problems

Thank you, Portugal!

| Mairead

2018 1

(Normally closed these shutters keep the house cool. Can you see the thickness of the wall?)

We are staying in a house on the edge of town, did I tell you that? It’s a very cute traditional Portuguese house. It has shutters on the windows at the front and very small windows at the back and really thick walls. Which all helps to keep the interior of the house very cool. So cool in fact we wear an extra layer when we are inside. It’s the original air conditioning. We have been here three days and I’ve only just realised that something I have been imagining with you, has become real… There are oranges growing in our garden!

2018 3

(Oranges growing in our garden)

Ok I know it’s not technically our garden but it is kinda our garden for today and probably tomorrow and the next day. Einstein seemingly said imagination was more important than intelligence… he was probably thinking of oranges. As well as the oranges, there’s a vine, possibly an almond tree (do almonds grow on trees?) a couple of different palm trees, something that looks like woodbine and a fruit I don’t recognise (picture below.) There are birds tweeting and cars passing on the road outside. Over the road is a field with rows and rows of small trees in blossom but I don’t recognise them either.

2018 1 1

(Unidentified fruit)

This unexpected visit to a real Portuguese house and garden is lovely and the powerful shower is truly lovely. This unexpected week in a small Portuguese town is very different to the way we have been travelling and being temporarily not in control of our destiny has brought up interesting messages…

2018 4

(Also don’t know what theses are…)

Like how much support we have received from the communities in the towns we have travelled through. We have been here in Portugal for two months today. Without the parking spots they provide for motorhomes, without the water and the emptying places, without the electricity and the refuse and recycling bins, without the great mobile data rates, we couldn’t do what we do.

2018 2

(…or this shrub. The flowers smell beautiful)

Sometimes we need a bit of a jolt to realise how incredibly lucky we are and how maybe we’ve been taking it all for granted. Today is a holiday in Portugal. I googled it but at the risk of getting it completely, insultingly wrong, I will find a real Portuguese person to tell me the story. I think it’s going to be about peace and freedom…

Obrigada, Portugal, you are generous and kind and beautiful. Mairead.

Just in time…

| Mairead

2018 1

(Ruby being winched backwards into van hospital)

I’m exhausted. It’s 6am and I’ve been awake for an hour… Denis is snoring loudly this night/morning! I feel a huge fraud saying I’m exhausted when here I am here in a beautiful place with everything working out for my good and I am complaining. Two of my friends have just completed big projects, one had a third of her team missing and the other has a Mum who is very ill. I’m sure they are exhausted. My own mother is in pain and miserable with an ongoing physical complaint. I’m sure she’s exhausted. And you, you have challenges that no one knows about and you bear them yourself. Are you are exhausted? One person’s challenge is someone else’s dream day. This is just my story but maybe any story can be a symbol of every story. It’s a long story so I’ll go back to the beginning or even before the beginning…

2018 2

(Very organised garage)

Less than a week ago I wrote “Something I really love about the motorhome is the flexibility. If your plan doesn’t work out it’s not the end of the world. Another plan is always possible. I’m not naturally optimistic, I have to work at it. Sometimes I am more comfortable thinking about what bad thing could happen so that I can work out in advance what I will do about it. Ruby and this was of living is helping me practice and I actually love optimism. Google it, I think you’ll love it too!”

2018 4

(The boss mechanic won all these trophies playing five-a-aside in the 80’s)

Well you know what they say : be careful what you wish for… I had googled optimism at the time and loved that it said, “…hopefulness and confidence about the future…” I have always loved the word hope. It gets a bad press because it’s related to being attached too rigidly to a specific desired outcome. Maybe I am too attached to a happy ending but I think I love hope because when the ending comes I understand I will (eventually) find the happy in it. In the meantime hope keeps me going.  So my definition of optimism is: finding the happy in difficult situations.

IMG 3244

(Ruby is still in surgery…)

And then we are stuck on a small street in a small town and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I get through the day finding plenty of happy but don’t sleep that night. My mind is racing… How will me manage until Monday? How will we get water? What if we can’t get internet? What if they can’t work on the problem on Monday? What if the police come to move us on or arrest us? How will we contact the mechanic? If they don’t come how will we push the van around the corner and down a narrow street with cars parked on either side? Will it fit into the doorway? If it does fit where will we stay? How will we get around without transport? How much will this cost? How do I empty the black water cassette so that the mechanic isn’t overpowered by ammonia fumes if this takes longer than a few days? How do we communicate with the mechanic? On and on and on… Answering my mind’s questions is exhausting.

