This is our parking space for today. A large parking lot with fresh water and waste disposal station. Approx. 900m from the town center. Behind the “auxiliary police”. (They call themselves that because they are from the municipality, but have many rights, just like the police. They can also impose fines of up to 300) and the bus station. The many campers have a lot of fun here. They laugh, talk, sit together, prepare their food outside and some have their awnings out. We can’t say whether this is really allowed, as it is usually forbidden on pitches like this. We think it’s great and are happy. It gives you even more contact with the individual people. There is also a motorhome from Heidenheim here. They are pensioners from Bolheim. Let’s see if we meet up more often on the road. You always meet one or two campers from the previous pitches on the trip. That’s always nice too.
However, by the time we arrived at this site today, we had experienced quite a lot…
Originally, we only wanted to drive 10 km further to Viana do Castelo. We were sure that the pitch at the harbor had everything we needed. Our waste water tank and toilet cassette were full, as the last pitch had no possibility of emptying them. Unfortunately, we were probably wrong. So we wanted to drive another 5 km to another pitch. All we had to do was cross a bridge over the river, but that wasn’t possible for us with a WENNE and 7.5 tons.
We drove through the town three times to realize that this sign prohibiting the passage of 3.5 t over this bridge simply made it impossible for us to cross. It was the only bridge in the town. So we had to take a different route and were only able to cross the river over another bridge about 26 km further on.
Since we had to take this detour across the river, we decided to head for the disposal station immediately after crossing.
As we have often been in this situation due to the weight of the WENNE and the satnav has guided us in a different direction, we trusted the satnav again this time and drove past the sign for the waste disposal station, indicating 200 m to the right. This time it was a fatal mistake.
Our sat nav led us along this path. We’ve driven strange routes a few times and thought nothing of it at first.
Turn around?!?! Not a chance! So we had no choice but to somehow drive our 8 meter WENNE along this great, narrow path back onto the road 🙁
After we followed the sign for the waste disposal station, we successfully reached it. But this waste water channel was so narrowly fenced in that we couldn’t fit through :-0
It’s a good thing that it also works with a bucket. You just have to walk a few times with the full 10l bucket until the 60l tank is empty.
20 km further on, we reached the campsite that was only planned for the next few days.
Plenty of space and with services, a supermarket, DIY store, workshop, petrol station and a place to do laundry.
It quickly became clear that we didn’t want to stay here, even though the site wasn’t bad in principle. However, we took the opportunity to thoroughly wash our clothes again for 8 euros. We had a look at the “Intermarche” supermarket (the Intermarche often offers pitches for campers) and made ourselves a coffee with a chocolate croissant.
After a break of just under an hour, we drove on and tried our luck at the originally intended parking space right by the harbor, just after the bridge, which was not passable for us.
Everything was pretty cramped here. Unfortunately, all the spaces were already occupied and we had to turn around in a dead-end street, which wasn’t really any wider than this one in the pictures.
After the turning maneuver somehow worked, we drove on to the next pitch on our list. After the chaotic day today, to make matters worse, we passed a motorcycle accident. Hopefully the rider hadn’t been seriously injured.
100km and 7 hours later, we finally arrived at our campsite for the next two nights.
Portugal is very beautiful. The architecture is very different from that in Spain or France. The roads are often very narrow and quite bad. Even if there is a central reservation on the road, it doesn’t mean that the sides of the road are wide enough for normal cars. Our speed is between 40 and 60 h/km. But we have time 😉
We had heard that it is better for every camper in Portugal to get a truck navigation system so as not to become an attraction in the city.
We have this truck app and yet we became an attraction twice today 🙂 But since today we can say that the Portuguese are extremely friendly and helpful.
Now we are excited to see what other adventures await us in Portugal.
We took a look around the small town. Apart from a small food market, there wasn’t much on offer. So we spent the rest of the day relaxing in the camper.
As we stood at the aid station the next morning, a young Italian couple approached us. We met them in Tao, in the chestnut forest, where we were all alone with them. There are so many motorhomes here that we hadn’t even seen each other.
We actually thought it would be a good idea to continue on Sundays, as there probably wouldn’t be much truck traffic and we could drive through the narrow streets in a more relaxed manner.
There were actually no trucks on the road, but it felt like everyone else was. The stores here are open 24/7 and there were flea markets everywhere.
We stay here in the Intermarche parking lot for the next night. There are a few pitches for motorhomes including a supply station. These pitches are not very comfortable, but we are fine for one night.
