Category: Portugal

We left Obidos reasonably early (for us that is!) and we were making good time along the coast road.  Even though there was not much wind, the sea was really choppy and there was some atmospheric sea mist blowing in.  Then we spotted a lovely bay at Praia São Lourenço and decided to stop for lunch and a quick flight with the drone to try and get a nice couple of shots.

All in all, it meant that we arrived at the camperstop in Sintra about two o’clock and after a chat with some lovely brits in the van next door it was a brisk and a very hard slog up the hill to the Palace Park and National Palace of Pena.  We spent a few hours looking around the palace (It used to be a monastery) and walking around the wonderful gardens and then a wild and rapid Tuk-tuk ride down the hill back to the mothership for beer, scrabble, stew and Morgan Freeman (in that order).

The next day we decided to skip town: we had another day planned but both of us were suffering with painful knees and ankles and the schedule didn’t allow for a down day here, so it’s a place we will have to come back to sometime!  This is a first – we’ve not really been making too many notes for the next lap of Europe!

A chat with some other lovely brits that turned up just as we were leaving (and they gave us some great ideas about wifi range extenders!) and it’s off to Lisbon a day earlier that we originally planned!  

Obidos is a medieval castle and walled town walled town in the Portuguese district of Leiria municipality. (wikipedia.org)  It can be traced back to Roman times, although the signature viaduct is not Roman at all but dates to the 16th century, built at the direction of the queen of Portugal.  

The town walls are essentially complete and you can walk around most of them. There are no safety barriers though and the path is as narrow as 3 feet in some places and there are also steep steps where the town wall rises with the contours of the hill on which the town sits.

Inside the town the building are mainly white rendered with blue accents and to say they are picturesque does not do them justice.  Of course, they all make money the same way by selling things to the tourists. Even in November there are tourists here by the coach loads – literally!

Of course the modern town has expanded beyond the city walls, but there are not too many buildings close to the old town and it retains the feel of a medieval hilltop town.  In fact, every July, the town hosts a full two week medieval festival with rousting, jousting, theatre and probably much drinking too.

We explored the lanes and alleys of the town and walked the walls.  We could not tour the castle proper as it’s a hotel these days – must be gorgeous! We found a couple of awesome bookshops – one in a converted church and the other with the walls covered in shelves made from wine boxes.  

Back to mothership and scrabble and pasta for dinner.  The next morning and a brief visit to the (closed) church and we are off towards Sintra.

About 10km outside Coimbra: we arrived at the ruins a little perplexed – the camperstop that we planned and that we put in the sat nav was supposed to be about 2km away from the famous roman ruins that we came to see. But we actually turned up at the car park for the ruins.  It seems that this camper stop is a ‘overnight stopping is permissible’ type affair where there is not a permission per se, but they won’t turf you out. We don’t know what happened to the stop we planned to use, but this is actually quite common – most of the apps allow user submissions and user submitted updates, so data quality is sometimes not great!

We quickly got sorted and went exploring.  The weather was awful so we interspersed the indoor museum with the large ruins.  We still got very wet!

The ruins are great – the old town was set on the top of a hill and with an almost sheer drop on one side.

Prior to excavation the main above ground feature was the city wall – dating to around 3rd century.  But that wall was built on an older Roman town which in turn was built on a pre-roman town – so it’s interesting to see that the ruins have been excavated in different ways depending on whether the archaeologists were interested in late roman, early roman or pre-roman settlement.

Behind the main excavated ruins, but still inside the city walls is a grassy meadow with olive trees in, so we guess that over the next decades, the ruins may be excavated further.

Although it seemed a great location for a drone flight, the weather didn’t play ball and also there were quite a few people around so likely we would have been caught by the Portuguese drone law ‘any more than 12 people together is a gathering and must not fly near’.  A few days later – in Sintra – we met a Portuguese man flying a drone right over the top of a palace packed with people, but for now we’ll stick with the cautious approach!

His drone, like ours, is a DJI drone. They seem to be a responsible manufacturer, – the drone has built in geofences which enforce no-fly zones and also the drone uploads flight logs to DJI, so if you do anything stupid, DJI could be aware…

For any pilgrims out there, the ruins are on one of the main pilgrims paths to Fatima.

Anyway, the weather didn’t improve and the forecast for the rest of our trip down to Lisbon also seems damp, so there may be less sunny holiday photos for the next week or so!

Our stopover in Coimbra is on the banks of the Mondego river and just 5 minutes walk from town. Coimbra is another wonderful hilly/hilltop city.  First impressions are bad – the stopover is messy and the nearby boat club buildings are all looking very dishevelled. But we discover that the recent coastal storms affected Coimbra quite heavily and there are many trees down and the missing cladding from the boat clubs is all due to the recent weather. In fact this may explain the vast numbers of bonfires that we have seen since we entered Portugal – all cleanup after the storms maybe.

Anyway – at the camperstop we have a loo that’s open during the day and we have free fresh water and blackwater drop off, so that’s not bad.  The camperstop noted that there is free wifi but this turned out not to be, so the photos and write-up of Coimbra will have to wait until later in the week.

Coimbra used to be the capital of Portugal and so has some famous tombs for example the first and second kings of Portugal are buried in the  Santa Cruz Monastery in the city. Also famous is the university which is around 700 years old.

We spent a day wandering round the city markets and visiting the monastery.  The monastery was great. The only odd thing was the amount of human relics on display.  Morbidly fascinating.

We spent a further day just visiting the many university buildings.  The university library (the old library not the new one!) is amazing – it vies with Arundel castle for the top spot on our list, but photos are not allowed in the library so we can’t show you ;-(

The reason for the stopover here is to make sure we are fully fed and watered for the Paiva walkways which are a very steep 8km (or 16km if you don’t arrange a taxi back!) mountainside walk. It’s a big parking area which is normally the market square.  It’s a location with facilities so we could fill up and drop-off after nearly a week off-grid. That’s close to our limit without changing the toilet arrangements!

The weather closed in on Monday and it rained pretty hard, so we used the rest of the day to plan the rest of the trip down to Lisbon.  We’ve put a couple of extra stopovers in to see particular places which look good.

Tuesday and the weather was still terrible, so there are lots of other maintenance tasks to carry out – where maintenance equals T haircut, proper van cleaning charging the vacuum cleaner – all exciting stuff!

The weather broke towards the end of the day on Tuesday so we drove the 20km to Espiunca – one end of the Paiva walkway.  And disaster – although the website says it’s open all year round and there was nothing on the news page – there is a sign up saying it’s shut from the 28th October to the end of November for maintenance.  Dammit. A quick phone call and we discover that regardless of what the closed sign says, it is open on the following day, so we decide to hang about for the rest of the day.

We cleaned and carried out a few maintenance tasks and the following morning went to see what the fuss was about!

The Paiva walkways are amazing – it’s essentially 8km of walkways installed along a valley and following the river Paiva (no surprise).  The walk from Espiunca towards Areinho gradually climbs higher until not far before the end of the trail, there are a huge set of staircases and you climb a couple of hundred metres to the hilltops to look over the whole area.  Along the route there are many signs (in English too) describing the local flora, fauna and geology of the area.

About halfway there is a small suspension bridge over the river and at the far end (from our point of view) and at the top of the big climb towards Areinho there is a huge suspension bridge being constructed which will allow walkers to see the amazing waterfalls at Areinho from above.  All that’s been completed so far is a huge concrete support.

T elected to do the round trip so it was the full 16km of pretty heavy going ups and downs!

We left the same day and the sat nav took us round some _ridiculous_ narrow roads on the way down the mountain.  But we arrived in one piece in Coimbra.