2018 1 1

(There’s a river just up the road from the garage)

There was something else pushing it’s way quietly into my mind as I tried to find answers. Big Picture. Think about the BIG picture. The big picture has none of the little details that my mind was concentrating on. The big picture requires me to stand way, way back to look at the situation. The big picture is like a landscape photograph with green trees and flowing water. there’s me sitting quietly by the water writing, there are birds in the trees and they definitely look like they are singing. I am safe. I am warm. I am still. My mind is quiet. The answers come in the perfect time.

2018 5

(Lemon blossom and…)

Even though I like the big picture and how it makes me feel I still resist it. I want to answer all the questions. I have to answer all the questions or bad stuff will happen. The thing is, there is no way to answer the questions… until the precise moment an answer is required. For example, the question, how will I empty the black water cassette? got answered when I woke on Monday morning at 7am. The answer was clear, walk to the public toilets rolling the cassette behind you, there will be less people on the streets to see or smell you. I have no idea how many people saw me (or smelt me) doing that walk of shame because I was concentrating on the ground and even if there were people judging me, it was not a shameful thing… actually you could call it heroic – I saved the mechanic from ammonia poisoning. My point, it was the perfect answer and it arrived just in time, no sooner.

2018 7

(…lemon blossom bud)

And just in time is a recurring theme… Just at the precise time we needed to communicate with the mechanic a dutch couple who live in the town and speak Portuguese arrived to collect their car. They translated and offered further translation by phone. Other questions didn’t need answers because they didn’t arise… we had just enough water. There was just enough clearance to get into and manoeuvre in the garage (remember the skill of the Portuguese drivers? well this Portuguese mechanic could manoeuvre with centimetres to spare while outside the van pushing it!) Just in time we found a place to stay with wifi and within walking distance of the garage, so we didn’t need our own internet or transport.

We still don’t know when Ruby will be fixed but it’s probably going to be just in time… Mairead.

Everything is fine, just fine…

| Mairead

We had a bit of an adventure today…. Ruby broke!

2018 3

(Ruby on her way to the garage…)

We moved this morning from the orange and lemon campsite during a thunder and lightening storm. We arrived in a small town with very cute small streets and the rain stopped and it got a bit warmer. Then Ruby’s clutch broke… and we were stuck on one of those cute small streets for four hours. Yep we were.

2018 1

(Can you see the planks of wood? They will become important later)

It is an example of the truly amazing agility of the Portuguese drivers that they were able to manoeuvre around us. And there was not one beep of a horn or a cross word. In fact people were coming out of the woodwork to help us. First, there was a man sitting patiently as he waited for his wife and saw our predicament. He directed Denis to a mechanic (as luck would have it the word for mechanic sounds the same in Portuguese) while I stayed in Ruby and searched high up and low down for the emergency triangle. (An emergency triangle is one of the things you must have in your vehicle in Europe… let this be a warning to you…)

2018 1 1

(It was a bit fiddly but I managed to assemble our triangle)

I found the triangle after only a little hyperventilation, managed to wrestle it out of the plastic wrapping and stand it behind the van and then I just sat inside communicating my apologies as expressively as I could to the passing motorists. Within an hour Denis was back with the mechanic who didn’t speak any English, although he didn’t need to, it was clear we were stuck. Then an English and Portuguese speaking Ireland-loving Swiss doctor knocked on our door (yep!) and he translated between Denis and the mechanic and his boss who has just arrived. Turned out the doctor spent a very enjoyable holiday in Ireland and loved all Irish people and couldn’t do enough for us. He was offering to go home and get his jeep to tow us to the garage but the mechanic reminded him that it’s illegal to tow vehicles in Portugal (another useful piece of information, you’re welcome.) We have to ring him on Monday to tell him how we got on.

2018 2

(Ruby getting a lift from our new friend)

The street was bustling with people by now and Denis was on the phone to the emergency breakdown people who said they’d be there in 45 minutes. The man with the tow truck arrived in 40 minutes. Everyone was gone home for lunch when he arrived. It took an hour for him to manoeuvre Ruby into place. She’s a little low on the back so he had to use numerous planks of wood under the back wheels to keep her from scratching along the ground as she was winched onto his truck. It’s not as simple a procedure as you’d imagine. He had to run through the whole wooden planks in reverse when he dropped us off at the garage and here we sit… on the road outside the garage.

