. I’ll go out when it eases and take some photos of the empty car park and see if I can make it look interesting!

2018 6

(Ruby)

That’s the thing I like most about going somewhere I’ve never been before, noticing ordinary things…

2018 1 3

(The trolleys are green)

For instance here it’s the colour of the trolleys, I hadn’t really noticed that trolleys are different colours in different supermarkets. The trees, there are trees. And the absence of people. It would be unusual to find a supermarket car park in Ireland this deserted on a Sunday afternoon. When we moved to Greystones first the big supermarkets didn’t open on a Sunday at all, the car park was where learner drivers went to practice and the odd car boot sale was held.

2018 5

(A tree)

I back in and I’ve done my best with the photos! Just checked my weather app – it looks like it will be raining until nightfall. Then i noticed it’s exactly the same temperature here (11℃) as Greystones, Wicklow, Dublin, Cashel, Cloyne and Celbridge and it’s raining in all those places too except for Cashel. Breaking News: The weather is better in Cashel, Co. Tipperary than the south of France! Maybe I should do a weather report once a week comparing weather in those places in Ireland with wherever we are at the time. Could it be the best weather is always some place in Ireland? Could be…

From a rainy Casino supermarket car park, Mairead.

Trip to Portugal 2018

| Mairead

2018 1

(Car park near Rosslare)

Tonight we are leaving Ireland for three months. There is one week in March when we have to be in Lisbon but other than that we don’t know where we’re going or when we’ll arrive. What we do know is we are driving via France and northern Spain (although not the exact route) to beautiful Portugal. We will be travelling more slowly than in the past, weather permitting. Previously, we drove like the clappers until we got to Portugal and then slowed right down, but we have come to realise that every bit of the journey (from our front door to the southmost tip of western Europe) is part of the experience and there’s no need to rush any of it. Of course, if the temperature is below zero in France we might feel even amazing French coffee and croissants can’t justify driving slowly through the cold. Although to be honest the van isn’t ever cold. It’s a small space and doesn’t take much energy to make it toasty.

2018 2

(I love bunting!)

We travelled to Cork and Cashel last weekend and got a gas cylinder that we can fill up as we travel, the bottle connections we use in Ireland don’t work in the other countries of Europe. We use the gas for cooking and heating so we don’t want to run out. It was also an opportunity to take the camper out on a test run to see what we’d forgotten… It’s really easy to forget what we need when we are in our house. It’s also hard to pack for warmer weather when there’s snow on the ground. In the past I’ve ended up with too many fleeces and too few t-shirts.

2018 3

(Happy as a pig in… a messy van)

This will be our third year travelling away from winter in Ireland. We read the same news as you. We stay in contact with our family and friends via mobile phones and computers. We cook dinner (well, Denis does, I wash up!) We watch YouTube videos instead of television. We shop in supermarkets, including Aldi and Lidl! It’s very like living at home except for the view. Some days we wake up in a car park and some days we wake up in a forest. Some days the birds are singing outside, some days waves are crashing, some days there’s rain falling on our roof which always makes us smile. Because the one constant of this way of living is that nothing is the same as it is at home. Surely this rain isn’t the same as the stuff we complain about all the time in Ireland…?

But it is and the thing that makes all the difference is your point of view, Mairead.

Wash Day

| Mairead

IMG 6391

(Another lovely sunset)

Yesterday was wash day. Washing your clothes while travelling in a camper van requires a little extra organisation. [But before we start a health warning… Kate, close the email… there’s a picture of a snake in this post!] When we arrived last week we were at the limit of our clean clothes and we picked this site because it had a washing machine. It turned out to have so much more but that’s another story. So as soon as all our passport details were handed over I asked about tokens for the washing machines. (Would you like to know the cost? €3.73 and the sun dries them for free.)

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(Our washing…)

So we parked and I went straight to the washing machine room. But it was full. The washing machine, I mean. With someone else’s clothes. On other trips I would have happily taken out someone else’s washed and wet clothes and placed them on top of the machine to put mine inside but we’d had bit of an incident back in Vila Chã. There was a great washing machine there too and a dryer. Anyway, the incident… it had been raining for a few days but on the morning of the incident the sun was blazing so I took off to reception to buy a token. When I arrived at the machine with my bag of washing and my token there were three bags of washing beside the machine. There was also a man pulling clothes out of the dryer. I smiled and put my bag down in the queue.

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(Perfect drying weather)

I came back thirty minutes later to the incident…. the cleaning lady gesticulating and talking loudly in Portuguese to the maintenance man. I was considering backing out of the washing machine room when the maintenance man turned to me asking, is that your washing? pointing to the dryer. Sensing, clarity was of the utmost importance I shook my head violently while saying, No, No, No. Communication is great when it works and it worked this time because when I had stopped shaking he was smiling at me and telling me to go ahead and put my washing into the now empty machine… No idea what happened but it makes me think twice before taking someone else’s clothes out of a machine. On this occasion our need to have clean clothes made me brave.

