Coimbrao – 8 april 2023

Since Thursday we are in Portugal, Lisa’s valhalla. She has been asking for years if we can go to Portugal and all my remarks that it is quite far to drive have fallen on deaf ears. But now we are finally here and I am curious where she all wants to go here…she has just started reading the Lonely Planet guide. As expected, the landscape in the north is not much different from Spain. Many hills with valleys through which the road winds. What is special is that Portugal has an electronic toll on the motorways. You register for this just after the border with a credit card, after which your license plate number will be read out. I’m curious because the license plate is already wrong on the bill so how this ever works out, we’ll see. Incidentally, the highways here are beautiful, often three-lane and empty. In the Netherlands we can no longer build roads and houses because of a few cross-cutting farmers. Who is doing it wrong…..?

We are now at a campsite with an older German couple 6 km from the beach in the town of Coimbrao. Beautiful campsite, excellent facilities and quiet because we are a bit further from the beach. Every evening, around 5 o’clock, a bunch of dogs start barking terribly here. Apparently there is a kennel nearby where the care clearly falls short because those poor animals continue barking for at least 2 hours.

It is quite windy here in the evening so I fixed the awning with a few guy lines (our clothesline) and that works well. Yesterday we went cycling, first to the coast about 6 km from the campsite and then south along the coast. A good cycle path has been built and it is not busy on this. We attract a lot of attention on our Koga and Santos bikes without a battery. I was planning to cycle all the way to Nazare, the surfers mecca of the world where there are waves of 20 meters or more. However, that was 45 km cycling and after 33 km and a hamburger we no longer felt like it and we turned around. In the end we cycled 70 km this day and climbed and descended 400 m. In the evening we ate small pizzas that we warmed up in the pan and watched another English detective.

Today we go for a walk because we both have quite a bit of saddle pain. There is a small lake 5 km away and that is a nice walk for today. Tomorrow we’ll see what we do and then we’ll leave on Monday again, so where does Lisa actually go?

The children still often call about all kinds of things ranging from cars, groceries and what to do at Easter. Tamara is now going to have coffee with my sister and Tom is sleeping, tired of helping two friends move. Our eldest is quiet but has enough on her head with her two children. Our oldest niece from South Africa told us that she is taking her 10-year-old niece into her home after the death of her brother. Very brave of her.