The castle on the hill

Hello again from Ivan, Jane and Daphne of course.

Our motorhome Daphne has brought us to the more rural region of Alentejo in mid east Portugal. It's beautiful.

We have called this blog "The castle on the hill" for the simple reason that in this area, every town or village has a castle on the hill! We love castles and we are trying to visit them all. Some sit at eagles nest height ontop of walled cities, others are dominating a small village.

All are surrounded by the beautiful countryside of Alentejo, full of birds, wild flowers, olive groves and oak cork woods. Wherever we are its unspoilt, friendly and stunning. Before we travelled here, in our minds eye we thought Portugal would have an abundance of history, architecture, culture and nature. We have not been disappointed. It has shared all this with us and more.

Along with visits to castles we have been cycling everywhere and really enjoying it. The temperature is just right, between 14-18c with a gentle breeze.

We hope you enjoy the blogs and will leave you with last nights sunset.

Oh, and here's a photo of Ivan attempting a soft sandy ford river crossing 🤣

The journey to the coast

The journey from Spain to Portugal was amazing. Our motorhome Daphne kept us dry and warm and we encountered all sorts of weather over the border and into Spain.

 When the snow came down some evenings its was -5 at night.

It was all worth it with visits to beautiful ancient cities in Northern Spain.

Jane posted a short video of the mountains coming through Portugal on Facebook and we arrived on the Atlantic coast, having driven all the way from the English channel. The city of Porto is magnificent with houses from all the famous Port names such as Cockburns, Grahams and Taylor to visit. We crossed the ancient bridge on our push bikes and explored to our hearts content.

This lifestyle really suits us. We are starting to slow down, take it all in and relax. We highly recommend it.

See you again soon.

The Road to Spain

The road to Spain was blocked due to the danger of avalanches. Mainly due to unseasonly mild weather, lots of heavy overnight rain in the valleys and lots of snow fall on the mountains. Ivan and Jane enjoyed their week in France and wanted to enter Spain through the mountains for the first time in their lives. We were advised the road was “difficult” and “treacherous” going up to the Somport tunnel to cross under and through the Pyrenees. We needed snow chains for Daphne. A neighbour in the free aire in Oloron Ste Marie told us it took them two hours to put snow chains on their motorhome and they ended up jacking it up! We brought the chains from the supermarket and watched a YouTube demonstration. Our instructions were in French, however we practiced in the aire and managed fine in about two minutes!
The next day we left after an enjoyable time in the beautiful ancient town of Oloron. The road looked like this:

The further up we went up the colder it got and started to look like this: 

We ended up at the top without snow chains, yay! We have done a short vlog (1 minute 27 secs) at the top. We hope you enjoy. Watch to the end and you will see what a good shot Ivan is! 

We then travelled the 5.3 miles through the tunnel in the Pyrenees mountains and into Espana. No snow chains!
Staying the night at the foothills of the Spanish pyrenees we find out the weather is turning in with heavy snow forecast for tomorrow and minus temperatures. Watch this space.....