Portugal

It’s not a Zoo!

| Mairead

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(He’s in a bit of a hurry)

Turns out the Zoo I thought we were staying at is more a nature reserve with botanical park, called Parque Biológico de Gaia. There are no elephants but there is a dinosaur…

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(There are little birds…)

I went to check it out this morning thinking I’d be done in 10 minutes or sooner if the rain returned. It’s quite big… it covers 35 hectares with a 2.8km path running through it. Two and a half hours later I arrived back to the camper with my camera battery exhausted from taking pictures!

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(…and big birds – storks)

I had met Fernando who has worked at the park for 18 years. We walked every path and he pointed out loads of interesting things. Despite no common language we got on really well! He told me about the cork trees which grow for 25 years before their bark is first cut to produce cork and then they are cut every 9 years.

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(The Cork tree)

He pointed out camouflaged birds in the enclosures that I missed. He knew how to bring the deer up close to get the best pictures…

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And he knew where the teen tiny wild boar baby would be…

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(Ok it’s not a great picture but… that’s the mammy wild boar on the right with the little boar – he’s fawn coloured – walking out from under her. Can you see him?)

But the most amazing animals were the Ibis, they looked like statues, they were standing so still and so proud, then the younger ones moved. As well as all the animals and the natural setting there are farm buildings which I think are original. One has a water-mill and five pairs of millstones. Another is called the Brazilian farm, when locals returned with their fortune from Brazil they built bigger farm houses… at least I think that’s the story?

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(The Ibis. Can you see the one in the cave?)

I’m going back again tomorrow. I’ll bring food and water and Denis, Mairead.

Ps Thank you so much to all the people who sent me pictures of the snow in Ireland. Below is the one I got from my mother-in-law…

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It’s hard to imagine…

| Mairead

2018 1

(Really like this building we passed yesterday)

As I write the wind is gusting outside the van and I can hear the not so gentle raindrops on the roof. In other circumstances I might be tempted to complain but I have been watching the storm reports from Ireland so I know we are the lucky ones. It is really hard to imagine what it’s like back home. When my sister was in Canada and she used to tell us about the snow it was hard to imagine that too.

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(Traditional tiles on the outside of a house)

We’re at a supermarket car park again today… with all the perks. Our spot is right beside the 24 hour petrol station. We seem to be getting used to the noises or else no one was buying petrol last night. There’s also a phone shop and a dry cleaners, there’s even a hardware shop. There’s a cafe too, with the best deals in coffee and natas – unfortunately!

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(Two Americano coffees + two natas = €2.70!)

Tomorrow we’re off to stay at a zoo, again. The overnight cost includes electricity and entry into the zoo… so I anticipate more elephant pictures, possibly. Also it’s near Porto so if the weather improves we might chance getting the bus into town.

Can you imagine living in a zoo? Mairead.

We are up in the hills…

| Mairead

(Sunrise this morning)

Do you remember the first time we took Ruby to Portugal? (I’ve put a link here if you want to remind yourself.) We ended up on teeny tiny roads searching for internet access. Well we’ve done it again, this time looking for electricity… We found the electricity but now we’re having difficulty accessing the internet!

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(Strange old machine in the car park in Viana de Castelo)

We are in the middle of nowhere in a campsite up in the hills of northern Portugal, thirty minutes north of a town called Vila Verde. Apart from the man working reception we are the only ones here. This is our first stay at a campsite on this trip. The only reasons we ever need to park in a campsite is for electricity or if we want to stay for more that 48 hours in one spot. Most of the free aires have a 48 hour (or similar) limit. So far we have been happy to move after 24 hours but that will probably change once the weather gets better or we run out of land to go further south!

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(Our new pet seagull)

It’s raining heavily at the moment but we have electricity so we are warm and our laptops are powered up. We have hot showers so we are clean and sweet-smelling. There’s food in the fridge and water in the tank and we also have half a rustic baguette, still fresh – it really doesn’t get much better that this.

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(Home for tonight)

In fact I’ve been reading and enjoying a book about meditation and mindfulness and I’m feeling very zen. The book is called 10% Happier by Dan Harris and the message I’m getting is that a day when you have half a rustic baguette is a very good day. Ok, it doesn’t actually say anything about bread, fresh or not… but it did say nothing lasts, neither good things nor terrible things. So, i’m choosing to enjoy my half a rustic baguette moment… I may have misunderstood the message.

We’ll probably move back towards the coast tomorrow, Mairead.

Warm hugs from the south…

| Mairead

2018 1

(Our car park tonight is just around the corner from this beach)

We’ve moved again further into Portugal… just a little bit. To a town called Viana do Castelo, less than 100km north of Porto. There was a temptation to just keep going to that beautiful city but I’m glad we didn’t, we have yet again found a magical spot. The weather is definitely onside too as it’s 18℃ with a cooling breeze. Before you get too envious, rain and thunder storms are forecast all over Portugal for the next ten days…probably no snow though – sorry about that.

