Travels in the Van 2023: week one

First week

January 13th-21st






Travelling in a camper van means we can run away from bad weather and change plans as we go, so we headed south after a rough crossing, to Lisboa where we’ve spent the week. The wooded campsite is in a big national park close to the city. It’s huge and in the summer full of families around the pool and the park farm. In winter it’s quiet. We’ve made friends with the Campsite cats, the donkey, goats, potbelly, pig, chickens, and one sheep. It’s the perfect place for the other joy – exploring the city and the park by bike. City cycling is not for the faint hearted, tramlines and cobbles add to the usual hazards but it’s great for food-market hopping and sightseeing. We can move quickly, see backstreets and get the views that other tourists wouldn’t see. Catching a train with a bike is easy here. We’ve headed west to Sintra and cycled back along the coast. 


Go, go, go 

Friday 13th Jan (I know!)

I've never felt so prepared for a trip or an adventure. Setting off from home after days of rain, we pass swollen rivers and flooded fields and wind our way through fairytale ancient villages and ugly sister roundabout towns of Southern England. A minor electrical fault diverts us to Poole, where cheery staff at the VW garage are helpful and enthusiastic, without actually fixing the problem. I also drop and leave behind the only lipstick I’ve brought with me - a hard to find make and colour. If you have ever done this you’ll understand. If not, let’s move on. I resolve to make do for now and add this to the list of things to deal with when the 32 hour ferry voyage/ordeal is done. Once aboard, there is a sense of foreboding (I muse again whether it's better to know what is coming, by looking at the ‘weather & radar app’ or take each experience as it comes) in the comfort of the club lounge with endless food and wine available. I wonder if this time tomorrow, in the bay of Biscay, we’ll all be quite as eager.


All at Sea.

Breakfast - there are fewer of us and it's hard to move around as the tannoy warns us all to be careful. The staff are totally unflappable and show no emotion as cups and plates slide off tables onto the floor. I'm blessed with a cast iron stomach and sea legs and able to get through the day by eating little and often and doing yogic breathing with the rolling and the crashing. The waves are pretty impressive, breaking over the bow and hitting the windows dramatically every now and then. Richard turns green and sensibly sleeps through it. It's an ordeal but no one dies (as far as I know).


Zamora 

Sunday 15th Jan
It's good to get off the ferry and start the journey south-west. The weather forecast causes us to review our plans, so we drive, keeping ahead and out of reach of gales and rain, taking it in turns on open, empty Sunday motorways. We see more from a van, than a car, of the terrain and countryside around us. We stop for coffee in view of Los Picos d’Europa, and pass the glorious Las Tuerces, a peculiar outcrop of fantastical rocks look like giant bulls and Mushrooms. We stop in Zamora on the Douro, in an empty municipal campervan site right on the river. It's mid afternoon so we ride out along the river to a muddy nature reserve and see our first storks in their nests. The sun lasts while we climb up to the old town to the impressive castle above the town where are friendly custodian minds our bikes and urges us up the ramparts for the view. It feels very sleepy even for Sunday out of season, but once again we learn the hard way that nowhere really opens until after 8 pm for supper. Patience means we strike lucky and sleep well after a good meal. We’re joined by a couple more vans and it’s comforting to be in a pack who also think it's safe to park by the river, especially when the wind howls and the rain falls in the night. But the already flooded Douro takes in the rain without a fuss.




The only dark cloud is it uncharacteristically careless about my cycling glasses (prescription, very focal, reactive light – very expensive) I don't put them back in the case before out of the boot both arms snap off another item to add to the fixes needing needed during the trip it's I'm seeing it as a quest.


The Border
Monday 16th Jan 

From the open planes of Spain to the rocky, deep valleys and ridges of Portugal, crossing the border is quite dramatic. We alternate the driving and the playlist.  Portuguese road signs are bright primary colours, red, blue and yellow. I listen to a video of Portuguese pronunciation to try and get a feel for it and a little sticks. The temperature rose from 8 to 15 degrees as we drove. It's a long haul to Lisbon and we’re tired from interpreting and negotiating the motorway junctions when we arrive at the Lisboa camping site in a big woody park on a hill with reasonable facilities in the Monsanto National Park. It’s still blustery as expected and will be all week. It’s good to park up properly and re-organise the van.




Quest update: the three problems on my list are sorted. 

1 - Lidl middle aisle miraculously has 12 V USB chargers, temporarily solving our electrical fault well enough. 

2 - Amazon delivers a replacement lipstick to Sam at home, who will bring it with him when he joins us

3 - my glasses, on close inspection has arms that are designed to snap off in a fall have snapped back on again! hurrah!


Van Life & some mysteries
Tuesday 17th Jan

Thank God for yoga for travelling on YouTube - my morning routine is re-established with campsite cats for company. After a leisurely start of the day we cycle into Lisboa in sunshine. We take a route up through the woods and I see a small blue cone as we go and wonder what it is. It's lively and there are cycle routes, my route master (Richard) also knows where he's going, having done the prep and having a 1st class sense of direction. We aim for the magnificent MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology walkway bridge to the waterfront and to the Food Market. There is evidence of a lively visual culture and industry all around. The Market is Interesting, through the door you turn right for traditional fresh provisions and left for a trendy food hall, very popular everywhere now. It's buzzing with middle-class Portuguese and visitors from everywhere. The food is great and the prices gastronomic. We share a few dishes and a beer and head off again in warm sunshine and brief showers. The cycle route back to our temporary home is epic, through the city, skirting monuments, back streets, housing estates and the motorway, seeing things visitors would never see other than by bike.



