Our journey into Portugal

Ecopista do Tamega (Green cycle route)

If any of you have driven around Portugal you will know that the motorway toll system is somewhat complicated for the foreign tourist so after much deliberation we decided to keep with our tradition of touring toll-free enjoying the slower and quieter roads, it may take longer to get from A to B but it's always more interesting.

The Aire from Bragança castle

From Zamora in Spain we headed west into northern Portugal and the city of Bragança, a historic town with its old, walled citadel perched on top of the hill.

The municipality provided a great terraced Aire right below the castle making it easy to walk up the hill to the castle and then through the narrow cobbled streets into the town. We stayed long enough to explore the city before heading further south and inland to an area we visited five years ago, a town called Arco de Bauthe, we parked by the old station museum of a disused railway which is now a 25mile long tarmac cycle route through amazing countryside. We had a wonderful couple of days cycling along the route. We had the cheapest cup of coffee in a small town next to the track, it was only 65 cents (about 50p) and equally as good as Costa!
Our journey continued slowly west following the Duoro valley, along our route we found another great free Aire at Sauselo with water, electric, toilets and hot showers (first time ever for free hot showers!) but annoyingly it was quite noisy there and there was nothing to do in the vicinity, no walking or cycling trails and the walk into the local town was along the edge of a main road with no pavement. Such a shame, also the Aire was poorly designed for the larger Motorhomes with really awkward access especially to the service area.

On a more positive note I met an amazing lady who invited me to join her doing Pilates, she was an instructor and she gave me a lesson in which I learnt more than I have done in years! I also  got to star in her Pilates video on Instagram!
It really inspired me to get over my self consciousness, to get my mat out and do Pilates more often whilst we are away.
The Duoro valley route is one of the best and most scenic in Europe, the road (the N222) follows the gentle curves of the river as it winds its way through the hills covered in vineyards, if you're interested then just search for N222 on YouTube and you can see wonderful videos of other travellers journey along the valley, sadly none of my photos do it adequate justice.
So where to next? We decided to head to the West coast of Portugal, not sure what sort of weather we would encounter at this time of year (October), but we were not to be disappointed as we enjoyed a few days at Figuiera da Foz parked up right by the beach and seafront cycle path.

Beautiful sunshine reflected on the sea at Figuiera da Foz