Portugal and Spain - 2025

Ola

We start the day by catching an Uber to the Villa Nova side of the Ponte Luis 1 bridge (top tier) and walking across the bridge to Porto. Simply magnificent views in all directions.

Across the other side, there is an obligatory morning tea stop in the shadows of the cathedral (with some Pastel de Nata from our camping buddies next door), but not before eagle eye Bob races to the other side of the road to the Press box and unbelievably they have last weekends Financial Times newspaper (and this is Thursday 👏👏).

We check out the outside of the cathedral and marvel at the difference between the stonework that has been cleaned and restored, and the dirty unrestored sections. We also walk around and see some lovely old buildings, a monastery and the obligatory statue!

Next stop is the Lello Bookshop, which is a magnificent fairy tale 1800s construction with cast concrete twisting stairs but all the rest in beautiful timber, oh and a few books as well (it was rumored to be the inspiration for the bookshop in Harry Potter but JK Rowling has denied this and said she never visited it).

We retrace our steps back down towards the water and are confronted by a serious Police presence - multiple cars blocking traffic in all directions, Police spotters moving people out of the way, Riot Squads with Shields, Officers with Big Guns (okay probably Tear Gas funds but still!) - what on earth is going on? Who could be this important? Has there been a threat? Nah, it’s the bleeding Nice (as in French city) Soccer Team Supporters Club in town for the game against Porto tonight. They are marching in their hundreds and the Police obviously have some concerns that they will go a bit wild (they all might have a few sherbets under their belts already), or the local supporters will attack them. They pass us without incident although the leaders do a bit of a pogo stick impression and chant their chant right in front of us.

Okay back to our tour, we head to the tram stop to catch the rickety old Line 1 tram out towards the river mouth. It arrives at the half hour despite the timetable suggesting it’s every 20 mins on the 0, 20, 40. We take the 20 minute trip, out check in the next tram time, yep every 20 mins in the 0, 20, 40 etc. We wander around as the sun is setting (lovely sunset) and go back for the 20 past tram which duly arrives and the driver says I go on the half hour and every 30 minutes (clearly someone can’t tell time or read a clock!!).

Anyhow we wait for the half hour (what else do you do?) and get back to the Quay in time for a sunset drink. We pick a bar with a view and heaters (it’s got a bit chilly), and get told no drinks without food - bugger, so we walk back across bridge to ‘our’ side and find a nice bar with (fairly ineffectual) heaters , and a fabulous view of the bridge and lights. We have a lovely glass of Vinho Verde.

he river on

Oh and we also wander into another old library along the river on our way home:

Then we catch an Uber home, which is a little interesting in that the driver talks to us about how he loves camping, then spends half the trip thumbing through pictures on his phone - while driving down narrow winding streets - and eventually finds and shows us his camping setup, and his dog for some reason. We make it home safely, although that wasn’t a given by any means.

Adios for today.

Ola

We awoke to consistent rain that did not let up until 3.00pm, so we decided on another do nothing day. Bob went back to bed for a nap around midday while I tried to catch up on some blogs (but still didn’t advance very far).

When the rain stopped we did attend to fixing the rear side running light which was not working. Bob found that the wiring was disconnected, another victim of the rubbish bin that was mounted right of the edge of the gutter that the busted rear plastic molding got caught on. So after a bit of fiddling we were able to reconnect the wiring, then manoeuvre the busted light (you might recall it was broken when we picked up the van 8 weeks ago ) back into place and get it held solid with just one end screwed in. And we were able to use a scrubbing brush and some detergent to remove the surface marks - the result is that the panel is definitely more secure than when we picked up the van, and sitting more aligned with the way it should be. Job well done.

And the other great thing is that Pedro, the owner here, sourced a new screw cap lid for the toilet cassette,and picked it up in his way home. Cost - €8.20. He is our new hero for that.

Pedro also hosted a little Port tasting at 5pm, with 2 different Ports and some bread, their olive oil and almonds, and a cheese to go specifically with the 2nd Port, a 2019 Vintage. Pedro commented that it was notable for 2 things:

- firstly it was the year they opened the campground,
- secondly some guests tonight also were here in 2019 soon after they opened (guess who that was?)

