Wednesday 6th January

Drove along the coast through villages and over cobbled roads, they seem to like them here. Although the main roads aren’t the best to drive on either as you are constantly playing dodge the pothole! Anyway as the day was getting on, we were driving around through the coastal streets of Valadares trying to find somewhere to park up for the night that wasn’t in front of someone’s house. As I turned into a small street there were some low trees overhanging the road and suddenly there was a crunch! In a stupid moment on my part, thinking it was just a small branch catching the top, I carried on and a much bigger crunch came. Lorna was looking up through the sky light horrified, I then finally stopped and looked up and I saw our roof box curled up. I jumped out and the roof box had been ripped open by an overhanging tree trunk. The box was a mess of twisted metal and broken plastic with all our belongings hanging out and over the roof! We were blocking the small road, so there was nothing to do but get up there and get all our bits into the motorhome. By this time a few local Portuguese had come out to have a look at the stupid English and one was taking a picture on his mobile, as I was handing stuff down to Lorna from the roof. What a stupid move I had made, I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Let alone what we would actually do next? Our roof box was massive and the motorhome inside was now full of everything from it, as there was no storage room left inside anyway. One of the locals went and got some rope for me so I could tie what remained of a roof box onto the roof racks, as it had been ripped off them. They then helped us reverse out the road and told us which way to go so we wouldn’t come across any more low trees. I drove sheepishly away, with the wreck tied on top and we then found a spot we could park up in for the night. I removed the box off the roof and also found a roof bar had been bent. With the box on the ground I started fiddling with it, in the vain hope I could fix it, but it was no use as it was no longer a box. Lorna finally called me in, telling me to leave it, as the roof box was now dead.
Portuguese Tree 1 - Mark’s Driving 0.