In May 2016 we drove across Spain and over the Pyrenees into France to get in some hiking and enjoy pristine landscapes. This time we were going a bit further east. We hoped to see more of the Pyrenees but also to explore its medieval past, dip our toes in the Med and to forge on to the greatest medieval fortress city of the area, Carcassonne. But first of course, leaving our home in Portugal we had a fair bit…
In the middle of the boiling hot summer that was August 2016 we decided to take a few days away in the mountains of the Serra da Estrela. We had managed to book a house in the village of Videmonte, not far from Guarda, big enough for two adults and two hairy ones. It was a fairly short drive so we decided to stop off on the way in Guarda for lunch and a bit of a mooch. Like many…
Having followed the Tour de France on the TV for a number of years we had always wanted to visit the Pyrenees. This May our dream came true. As we don’t like driving for too long we decided to split the journey and visit another of the great cathedral cities of Spain – Burgos. But before even Burgos and just across the border we stopped for lunch in the delightful and picture perfect medieval town of Ciudad Rodrigo. Restored by…
For us, September is holiday time and it usually means a road trip into Spain. This year was going to be a long one – 3000kms in 10 days. It was long because a friend of ours had kindly lent us his holiday apartment which happened to be located in the far South East of Spain in a little pueblo blanco called Mojacar. As it was 900kms from our house in Portugal we weren’t going to attempt the journey in…
We had been avid watchers of the Tour de France for a number of years. Afternoons in July are often unbearably hot, so what better than to relax on the sofa and watch the peloton streaming through the beautiful French countryside. However, we wanted to see it in the flesh. Well the next best thing – the Spanish tour or “La Vuelta” and it was going through Asturias when we were due to go for our annual holiday. Asturias was…
Santiago de Compostela is supposed to be the final resting place of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) and so is also the end of the Camino de Santiago, one of the most famous pilgrimage routes for Roman Catholics. You are supposed to walk there from your home and although there is a route marked out from Portugal we decided to take the car. Located in the far North West of Spain and about 400kms due north from our home in…
May is when Jackie’s parents generally come to stay for a couple of weeks and therefore our chance to get a few days away for a camping trip. We chose the Alentejo again (we went to Marvao last year) because it would be warm, there would be plenty of places to take the dogs walking, there are a few interesting towns and we could enjoy the last of the spring wild flowers. We camped at Camping Rosario which turned out…
We had been putting off going to the Algarve primarily because it is the most popular area of Portugal by far. So I was worried it would be packed with foreign tourists, expats and all that goes with them. However, a good friend of ours had a holiday home in a less-touristed part of the coast and so we thought we would give it a try. After all you can’t malign a place properly until you’ve been there yourself, can…
We occasionally go for walks with a group of friends known appropriately as ‘Portugal friends’. Obviously the hairy one is a popular participant in these events, the most recent of which took place not that long ago. As we hadn’t been for a while there were lots of enthusiastic greetings for the hairy one, accompanied with cries of ‘oh gordo, gordo’. I think it was a compliment but it actually means ‘fat’. As Labradors (as well as some of us…
An unusually warm September meant that we could get away for a final weekend camping trip for the summer. The destination was a place we had intended to visit many months before – Salamanca. We weren’t disappointed. It was a three hour drive to the border and then once over we stopped for lunch at the first major town in Spain – Ciudad Rodrigo. After Ciudad Rodrigo we headed East for a further hour across the plains to Salamanca. We…