2018 4

(That car on the left is a BMW and we were too close to put Ruby down here… eventually the tow truck man had to put her down in the street and both he and Denis pushed Ruby to the curb. Me? I was steering)

The garage is closed until Monday. Then they will investigate our problem and order a part and hopefully we’ll be motoring by Tuesday. In the meantime our grey water is empty so no problem there. We will be making great use of the public toilets in the town so that’s fine. We have a half tank of clean water so that should be okay. But our battery power will probably only last until Monday morning, we will need to do something about that then. Our wifi will probably last until Monday too but I haven’t seen a MEO (mobile internet provider) shop in the town so we may have a challenge with that. And lastly we are parked in a place that’s not designated for motorhomes so we may be getting a visit from the GNR (police)… but you remember our friend the policeman in Soure? Hello Rui! He’s still following us on Facebook and he did say if we every needed his help…

To be continued… Mairead.

The inevitable happened…

| Mairead

2018 4 1

(I’ve run out of photos in Lisboa, so here’s even more narrow roads from Ericeira)

Still having a great time at the workshop. Here’s more news about my travel experiences. I took the bus-metro combination again today so I was singing songs again and I’m getting louder. This isn’t a problem because I travel across the big white up in the sky bridge very slowly and most people have reached the other side while I am getting to the top of the steps. In other words there’s no one around.

2018 3 1

(Modern mosaic…)

It was raining at the time so when I got into the metro I took off my coat and stuffed it into my rucksack. When I was getting out I realised my ticket was in my coat in my rucksack so I took out my coat again. I was distracted and I forgot to close up my rucksack. Disaster, my purse and my phone were at on top. The inevitable happened…. I was standing by the door waiting for my stop when a young girl tapped my arm. I turned but didn’t understand what she said. She persisted and pointed behind me. I looked at the seat I had vacated but there was nothing there. She tried again using English: your bag is open.

2018 2 1

(This way…)

Oh… and it was open. I thanked her in English and Portuguese and we both smiled. When the doors opened I turned back to wave and she said, have a nice day. It was such a small thing but it felt really big. We had a moment of smiling again and I said, You, have an especially nice day!

The inevitable thing that happens… is kindness, Mairead.

Only one more sleep

| Mairead

2018 1

(View over the rooftops, Ericeira)

We’re in Lisboa, at a different campsite. I’m almost set to participate in the workshop tomorrow and, the sun is shining! We did all the washing in Ericeira and now Ruby is as squeaky clean as the clothes. I’ve packed my bags with all the required supplies and set out what I will wear. I have my bus timetable, my travel card and my phone is charged. It’s like a first day at school. I’d ask Denis to take a picture of me on my way but it’ll be a bit too early. Might try a selfie…

2018 2

(More narrow roads)

This experience has reminded me that I can only prepare so much, I have to turn up and trust that I will be flexible enough to cope with whatever crops up. Stuff happens… maybe the bus will be late, maybe I’ll miss the stop to get off, maybe there’ll be a strike, maybe I’ll get lost. I was wondering, isn’t this a kind of creativity?

2018 3

(Lace made of marble)

I know when I make something, especially in mixed media, I have no idea what it’s going to be when it’s finished. I also don’t know how to finish it when I’m half way through it. I call it Not There Yet, it’s between the Hopeful Beginning and Triumphant Finished where I think, this isn’t going to work, no it’s not any good, oh no it’s actually terrible! When I let go and flow from Not Working Yet to Breathlessly Waiting and hang out there a little while… I’ll soon hear myself saying, oh hang on I see it now!

2018 20

(This is the library at Palace of Mafra. They have over 30,000 books!)

Not Working Yet is a scary place, I don’t like it much. I love Hopeful Beginning, Breathlessly Waiting and Triumphant Finished. Maybe Not Working Yet knows I don’t like it… What if I made friends with Not Working Yet? In the situation of preparing for tomorrow’s journey to Lisboa, I haven’t practiced a trial run of the public transport route from this campsite. Not Working Yet is: I don’t know what the bus stop will look like, I don’t know where to go when I get off the bus, I don’t know where to go when I get off the metro. I will be depending on the kindness of strangers and my google map app. Actually, when I think of it that way, I am a bit excited, because this country is full of kind strangers.

