To Porto

Wednesday 10^th September

It rained a little in the night, but nothing major. We had a slow start to the morning, breakfasted on pancakes (I’m out of cereal), emptied the van, and headed off for the Orbitur Madelana at Vila Nova de Gaia, just below Porto. The sun was out again, and it got very warm. We arrived about one o’clock and drove along the seafront, parked up and got out to look at the beach. According to the satnav, there should have been motorhome parking along the beachfront, but it looks like it has been built over. I parked sideways in an empty car bay.

The beach looked lovely, with big breakers and white foamy surf. It had very few people on it, and a lifeguard – who seemed to be napping in the sun. We went back to the van and had lunch whilst observing motorists seeing who could park the closest to the van. I moved it back at one point so that I wouldn’t get hemmed in!

Finishing lunch we drove up the promenade to what seemed to be the end, then turned around and went to the camp. I checked in using my broken Spanish once again – I had to go and get my passport – first time this holiday so far. We were issued with our passes and went to find somewhere to park.

Basically, the parking consisted of bare earth under tall eucalyptus trees. There was no marking of pitches or boundaries – you could park where you wanted. We chose a position close to a walkway, not too far from the shower block and from power. I got the small doormat out, as I thought we would need it. We went to explore the shower block. It was basically clean, but very, very run down. The tiled floors seemed to be soaking, the bottoms of the stall doors were rotting in places, and had been painted over. There was no toilet paper (as there had been in the last place), it was dingy. K particularly wasn’t keen. Can’t see how this is classed as ‘Four Star Camping’. I would take clean and tidy shower blocks over a swimming pool any day.

Returning to the van we set the bikes up and went for a ride along the sea front, using the well marked cycle lanes that they had. We knew that we were about four and a half miles from the centre of Porto – so we went for it. The ride was mostly flat, and much of it on the cycle way. It took us about forty minutes before we were standing next to the tourist information in Porto. Not too bad, we thought.

We obtained some town maps and had a look to orientate ourselves. We had already ridden past the ‘cave’ of one port wine maker – Ferreira, so knew that we were in the right area. We found the Sandeman cave which had a café in front of it. We pulled the bikes up onto the wide walkway and sat down for a drink. K had a ‘Sandeman’s Founders Reserve Port’ with ice and some mint leaves. I had a local draught beer – ‘Sagres’. Both very nice. We sat for a while and answered questions about our electric bikes from a few people. The weather was changing, and we felt a few spots of rain.

We drank up and continued down the front of the river Douro, toward the Luiz 1^st Bridge. Crossing the bridge with the bikes was an experience. It’s quite narrow, with small walkways either side. The walkways were really too small to take the bikes, and riding meant that nothing could pass us. K zoomed on ahead. I got stuck on the walkway whilst trying to take a photo. I put the bike down onto the roadway when I spotted a gap in the traffic, and went for it.

After a while sitting and looking at the river from the other side we re-crossed the bridge, picked up some tourist leaflets and began to head back. We determined to come back by bus tomorrow, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about storing the bikes somewhere. The weather changed again, and we rode back to the camp site in sunshine. I used the motor a fair bit on the return, as did K – so the trip was fairly swift, arriving back at camp around seven thirty.

We had terrific rainstorms that evening hammering on the van roof. There were rivers of water flowing past the van, and forming large pools. Our doormat was truly inundated. I was glad that I hadn’t left my shoes outside – they would have floated away.

What with that and the ‘crack!’ every now and then as one of the large seed pods from the eucalyptus trees landed on the roof, it was a fairly noisy evening. It calmed down later, enough for us to get to sleep.