Blue Thing

On the path as I cycled today
amongst the windfall twigs branches and leaves
all unusual to me in this foreign place
was a very small, powdery blue conical thing
I just caught its shape and size 

and that startling colour as I rode past
and then I looked for others
I wished I had stopped and picked it up
and then I saw the same shapes – brown and wet, and spent.
So it was real, that beautiful blue thing I saw.


(Update: it’s a eucalyptus seedpod, the campsites full of them!!)



















A new feature of the campsite experience:  a donkey a sheep, some pigmy goats, a pot bellied pig and some chickens in an enclosure right behind our van.



When your friends smell.

As soon as we arrive a little cat appears

meows and beseeches us for some food. 

She is black with white bits

her tail like a magic wand with a tiny white tip
She’s a campsite cat we decide
and so is her brother all black and sleek but not as cheeky
There’s a mother cat too and then another tortoiseshell
They all have a corner snipped off one ear. 

As soon as we get back today from a bike ride 

a donkey, a sheep, a few pygmy goats and some chickens 

are foraging on a little hillock just behind us 

they come to say óla
I stroke the donkey’s velvety nose through the fence 
and greet the goat. 

I wonder if the others like his goaty smell as much as I do


Sintra 

Wednesday 18th Jan

A fairytale town reached by train. The people we meet and deal with a friendly and helpful especially at the train station - they seem to like bikes in Portugal. We climb through breathtaking mossy woodland with giant boulders with kamikaze Tuk-tuks and taxis hurtling past, taking tourists around the sights – imagine what it must be like in high season. We visit Palacio de Pena, a Gothic Royal castle with beautiful tiles and eclectic interiors, guarded by officious staff. We cycle back along the coast in the sun and make french toast for supper in the van, which is a first.





City cycling
Thursday 19th Jan

We leave the campsite on a different route to the city, and stop at the astounding Mirador de Monsanto. Once a triumph of modernist architecture and an exclusive restaurant the Observatory with stunning views is now a shell of a building turned over to street artists by the city council. It’s eerie and deserted and well worth the visit. A clever move to make it an alternative tourist attraction while it disintegrates.

Now veterans of tramline and cobbles cycling, we find another food market and have fantastic steak and wedges as a perfect reward. A flat tire is cheerfully mended by a local bike shop we have the wrong allen keys in the wrong bag. Open and up and down tall of small streets and terraces English folk singers outside the castle walls and a trip back along the seawall.  We watch boats sailing against the tide from the cafe terrace of the MAAT building we walked across at the start of the week.































Back to Sintra 

Friday 20th Jan
Back and fore on the train to cycle up into the clouds. We stop and have whatever the dish of the day is in a small village café -  tripe & chickpea stew. Hmm.



Last day in Lisboa 

Saturday 21st Jan

It’s sunny as I sit outside the campsite launderette writing up the week. It’s time to move on. Before we do there’s one last ride to the city. We’ve decided to do our own food tour returning to a couple of favourite spots and to the LX Factory Cantina where the service is painfully slow but the simple food worth waiting for. A farmers’ market is full of Saturday family outings. It has the usual honey, chutneys and crafts, though no one seems to be buying much. We’re tempted to follow the guy who’s cycling round the square with a boom box playing quite tasteful music, he seems to be performing a public service and deserves some followers. The late afternoon light fades and the early evening life changes. There are sirens and chants coming from somewhere as we head back through the City to the hill, it’s an animal rights demonstration, clearly popular in Portugal as in Spain last spring. The traffic is a bit more manic and we’re kept on our toes to find the route home. My bike front light battery gives out half way home which adds a surreal element, especially the final sprint through the woods back o the safety of the van.




Mysteries of a campsite in winter. 
We are allocated a pitch in the 80% empty campsite. The short walk to the toilet block poses a couple of mysteries. Whose cats come to great us noisily? They’re clearly a family, each one with a snipped ear. Are they the campsite cats? 
The first two caravans next to us are Portuguese and look permanent. Both topped with tarpaulins, the additional extensions and extra tents weathered and worn make them look abandoned to the elements. The cats seem to congregate under the first one. But as darkness falls there’s no sign of lights through the cracks. There is faintly from the second van, and there’s a car parked outside, but there are no tell-tale cat food trays outside this one. 

Next, there’s a German campervan, a disability aid by the door. I met the woman in the toilet block one morning and we greet with an esperanto mix of words. They’re gone in a few days. 

Fourth pitch, right next to the toilet block is a large campervan with a Finnish number plate. This is the most mysterious of all. Over a couple of days, it’s noticeable that the inhabitant never leaves - the bike outside does not change position. When we are back from a ride each day, he’s there in the van, TV on - hockey matches, and an iPad set up on the table, the captain seat turned in from the front of the van. And so it goes, as we wash the dishes, take a shower, even late-night toilet visits - he still there, watching the hockey. We muse on what he’s doing on the computer all day. 

I wonder at the off-season rhythm of life of this on this campsite. There’s no difference in this way of life to living in a room in town I suppose. We’re there six nights. One evening, the fifth, his lights are on, but he’s not home. There’s laughter and rock music blaring from the van down on the next row. It’s dark but I can just about see the people sat in the awning. They’re still partying at 1.30 am. Next morning in daylight, I see that the caravan also has a Finnish numberplate. The Finns clearly know how to party. 

The last night before leave I’ve stopped wondering and worrying about who’s feeding the cats. there’s a car next door. Side lights on and a man picking herbs from the ‘garden’ around the van. There’s a cat saying hello. And then he’s gone. Then it’s our turn to leave. Campsite mysteries are left behind.


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