Only one more sleep, Mairead.

To Lisbon by river…

| Mairead

2018 1 3

(Art in the park… looks like LEGO but made from plastic crates)

After the ruins we moved an hour further south to a small town called Villa Nova da Barquinha. It is right on the river Tagus. That’s the river that starts in Spain and runs out to the sea at Lisbon. When we arrived we parked as close to the river as we could. I did think, what a fast flowing river. It was definitely rushing past.

2018 4 3

(Another art piece, my favourite, stone columns with wire trees)

Also, the reviews in the parking app. mentioned that it was a quiet spot by a nice park and although it was beside a nice park, it wasn’t very quiet. Cars arrived constantly all afternoon and even thought it was raining most of the time, the occupants would hop out and go down to the edge of the water. Then they’d get back into their cars and drive off. By 6pm it was getting dark and the arrivals and departures had decreased.

2018 5 3

(Can you see the crime scene tape? The river was the suspect… That’s our parking space on the right)

Denis had just put on the burgers when a knock came to the door…. that’s unusual. A woman from the neighbouring (Belgian) camper was telling us that the police (who were just outside erecting crime scene tape…) had arrived to tell us all to move further away from the water for our safety. They (or maybe the water board) would be opening a dam tonight because of all the rain and there may be flooding!

2018 2 3

(Three meters deep here)

The cooking stopped and everything got fired into a cupboard (except for the frying pan, it was still hot so I held on to it) and we started moving away from the water. We moved about 200m up the road, me with the frying pan still in my hand directing the reversing. Denis returned to the cooking and I retrieved the things from the cupboard.

2018 3 3

(At least the ducks are happy)

Later that night I realised all the cars during the day were checking out the river, it’s probably not normally so high or so fast flowing. The cars continued to visit and so did the police but I fell asleep without too much trouble. But then at midnight… I’m awake, wide awake. Every sound is the sound of a river flooding and taking the van and us off to Lisbon… and not in a good way. I eventually got up and made myself a calming cup of Camomile tea while silently repeating that’s just a thought, that’s just a thought. Last time I looked it was 2am and then the alarm went off at seven.

While I’m feeling a little tetchy with the tiredness I am grateful we weren’t transported to Lisbon, Mairead.

Furadouro by the sea

| Mairead

2018 2

(That’s the Atlantic Sea out there)

We’ve travelled a little further south and now we’re in a car park behind the sand dunes at Furadouro. It rained when we got here. It rained all night. Really. All. Night. It’s raining now. But would you believe as I’m writing the rain has stopped! It has.

2018 5

(A sign…)

I’m still reading the 10% Happier book I was telling you about and the idea that things change and nothing, neither good nor bad lasts…. well when it rains as much as it has been here one might fall into the belief that it will never stop. One might become a little anxious and stir crazy. But I’ve been noticing… it isn’t raining all the time. It is raining more than one might expect as a visitor to Portugal, but it does stop from time to time. It stopped at 6.35pm last evening and we went out for a meal. Then it started again 90 minutes later when we were back in the van, which could be considered fortuitous. Very.

2018 1

(The neighbours)

It could also be considered very fortuitous that the good stuff doesn’t last either… during last summer there was a week of a heat wave, do you remember? Well, it was too hot – I know unbelievable, but I remember thinking, “this is way too hot”. Well that didn’t last either, a week later, I was cycling in the rain wondering if the sun would ever come back out…

2018 4

(The main street)

So here we are escaping the snow but getting rain instead, it would be absolutely fantastic if I could uncover a little life message… wouldn’t it? Well, it would and I think I have. You see I had heard of the nothing lasts thingy before and I was “duh! Yes I know nothing lasts, so what?” Here behind the sand dunes of Furadouro with the sound of rain pelting against the tin (poetic licence) roof, I think I finally understand what the so what is…

2018 6

(Even the fences are relaxed)

It’s to do with our thoughts and our feelings. When we think the rain will never stop it makes us feel something like frustration or maybe fear but definitely annoyance. Now, we might know the rain will eventually stop but… we don’t allow that knowing into our thinking. So we wander around in this thinking and we feel so very, very frustrated because the rain is never going to stop. We actually forget the rain always stops. On top of that we don’t even notice when the rain does stop because our thinking isn’t interested in stopped rain it’s searching for something to be thinking about that makes us feel frustrated or annoyed.