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(And there’s the boardwalk)

Portugal is different. We never get used to that. Each time we get here we are struck by the differences. Yesterday I mentioned the hospitality and convenience of eating establishments. So I’ve made a list of some differences we’ve experienced in the last two days…

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(And sunset tonight)

The biggest difference is the people, they are friendly and interested and want to help us. They help us pay for goods with our coins… for some reason they prefer coins to notes so even if we think we don’t have enough to pay they help us count up all our small coins and usually it is enough! They speak English, happily. Or French, happily. They provide beautiful places for us to stay, free of charge. They like selling coffee, there’s so many cafes and the coffee is so good and so cheap you’ll wonder how they could all make a living. And we’ve learned not to judge a book by the exterior of the cafe… it doesn’t matter what the outside looks like the coffee and natas (pastry filled with custard and then caramelised) inside will be heavenly.

Keep warm, everybody, Mairead.

We’re in Portugal!

| Mairead

2018 1

(We’re here!)

We have arrived! Less than a hour’s drive and we’ve crossed the border. We forgot about the time change (we’re now back to Irish time) and went looking for coffee at 9am! But that’s one of the great things about Portugal – there’s no set time for meals or coffee, you can get fed and watered any time of the day. Really, really helpful for the confused travellers.

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(Is that the time?)

We were very confused last night… We decided to mark our last night in Spain by going out for dinner. So, as you do, we looked up some restaurant reviews and it turned out that 6 minutes away from our parking spot there was a very good and inexpensive place. Of course being Spain, they opened for dinner at 9pm.

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(Festival time in Pontevedra)

On this trip we have dinner around 6pm and I go to bed at 9pm (it’s insurance against grumpy behaviour!) so it was a struggle both to stay awake and eat nothing, but I managed. Two minutes to nine arrived and we were on our way. A quick look in the restaurant window showed lots of empty tables, brilliant we’ll have the pick of the seats. The owner welcomed us in with a huge smile and said some Spanish words that sounded very like “do you have a reservation?”

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(Secret passageway)

We didn’t. He said some more Spanish words and gave us his business card. Time to mention we don’t speak Spanish. He was very apologetic and spoke to us in English. The tables were all booked, it was the weekend and there was a festival. He suggested that we walk on to the old town, we might be lucky.

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(That’s Spain over there on the other side of the river)

We were not lucky… Well, we were very lucky, actually.  Sure we were hungry and I was tired but here we were walking the streets of an old Spanish town in the middle of the night (a full half hour past my bedtime by now) full of happy smiling people. We tried loads of restaurants and there were no tables free so we headed home to (half a stale baguette) toast and tea. But then just around the corner from the very first restaurant, Denis spotted a pizza restaurant (I had given up by then and was looking forward to toast and bed). Long story short, they had a table! The owner was really friendly and spoke a little English and we got exactly what we wanted on our pizza and it was delicious.

As I write Denis is barbecuing sausages in the car park – hopefully that’s not against the law? Mairead.

Discomfort Zone

| Mairead

2018 2

(Freezing grass)

It was absolutely freezing when we got up this morning. It was also literally freezing… outside the van. Luckily it was over the 4℃ necessary inside to keep the drinking water inside the tank. We decided in spite of the lovely electricity, Ourol probably wasn’t the place to be, altitude wise. So we headed south down the mountain and closer to Portugal. The weather didn’t initially get better, it got worse hitting -3.7℃! …and then the fog came back.

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(Sitting outside in the sun!)

Now we’re in the Spanish city of Pontevedra. The old part of the city is very attractive and the weather is very attractive too, 15℃ (am I very Irish, talking about the weather all the time?) we were even able to sit outside and top up our vitamin D. We found another lovely free aire close to the river and the old town with cafes and shops. As it’s Saturday most of the shops are closed – Saturday afternoon closing. They will probably be closed tomorrow too. The restaurants close in the afternoon and open from about 9pm to 11.30pm – the Spanish eat very late.