We also got chatting to 2 couples. One a younger 30s’ish couple from the UK, travelling for 3 months (he works for Sound Cloud a music streaming app, she runs and manages the trip and is a content creator for their side hustle). They are suggesting that this trip is a way of deciding where they want to live for the longer term, which could be UK, Spain , Portugal, or Asia (she has Singaporean heritage). Instead of using their money for a house deposit they have bought an old 1965 Ford trades van, put a new v8 motor in it, and rebuilt the fit out before they embarked on the trip.

The other, older, Dutch couple also very interesting, he a Maintenance Tech working in Dementia Aged Care facilities, and she an Art Conservator who restores old paintings for a living (including a client in Perth that buys old paintings in Europe and sends them to her to restore before they get shipped to Perth). They also have sold their house and travelling for 12 months before deciding where they want to live (most like in the Dutch countryside). There was a loose Indonesian connection between the two couples and some discussion of cooking up an Indonesian feast tomorrow night- we offered to supply the wine!

Interesting evening.

Over and out for tonight

Ola

Today we wake to a rather cool van again - it seems we have run out of gas overnight. Pedro, the owner comes to the rescue again, gets on the phone and orders a new bottle for delivery this afternoon- so it won’t be a 2nd cold night 😮‍💨 .

We are off to WOW (World of Wine) today which is a huge complex of various museums and experience areas. Our campsite hosts organise our tickets, and suggest we order an Uber to drop us off as the bus or train don’t quite go there, and it’s really cheap ( and at €6 it is almost cheaper than the bus!).

The WOW is situated in old Port stores high up on the hill on the Villa Nova de Gaia side, and is a complex of museums, educational facilities and restaurants that make good use of the old production facilities that have been relocated elsewhere. They were essentially abandoned until Taylor’s (most famous Port House) and others got the $ and approvals together to save the area and generate both tourist and local traffic.
And we and about 6 other people have it to ourselves! Well not really, but when we arrive early afternoon it seems like we are the only people there. So no crowds, no rushing, no jostling for the best position to read something.

We see the "Porto through the Ages" exhibition first, tracing the development of Portugal through the ages up to modern days, and particularly how they jostled with Spain for territory for their own land, they fought for a long time until finally Portugal regained its sovereignty in 1640 and they signed the treaty of Lisbon in 1668. And earlier for overseas territories, the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494, drew a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands which split the world into spheres of influence- Portugal had the lands East of there and Spain had the West.
And I guess they still didn’t have that ‘the world is round concept’ quite in mind yet!! Anyhow.

We have lunch in one of the little restaurants:

We went from there to the Wine Experience which charts a year in the life of the vines and grapes (helpfully showing the months for both Northern and Southern hemispheres), from dormancy through budburst, flowering and forming teeny grapes, veraison , harvesting, post harvest leaf drop and back to dormancy. Also different soils types around Portugal and their equivalents around the world. Turns out the Dao and Douro areas have tough, low-nutrient crystalline granite and poor, low-nutrient sand and schist soils, just the same as the Stanthorpe wine growing areas (who knew?). Actually there is an interesting globe with straight lines drawn around the circumference showing where the grape growing areas are in both hemispheres - southern QLD just scrapes in.

Interesting wall thingy:

Old grape truck:

Further on you do a quiz to determine what sort of Grape you are, a jelly bean test (hold your nose and chew then release to show the interaction between aroma and taste,), a set of beakers with flavors for you to work out what they are, and most importantly a tasting of 3 wines (a white a red and a Port).

We have a fancy little gelato along the way:

It’s dark when we emerge, and we are worn out, so it’s time to head home, but our trip doesn’t go smoothly. I step down a bigger step then I thought and twist my ankle. And Bob gets instructions on where to order the Uber to come to, and accidentally/stupidly orders it to pick up and drop off from the same place (yes apparently it can be done). So we have to sort that out when the driver turns up, with fractured English and Portuguese we get there, albeit a couple of Euro extra than just us getting in the car one side and getting out the other side!! Never mind.

Central plaza of WoW - all lit up for Christmas:

That's it for today.

First up, we catch an Uber to and from the local supermarket as we need supplies and some extra booze for tonight (more about that further down).

