6 October 2022 - A fraught driving day

Miles driven today = 81

Total Miles to date = 2,049

We realised yesterday that despite having been in Portugal for 4 days we were still barely as many miles from the northern border with Spain.  If we are going to stand any chance of getting down to the southern parts of Iberia on this trip we had better get a bit of a wiggle on.  So today has been predominantly a driving day, or in Lisa's case an "Oh my God, why didn't we take the toll road?" day.

It didn't start well.  The service area at Parque Cerdeira was extremely narrow and tight to access.  As a result I managed to knock over the fresh water tap unit.  Something which I'm guessing has happened many times before as it just fell over without any visible damage to the back of the van.  We put it back together as best we could and drove off whistling nonchalantly.

Google Maps reckoned our drive to Peso da Regua would take about 3 hours (in reality we've learnt to add at least 50% onto these times for Portuguese roads).  We tried to stick to the N roads but it was still sinuous in the extreme, clambering our way out of one valley to snake our way down again into the next.  The scenery was amazing at times but also a lot more urbanised than I expected at others.

We picked a half way stop off with an Intermarche for supplies at Fafe.  Well what a right royal faff Fafe turned out to be.  We ended up rejecting a narrow cobbled street selected by Google Maps only to find ourselves in a dead end where the only option was to turn round in an obliging tyre dealer's workshop.

The route continued to wiggle and wind.  I nearly took out somebody's balcony when a bus came careering round a corner towards us.  Again I don't think I would have been the first to do so if I had.

Finally we found ourselves on the N101 and the huge downhill swoop into the Douro valley.  

I wish I could have stopped to take more photos because it was eye wateringly gorgeous but all the pull-ins were on the other side of the road.  We finally got to stop in a large cemetery car park near the bottom of the hill.  Unfortunately the lack of altitude here and the presence of power cables don't do the scene justice.

At last we pulled into the motorhome aire, which is situated beneath 2 of the 3 bridges which cross the river at Regua (to use its commonly shortened name).  There are 30 fully serviced bays here costing just €3 a night so it's obviously very popular.  Given it was 28 degrees we picked Bay 3 as it was the most shaded one available.  Unfortunately we are going to have to move tomorrow as 2/3rds of the bays have been block booked but if we can't find a free one there are plenty more vans parked down on the riverbank so we can always join them.

We took a stroll around Regua.  The Douro valley is famous for its production of Port.  There is a huge statue of the caped Sandeman logo overlooking the opposite bank.

We stopped at the museum.  We didn't actually go into the museum, we just fancied the look of their terrace bar.  We took in the view and drank beer, which probably marked us out as being complete heathens in these grape growing parts.

Regua is also a stop off point for the big river cruise boats which steam up and down the Douro from Porto.  Our plan tomorrow is to use a different form of transport for seeing the valley to the east of here.  We're going to catch the train.  I now have an Ocean Colour Scene earworm.  Blast!

7 October 2022 - Pinhao