P is for...

So I've been to this small, but not insignificant, country quite a few times before. Although (admittedly) I was mainly confined to Santiago do Cacem - before you ask no it was not an asylum. The Lady R has ner set foot on these here shores and neither has my Betty. 

The first night we found a place by a lake in a little place called Marco de Canaveses. Not a lot to recommend it really, we didn't sleep well thanks to the local twenty somethings who consider midnight drag-racing to be a suitable pastime. Even Betty, bless her, stayed awake most of the night on guard and growling at the external noise. 

The place did redeem itself somewhat in the morning as B and I set off for our morning walk when the fishermen were out, the mists were rolling and the views were beautiful. 

Betty showed her appreciation of the place by pebble-dashing the contents of her dodgy stomach across the picturesque path. That'd show them. 

To add insult to injury, some swine had locked the toilets. Irritated by lack of am ablutions the Lady R showed her distain:   Portugal needed to make more effort to impress us. We meandered on.

We thought we'd aim for Coimbra, having heard it to be pretty and rolled up on the outskirts of the town some time later. Contrary to the previous day's sweltering heat it was really cold the Lady R donned sweater and towel/rug, B snoozed comfortable on the floor between us. 

We decided to pull up near a river in a tiny town. It was beautiful and -mercilessly- fairly quiet (til the kids showed up). We wandered around and found a place which grilled food over live coals. This seems to be some kind of speciality. Think Nandos but better x10. We bought pork ribs. It was tricky because my Portuguese is non existent. I know ola/ adiós/ obrigada and esht (this) which is always useful when accompanied with pointy finger. Buying pork ribs was hard. The guy ignored my rubbish Spanish, refused French and English both and pointedly continued in loud/slow Portuguese. Obviously, I was totally able to understand that.

The Portuguese are a funny lot. They aren't that friendly, maybe a bit closed. I am sure that someone who knows them will say. 'Oh you need to get to know them.' Maybe they take thselves a bit too seriously, not sure.. but if we were marking them for effort we'd be jotting 'must try harder' in the margin.

On the plus side the Portuguese do great free parking and the beaches..wide, sweeping tracts of soft sand are gorgeous. They also have sun and sardines. 

This is the view as I sit and write - a nod to our sponsors bottom left. 

The Portuguese also do a great tree. Honestly, the country of trees and noise! We made a list (well, it was a fairly long drive yesterday): orange trees, eucalyptus trees, pine trees, lime trees, nectarine trees, apricot trees, lemon trees, peach trees, plum trees, damson trees, monkey puzzle trees, apple trees, deciduous trees, olive trees, horse chestnut trees, burnt trees, red leaved trees, trees, trees, trees, we decided the air quality must be amongst the best in the world and probably a reason why they aren't that fussed about litter, 'sod the mess, we got plenty of trees'. 

We received a call from a Mr S Vickers of Hamble: 

'Have you noticed the street vendors?' 

'Oh yes' replies the Lady R 'selling bread and fruit and veg and stuff in that heat'

Turns out that wasn't the kind of vendor Mr V was referring to. We had seen a few well dressed women, seemingly randomly seated along the roadside. Ahh.

Maybe prostitution was decriminalised, if you want to learn something interesting about Portugal watch: TED talks: Johann Hari - everything you think you know about addiction is wrong. 

And another thing...on arrival from Spain we were informed by the sat nav that Portugal is one hour behind its continental cousins, currently on the same time as the UK. At first we thought the sat nav was taking the P, I mean it had been privy to our inane conversations and had every right to consider us a pair of numpties. 

In support of this statement I offer the following: (I need to add that the Lady R and I seriously discussed its inclusion in the blog as possibly too much evidence of our combined muppetry).

True story:

Before we got here, occasionlly in France and more often as we moved into Spain, we saw (as European cars have) number plates accompanied by a P. Now, as you will no doubt be aware, French ones have an 'F' Spanish ones an 'E (Espana), Polish ones 'PL'. We were initially puzzled, the Lady R and I, by the 'P'. To which country did it belong? For the life of us, we couldn't think of a country whose name began with the letter 'P'. In fact, for the two to three days in which we puzzled over this (whilst approach Portugal) we proceeded to name all manner of other countries to which the 'P' could belong. Imagine our reaction (you can't) when we deciphered the answer. 

Anyway, hoping we can make it home without getting too confused. 

Ps and Steve, in answer to your repeated concerns: yes, we are washing regularly.