Last day here

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3rd April

Woke up to a beautiful morning. The hippies left soon after we stepped out & we’re the only foreigners here. When we planned the trip we thought we would use non toll roads in Portugal as we had read that they can be expensive for a motorhome but Cathy has bottled it as, obviously, there are more instructions to understand ie get wrong. So, after a quick bit of web searching we found that from the available options we needed a prepayment card as we were nowhere near a place where we could get anything else.

So, off on the bikes after lunch to the post office or CTT. On the way, there were loads of decent sized fish in the tidal river, possibly sea bass, close to the edge / rocks below the walkway. And we saw some spoonbills which were a bit special. The girl in the post office had no English but we got there in the end. I wanted one for €40 but they’d sold out so she sold me 4 €10 cards. So back to base to ask the lady at reception for confirmation of how to use them but she didn’t really know. She said you just text the code & registration plate number & use one at a time. Anyway, I got it sorted, loaded up 2 cards worth for now to see how we get on.

Right, out came the fishing rod, the collapsible one that Daniel had bought me for the last big trip & I caught the biggest fish you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo but it was at least 3’ long.....can you hear my nose growing?

Spotted a little chapel next to the campsite but it was locked up, probably a fishermen’s chapel from days gone by.

Tomorrow, we plan to get up early ish & travel to Barcelos which is the pottery centre apparently (with any luck we won’t see any shops or they’ll be closed) & then a slight detour to Bom Jesus do Montenegro, an ancient site built on a big hillside – both as we travel down to Foz do Arelho, so a long day.

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