Today we catch a short “6 Bridges” ferry cruise up and down the Douro River. Quite enjoyable, though sitting out in the front meant we couldn’t hear a word of the commentary - never mind, it allowed Bob to take a hundred photos of various bridges from every possible angle. As an aside there is a major construction project going on that is carving into the hillside which we discovered is a 7th Bridge and also tunnel purely for the Metro system (our Uber driver filled us in later and dryly remarked that the cruise price would be going up because it will be the “7 Bridges Cruise”).

Our little "6 Bridges" ferry boat - and then photos of various bridges and also along the river:

Old 1800 bridge gateway with "new" bridge behind:

We walked across the lower tier of the Ponte Luis 1 bridge (half the length of the top tier which we will do tomorrow ) to the Porto side, and the Ribera Quay area, which just reinforces how lovely Porto is.

Tiny laneways between buildings along river - and beautiful old buildings:

We return home to rest up as we are meeting the younger English couple (Mack and Tessa), and the Dutch couple (Ferdie and Barbara) for drinks and dinner in the camp kitchen (this is the only campground in the whole Iberian Peninsula that has one, as far as we know). Ferdie cooks up a delicious Indonesian feast because his mother/grandmother?? is from Indonesia, M&T provide dessert, from an ‘Instafamous’ Patisserie, and we supply the beer and wine, one from said supermarket and one from the campground owners local connections. We have a fabulous night! (and it highlights what you miss as the weather turns colder and you don’t see people out and about in the campgrounds because they retreat into their van early).

Adios

Largely uneventful on our way to our 3rd freebie overnighter - except for a small programming error which led the GPS to send us into the up the hill into the middle of old town Zamora! Buts that’s all we saw of it as we re-programmed and went to the stop down in the town motorhome stopover carpark. Very popular place this is with well over a dozen vans sitting there on our arrival. The toilets turn out to be a couple of Portaloos but will be fine for our short overnighter.

Next day, we get going relatively early from Zamora. As we leave the free carpark we realise that there at least 20 vans here - so either everyone is going somewhere and this is just a night stopover, or we are missing something here in Zamora. Oh well, we have places to be. We program Maps to take us a slightly longer way, which is all 4 lane highway to avoid an ‘N’ road that is shorter but longer in time. So today is about 400kms we need to cover.

So far so good, but as we enter the mountains it starts to rain, and then the fog closes in. It’s hard going for the driver, and even harder for the co-pilot. We follow another motorhome for some time, which makes the task a bit easier. They pull into a mountain top servo, so we do as well and have our lunch. While we have ours in the van, inside the restaurant there is a hundred people or more - so that’s why the carpark is absolutely full of cars and trucks! We always wonder whether the people sitting there drinking are going to be driving anywhere soon (including the truckies). Back on the road, it’s a bit clearer for a while, then more heavy fog, and the driver has to concentrate pretty hard. But things are going well, and we cross into Portugal.

Our drive on the way:

Oh oh, the brownie points that the driver has been accumulating has diminished- he has forgotten that as soon as we cross the border into Portugal, our ESims don’t work as we have specific country ones (the data is much cheaper that way, and when you are watching hours of F1 it chews it up pretty quickly).

So although, miraculously, the Maps directions keeping working for ages, eventually we get voice directions but no maps - bugger! Our campsite has advised us to take a different route to what the Maps will suggest, so we are relying on knowing where we are going and when to turn off.
We make a couple of stops at Servos until eventually we find one with wifi for us to tap into to update our Sims back to Portugal - which takes about 30 minutes standing in the middle of the shop stealing their wifi until we finally get ours sorted.

The rest of the trip is thus uneventful, but it’s a long drive day of about 8 hours (and for once the driver agrees with the stupid van when it tells him he is fatigued every 10 minutes).

We are pleased to pull into Istas Gardens at Vila Nova de Gaia, our home for the next 4 nights. If you were with us in 2019, you probably remember that we stayed here then (no? That’s okay). Back then it had only been open a couple of months, and the grounds were pretty bare, but we really enjoyed it, so we had to come back. The owners, Pedro and Claudia built it in the ‘backyard’ of their new home. It looks really wonderful now that all the trees have grown, and a few other developments suggest we will really enjoy it again (notwithstanding the weather forecast). Our check in process is lovely, a glass of wine, a tour of the facilities, advice on transport and tour options, and some dark chocolate and a wee bottle of port for a nightcap - you got me 😀.

Our campsite and welcome port and chocolate 👍👍

Adeus for now.