Portugal's Parting Gift

Sun 18th Jan

The rest obviously did me good, as today we are ready to move on. Further up the coast we go, trying but not succeeding, to keep to the more major roads and so avoiding quiet so many side tracks. We will have to return to Portugal, there is so much to more for us to see and do here.

As if to underline this our night spot proves to be a case in point. We find ourselves on a small peninsula, we ended up heading this way for no other reason than that at the end is a place called Troia. This, of course, reminded us of Turkey and as such we took it as a good omen that this was the road to take. As it happened we didn't reach Troia. The land all about us was sand and pine forest, the pine made a change from the miles of cork trees we had seen earlier toady. How strange they looked, half stripped of their bark, which had been harvested in preparation for the day it would maybe "pop" in celebration, be sniffed by some connoisseur or simply discarded with no thought of how it made its way into the bottle, only the best way to get it out!

Back on the peninsula, much of the sand is too deep to drive on. We laugh at this scenario having recently come from the Sahara! Then we see an accessible track. It leads through some woodland, just as we are reaching the edge of the wood two large, brown furry creatures run in a lumbering fashion across the track before us and on into the the next wood. We assume they were coypus? Although, they had fluffy tails with a sort of black Pom Pom on the end?? Until we have internet and time, we can identify them no further.

Out of the woods there is a clearing, with a single tree. It stands in front of a modern but abandoned row of little blue and white cottages. We stop and nose about. The cottages are completely empty. There are a couple of smashed windows and it appears that any bathroom fittings have all been removed. Other than that though, they are very sweet. Well, here will do us for the night! To the right of us are the woods, in front we have a view, over the fields of an old windmill and an attractive, modern railway bridge, it is pale green. To the left are further fields, then tall rushes before the estuary and the wooded landscape on the other side. A few fishing boats bob about. Behind us are the cottages, only in the distance behind them on the opposite side of the river is there sign of industry but there is so much nature about us, we don't even look in that direction. This place would delight any bird watcher. There are birds of all shapes, sizes and type: marsh harriers, storks, giant and little egrets, great flocks of black water fowl (not in our bird identification book) plus familiar water birds, there were also the birds who preferred the woodland, those whose preference was the marsh and so and so forth. This was a good place to sit and watch the world go by.

Mon 19th Jan

We dawdled about leaving here, today but knew we must. As we sat in bed, drinking tea and watching the birds, we daydreamed about the potential of the little cottages behind us. How good it would have been to have stayed here, walked the woods looking for clues as to the identity of our fluffy tailed coypus; walked down to the river, maybe done some fishing. How much we wanted to see what there was at this Portuguese Trioa. None of that would get us to the ferry on time though. We put this place on the slate, left an OIU a proper visit next time and went on our way. All night the wind had blown, strongly rocking Fay and disturbing any chance of a full nights sleep. Though, lessened in ferocity, it still blew and we were glad. Trying to leave had it been warm sunshine on a calm, clear day would have been so much harder.
When we were in Morocco, we thought we were ready to come home. Actually, we were just ready to leave Morocco! Camp fires and jacket potatoes proved that to us. We will be glad to see family and friends, though and don't regret having booked the ferry and definitely still know it was the right decision. After all, this trip has to end at sometime and is it not always better to leave, wanting more?

We are strict with ourselves for the rest of day and cover a lot of ground via the motorways. By nightfall we are camped up a lovers lane, outside of Cuidiad Rodrigo, Spain.


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