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(This little snake stood between me and my washing…)

And now I’m feeling a ton of gratitude for my washing machine at home. When I’m at home I never notice how easy it is to throw some washing in the washing machine. I just don’t notice. I don’t notice and I take it for granted. But the way to a joy filled life and a happy filled heart is to notice all the simple things around me that bring me joy and allow every simple thing in my life to flow. Gratitude isn’t about being nice to someone, gratitude is about noticing the things and people who make your life lovely….filled with love. Noticing them and thanking them with love.

Step 14. Say thank you to your washing machine, Mairead.

Might be driving illegally…?

| Mairead

IMG 6355

(New shoots)

I hope you had a lovely St.Patrick’s Weekend! I made a green shamrock to celebrate but it looks more like a green ace of clubs… and I had a very trying experience purchasing an electronic toll card online. It’s a long and winding story… Like at home there are toll booths and there are free-flowing electronic tolls that read your licence number here in Portugal. When we arrived in February at the town of Chaves we stopped at their electronic toll setup machine for foreigners. There we connected our credit card to our camper van number plate and off we went with our legal receipt. Simple. Easy.

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(New family)

Then on Saturday morning something woke me up early and made me look at the receipt. It was about to expire. It has expired today. No problem, there was a phone number at the bottom of the receipt, I’d ring and extend the validity date. I could handle this. I rang the number and the man who answered spoke perfect English. Perfect enough to make it clear that I could not extend the validity date. But… I could purchase a toll card at the post office on Monday or online anytime.

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(Old day)

Rather than wait until Monday (mistake number one) I went online to purchase the card (mistake number two). There was a very helpful site with Frequently Asked Questions and both the questions and the answers were very helpfully in English. Unfortunately, when I clicked on BUY the card I was linked to the Portuguese Post Office website. I love the Portuguese Post Office. They have patiently sold me stamps and envelopes and delivered (in super quick time) my letters and cards. Nevertheless, I do not like their website. It’s in Portuguese (naturally) and no matter how much I want to believe I could possibly recognise some words I cannot actually recognise any words…

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(Old door)

But you will remember Google Translate? The app on my phone that will translate typed words into English? I was working on this problem for an hour by now and although I was losing the will to live I kept going and eventually I bought the card! Yay! And I successfully connected the card to our licence plate! Yay! Then I proceeded to connect the card to my phone so that I could check the balance and keep it topped up and completely legal while we drove in Portugal.

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(Old cobblestones)

That’s when the post office website changed the language to Spanish… Google translate was giving me some odd translations about monsters and caves. That was my first hint something bad was happening (I thought I was just losing my mind.) And yet I kept going turning the language back to Portuguese while wishing their English language button would suddenly come to life (but no…)

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(Old sign)

I never did get to connect the online card to my phone.. we might possibly be driving around illegally. On top of that there was a message – in English –  on the card: PLACE IT VISIBLY ON (VEHICLE’S) DASHBOARD….  We may have to put the laptop in the windscreen for the rest of our stay in Portugal… somebody forgot to bring the power cord for the printer so we can’t print the card.

Step 13. Always wait until Monday, Mairead.

Broken Shells Calling

| Mairead

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(Friday evening in Furadouro)

I mentioned yesterday that I loved the town of Furadouro and one of the reasons was the beach. Not the sand but the shells. Not the perfectly pretty and complete shells. The broken ones. I had started noticing broken shells on the beach at Vila Chã, I thought they were interesting but not as interesting as the terracotta coloured stones. Then at Lavos Praia there were no terracotta stones but loads and loads of little broken shells.

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(A mix of broken shells and pebbles)

They weren’t everywhere, they seemed to be washed up in a line parallel to the tide line… a broken shell line, but there were so many I couldn’t but notice them. I started picking them up and once I started it was hard to stop, it was like they were calling me. Why would they be calling me?

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(Some of the bigger shells I saved!)

The ones in Furadouro were bigger, the chipping away had only begun, but in time (unless I saved them?) they would be tiny little broken bits. I wonder if shells start off perfectly pretty and complete somewhere up north and they get little pieces chipped off as they travel south, until they are so small they look like sand. I saved a bag full from Furadouro. I think I know why they were calling me…

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(and more…)

When I picked up the first broken shell I was surprised it was so smooth at the broken edge. It was like it had been sanded with sandpaper. Of course it had been sanded with the original sandpaper… sand. That’s why I kept picking them up. They were lovely to hold and to run my finger along the smooth edge. And they reminded me of buttons. I love buttons. But it wasn’t just their button-like feel, I also recognised a human-like feel.

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(…more.)

We start off perfectly pretty and complete and then bits get chipped off and we’re broken. We feel broken. We chip off others. We break others. Everyone we know is broken in some way. But these shells were asking me… Can’t you see how different we are? How very interesting we are? How we are so, so beautiful in our brokenness? I’m bringing a bag of broken beautiful shells home, please let me know if you’d like one to remind you that you are beautiful.

Step 12. Believe it, you are so, so beautiful, Mairead.