portugal, northern spain & home

April 2011: We crossed the border into Portugal & almost immediately everything was cleaner & greener! Spring was in full swing & the weather was mostly warm & sunny. The amount of insects about was amazing apart from when they got in the van & wanted to sleep with us! On our first day in Portugal I saw this beautiful butterfly.

We visited the city of Marvao, set upon a hill & surrounded by the old city walls it is a lovely old town with narrow cobbled streets.

We found a nice park up nearby in the grounds of a ruined farm. The ruin stood on a hill & at the bottom was a lake called Barragem de Apartadura. It was a lovely area & was had some nice walks as well as some lazy sunny days. Again there was plenty of wildlife around like this little frog.

We also found that Portugal has many ancient sites including the clapper bridge pictured below & lots of Dolmens.

Southern Portugal was full of storks, we had seen a few returning to the south of Spain from Africa in early March & driving across Western Spain & into Portugal we began to see more & more.

We saw lots of insects that we see in the UK but they all seemed bigger, like these massive ants.

We spent a week at FreeKuency festival an amazing free festival set in beautiful surroundings. There was some sound systems playing dance music, a live music stage as well as cabaret & theatre. The best things we saw was a great theatre show by Lux collective & the most amazing fire show from Crowlin Circus. This is better than any of the over-priced festivals in the UK :)

Here is a good video of the fire show from someone on YouTube...

By the time we left Freekuency festival the Storks had had babies :)

We stopped in the old town of Evora, it has a well-preserved old town centre, still partially enclosed by medieval walls. There are a large number of monuments dating from various historical periods, including a Roman Temple & lots of Dolmens & stone circles nearby. There is also an amazing bone chapel or Capela dos Ossos that we visited. We parked up for a couple of nights at the Menhirs at the Almendres Cromlech, at 7000 years old it is one of the oldest megalithic sites in Europe & one of the largest with 92 stones.

We then headed down the West coast of Portugal through Porto Covo & Almograve picture below.

Quite by chance we discovered storks nesting on the cliffs at Cabo Sardao. It was a brilliant sight seeing the massive nests balanced precariously on the high cliffs.

Once we got to the South coast we stopped at the touristy town of Lagos.

May 2011: After a couple of weeks of driving every day we were ready to take a break & found a beautiful beach called Barranco near the town of Vila do Bispo. There was spring water at the old wash house, free WiFi in the town & the beach was quiet & chilled out. We ended up staying there for six weeks as it was so lovely.

While we were there we found this, a stalked barnacle.

We also found this Rhinoceros Beetle.

Someone had dropped some dried lentils & these ants spent all day taking them back to their nest.

We were collecting water one day when we heard something screaming. It was this poor frog who ended up as the snake's lunch.

There were lots of Milk Thistles growing down by the beach.

This was the biggest fly I have ever seen!

We found this Turtle skull on the beach but couldn't take it with us as it still had some tissue attached & so was rather smelly!

Saw this snake basking on the rocks by the sea.

Rock art at Barranco beach by unknown artist.

This little fella had been caught by someone & left in a plastic cup. We released him far away from our van! It's the first time I have seen a Scorpion in the wild.

We took a day trip back to Lagos & visited Ponta Piedade where there are bizarre rock formations & grottos. It is one of the most photographed places on the Algarve which is not surprising!

Unfortunately the only Turtles we saw were washed up dead on the beach :( They are amazingly beautiful creatures & I hope one day I will see one in it's natural environment.

June 2011: We did see loads of Terrapins in the river at Aljezur.

On the way back up the West coast we stopped at Cabo Sardao again to see how the baby storks had grown.

I'm glad this beast didn't get in the van!

We parked up for a night by the docks at Vila do Conde.

Our last stop in Portugal was at the Dolmen da Barrosa.

We then crossed the border back into Spain to the area called Galicia. Galicia is very different from the Spain of the Costa del Sol. It is untouched by tourism & it felt like very few people visit the area. It is an area where people still toil their land by hand & there is a slower pace of life.

These weird dwellings are at Cabo Udra, I cannot find any information on what they were used for.

These rock carvings are on the beach at Mogor.

More stalked barnacles, alive this time!

Beautiful purple starfish.

Cape Finisterre is the final destination for many pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, the walk to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where some believe Saint James is buried. It is a recent tradition for pilgrims to burn their clothes or boots at the end of their journey at Cape Finisterre.

We discovered quite a few Dolmens in the North West park of Spain & even came across a marked route taking in ten Dolmens.

This Dolmen de Dombate had been built round, I would have preferred to see it how it was.

Celtic settlement at Castro de Borneiro.

We visited this impressive Celtic settlement in Coana. The Celtic settlement is made up of 80 huts, a sacred room and an acropolis. There is a collection of household tools used at that time and also a significant collection of Roman tools in the visitors centre.