Walk Don't Run(The Ventures)Travelling the World Surf Highway - Cabreiros to Caicais

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We have had a very comfortable stay at the Air BnB apartment of English couple Jane and Steve. It’s interesting how, when we haven’t been around English speaking people for a number of weeks, that it is very easy to strike up conversation with people who speak and understand the same language as ourselves.

Jane and Steve have built themselves a business that suits their lifestyle and as they mentioned it is just a 2 hour flight back to their children and grandchildren every 3 months or so.

Sticking to the coast we headed west to Peniche, which sits on a peninsula, and we will do the circuit to take in the scenery.

Although we had only travelled a little further south on the coastal plain it was apparent that the land seemed to be able to produce more as market gardening was quite intensive. Jane had mentioned that the Portuguese resist importing any fruits or vegetables that they can grow themselves which seems very sensible given the high level of unemployment here as it least it creates some opportunities for locals.

Our first stop was just outside the walled city of Peniche to climb up steps over high sand dunes to check out the curved beach and surf. Although the steps were quite steep we were a bit surprised that we were huffing and puffing a bit when we got to the top after 3 flights of steps indicating we still have a way to go to get over the bug.

There were a few takers in the surf which today was relatively flat. The beach had an impressive curve away to the north.

If one thing can be said that is constant about Portugal, it is that everywhere we have taken in a coastal scene the beach has either been long and straight or gently curved and pretty much all of it has been swimmable in warmer conditions.

Driving around the peninsula we stopped to walk out to a rocky promontory which offered views back to the town.Then, as it was lunchtime, we stopped at the lighthouse on the tip of the Peninsula.

The outside temperature was not quite warm enough to have a boot lunch. However we positioned the car so that we had a great view of the ocean where there was activity almost all the time we were stopped.

The N247 would take us all the way to our destination near Lisbon and keep us coastal all the way.

As we had picked up on earlier, the land this far south on the coastal plain was much more fertile and market gardens were on both sides of the road as we travelled.

The succession of small villages continued and this is the way the population has been dispersed outside of the few major cities that Portugal has.

Around Ericeira we entered into the World Surfing Coast which has hosted many surfing competitions including World Championships.

This section of the N247 had pull offs down to the beach where the car parks were well organized for many cars at once and buildings for changing and cafes set up. Although today wasn’t a good surf day there were still a few people taking advantage and we can imagine what the car parks must be like when the surf is really running.

The road now left the coast and headed towards the hillside town of Sintra, the popular summer escape for the Portuguese royals from the middle ages.

Sintra is one of the most popular holiday destinations in Portugal especially for day trippers out of Lisbon which is a short 40minute train ride away. More about Sintra when we visit over the next 2 days.

As we passed through the chaotic streets we can tell that we will need to have some patience finding a car park when we come to visit as the place today, and it’s still low season, is full of cars and the sidewalks full of people going here and there.

The road we were on avoided the centre historic, thankfully, and we were soon approaching our Air BnB apartment in Caicais.

Gina was right on the spot with her directions on this one and we did what everyone in the street seemed to do and that is park on the sidewalk!

As soon as we approached the gate to the property we could tell entry was going to be interesting if Gabriel, our host, didn’t come out to meet us. This was because two very large German Alsatians were the greeting committee to the BBA V3 and like most guard dogs they didn’t seem keen for us to enter!

A telephone call bought Gabriel to the gate and he assured us that Mila and Thunder, despite their size, would be friendly to us. We are sure he is right…………..

Gabriel, who is a flight attendant currently in dispute with his employer, showed us around the large garden complete with fruit trees and chicken coop. He gave us half a dozen fresh eggs for breakfasts over the next 3 mornings.

Mila and Thunder trotted up and down to the gate with us as we unloaded the car and as we settled in they returned to guard duty.

The shopping mall was a short drive away and so a quick visit was made to get our dinners sorted for the next 3 nights. We have decided a change from fresh to frozen was worth trying to try and get our appetites back so we bought fish products and chips and potato cake things that also had vegetables mixed in.

Unfortunately the weather doesn’t look that great for the next couple of days so we shall just have to hope the forecasters are wrong.



We finished off the day trying to decide what to watch from the hundreds of cable channels on TV. It’s odd that for the first few weeks of travel there were no channels in English and yet in our last 3 stops we have choice of something we can understand putting YouTube onto the back burner for now

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