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(Convento de San Francisco de Pontevedra)

I mentioned in an earlier post that there was one week in March when we need to be in Lisbon and that’s because I am attending a workshop. I was very excited about attending until the pre-workshop homework arrived. Nah, I’m only joking, I’m still very excited! But there is one assignment that has me concerned. I have to take a picture of a person. A real live person. I only take pictures of streets and buildings and trees and flowers, I don’t take pictures of people. They don’t like me taking pictures of them. I really don’t want to upset them…

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(Huge cross…)

So I need to ask their permission. Of course I could cheat and take a picture of Denis, but something about connecting with a stranger, another unknown human takes me so far from my comfortable picture-taking that I think it might actually be a good idea to try. As we walked the old streets of Pontevedra today I began to look for people I could possibly, maybe ask. The first person was an older man wearing a knitted hat, he was walking towards me down some stone steps. Just as I reached him he sat down on the steps, I think he was tired. I kept walking. I can still see his face and that hat… Then I saw a young man wearing a tan apron, walking purposefully while smoking a cigarette, for some reason he made me think of a shoemaker. I didn’t go up to him. Then I passed a woman in a pale pink fake fur coat, I was so close to asking her but I kept walking when I realised she was sitting in a wheelchair. I thought I might offend her. I can still see her too and the thing is, her wheelchair was a beautiful blue. It’s a really good picture… in my head.

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(Nature in the city)

I think I’m (definitely probably) going to start asking people, I just hope it’s soon. Because now I’ve put myself into a discomfort zone… And the discomfort is growing. There’s the discomfort of asking someone can I take their picture and now there’s the discomfort of not asking them.

Do I have to wait for the discomfort of not asking them to exceed the discomfort of asking them? Mairead.

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.

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(…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.

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(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.

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(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…

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(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).

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(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.

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(View from the dining room…(!))

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

It’s raining today

| Mairead

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(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!

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(Ruby)

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

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(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.

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(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.

Once upon a time we had no water…

| Mairead

Lots of people ask me how Denis and I can live together, in such a small space, without killing each other. I’m not sure I have ever given an adequate answer, mainly because I don’t know. So I thought it might be interesting to notice on this trip what we do. Today I got some useful information… it’s a long story, bear with me.

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(Our back garden tonight)

As I was saying we planned to be taking the slow journey through France, as long as the weather was kind… and the weather was grand, but we hadn’t taken into account a particular side effect of weather – water pipe safety. Yesterday we travelled for about an hour from the ferry at Cherbourg and arrived in the town of Isigny sur Mer at dusk. We planned to fill up with water and stay for the night. While in Cork the previous Sunday we had filled our drinking water tank but we forgot that there’s a safety thingy in the van that protects against frozen pipes – by dumping all the drinking water! It only happens if the temperature inside the van goes below 8 degrees. Must have gone below 8 degrees while we were on the ferry because when we got off in Cherbourg the tank was empty. We might have left 100 litres of Cork water in the English channel… sorry.

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(Autumn)

Not really a problem, we would get drinking water at the aire in Isigny sur Mer. But we couldn’t! This is a bit of a sweeping statement but it might still be true: in winter the French turn off the drinking water taps at their aires. To be honest we’ve only tried two this morning but two out of two is enough for me to start making sweeping statements. Still, not a huge problem, we do have a couple of two litre bottles of water I bought in Lidl when the whole of Greystones was on a boil water notice. That will keep us going for a bit, but I think we need to reassess, regroup and let go of the original plan.

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(Spotted on our way to the supermarche)

When you decide on a plan and then set it in motion it takes on a life of its own. Every decision that follows fits neatly into the plan and before you know it there’s a machine trundling down the road to get water where none exists. The machine in this case is a camper van plus two humans. When the water at the second tap an hour south of the first tap was also turned off the two humans approached a crossroads (metaphorically). One of them was doing all they could to keep the machine moving with the original plan, i.e. on to a third tap, while the other human was doing all she could to throw out the original plan and come up with a new one.

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(Here we are)

It turns out we have very different patterns when it comes to finding a solution. Denis focusses on making the present plan work (tenacious). I focus on coming up with a new plan (creative). Even thought this is a metaphorical crossroads it felt exactly like we were pulling in opposite directions and it was very uncomfortable. Discomfort makes me grumpy and blamey (not a real word but I think you know what I mean…?) It wasn’t very peaceful. I’ll spare you the back and forth that went on until silence descended. Not peaceful silence. Then something changed. (Incidentally I would not have understood what changed had I not been writing about it. Thank you, writing, I love you!)

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(We found water!)

But first… Many years ago these two humans were not living peacefully together. They had a lot of hard stuff going on and they were pulling apart at every crossroads. And then they stopped, I actually don’t know why they stopped, probably a combination of things, other people inspiring them, books teaching them, courses educating them. I don’t know, but things changed and they found common ground. One night, I think they were sitting on the sofa watching the telly, they came to an agreement on something… they wanted peace. And they were willing to do hard stuff to have peace.

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(Our first bbq on the road (thank you for teaching us, Moira!) and the orange/metal thing in the park is a game called disc golf – google it)

The thing that changed today was that as soon as we realised we weren’t at peace, we separately (and silently) stopped thinking we were right and the other person was wrong. Then we began to search together (awkwardly) for workable solutions to the problem. Then we drove to a place we knew had water… duh.

We are able to live together, in such a small space, without killing each other because we want peace, Mairead.