2018 3

(I finally asked someone if I could take their photo – can you see them up there?)

Once upon a time there was a woman living beside a lighthouse. She was a very unhappy woman. This woman loved the dark. But every night just as darkness fell instead of feeling happy this woman felt annoyed… because that’s when the lighthouse started to shine… all through the night. She had put up blackout curtains but still felt annoyed with the light. One night there was a terrible storm and a small boat was wrecked on the rocks under the lighthouse. The following morning the woman was walking along the cliff when she saw the wreck and climbed down to check for survivors. She found the sole occupant of the boat, a child, barely alive and carried him up to her house. Within a few weeks thanks to her care the boy had recovered enough to enquire where he was and what had happened. The woman had to explain that sadly his boat had been destroyed and he had had a lucky escape. But the child was very confused because he had no memory of a boat, he had no memory at all.

(You might remember this lighthouse…and what a blue sky looks like)

In spite of that he continued to recover and soon the woman found she was very glad of his company around her little house. He was very helpful and before long was even cooking simple meals for them. There was one thing though, the boy hated the dark. So much so that as soon as night fell he became afraid. And it was getting worse. The woman felt so grateful to him for the difference he was making in her home that she wanted to do something to help… so she took down the blackout curtain in the boy’s bedroom and explained that the lighthouse would shine on him all night long. In the middle of the night the woman was awoken by the child’s crying. Racing to his side she asked what was the matter, “the light keeps going off”, he cried. The woman was astonished, she looked out at the lighthouse and for the first time noticed that the light went on and off, on and off, it didn’t shine all night long. In that moment she lost her annoyance with the lighthouse. She held the boy’s hand until he fell asleep and then she removed all the blackout curtains from her home. Next morning the boy’s parents arrived (the story had gone viral on Facebook) and took him home…

Even good stuff doesn’t last, Mairead.

As easy as buying scratch cards at the post office…

| Mairead

2018 3

(Porto buildings and steps and Denis)

We didn’t go back to the park today, instead we decided to go to Porto and sort out our toll road issue. We haven’t been on toll roads yet in Portugal and it’s only a matter of time. I think I might have explained this before but I have new information, thanks to the Porto tourist office and the man in the post office of Porto.

2018 2

(Tram tracks on a cobble-stoned road with tiled footpaths)

So, going back to the start… there are toll roads with booths where we can stop and pay and there are toll roads with electronic readers where they automatically charge your vehicle… if you have bought a pre-pay card or you have connected your vehicle online. If you don’t have a pre-paid card or you haven’t connected properly, there is no way to pay retrospectively! And you can be fined by the police. I had tried to do the connecting last year and it was really stressful and it didn’t work. This year I decided that I didn’t like the fine option and that we would stop at one of the special places set up at the border for tourists to connect their vehicle with their credit card. I was really looking forward to that special place. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find that special place. I am no longer sure that special place exists…

IMG 3073

(And a tram)

So I have been having palpitations whenever there is the possibility we might stray onto an electronic toll road. It was past time to do something about it and here we were very close to a city with a tourist office. We took the bus to Porto and the nice English-speaking lady in the tourist office explained that the easiest way to do it all was online… “Noooo, I tried that last year and it got messy, they wanted me to print the receipt and stick it in the window and the printer didn’t work and most of the instructions were in Portuguese and I think we were driving under the electronic tolls illegally!” says I.

2018 4

(Colourful market stall at the indoor market, Porto)

The nice lady was a little taken back but finally found her voice and suggested the other option –  the post office and it was just across the road. So off we went to the post office. The nice English-speaking man in the post office took us through the instructions (in spite of the long queue behind us). First buy the pre-pay toll road scratch card then scratch it, then send a text to the toll company with the scratch card number and the van registration number. Very quickly they sent us back a text telling us our balance. It worked! The balance amount turned out to be a bit of a surprise, though… it was twice the amount we paid in the post office.

There was no need to panic, it had worked last year, 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.

2018 3

(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.

2018 4

(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…

2018 8

(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.

2018 9

(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.