Monday 11th January

In the morning we were removing the front windscreen silver screens and getting the toast and tea on the go, as usual. When a police car pulled up very close to us, then an officer got out and walked past the motorhome. Now wild camping in Portugal is similar to England, it is not officially allowed but in places seems tolerated or a blind eye is turned. So a lot of time we run the risk of being told to move on or even fined. We are careful with where we park and as yet have had no problems, but was our luck about to run out? The policeman seemed to be standing slightly further up the road on his phone, they were probably just making their presence felt. In a lot of places so far in Portugal the Police had driven into the car parks to check them out, but had never stopped or spoken to us. We decided not to continue cooking our breakfast and to eat it under their noses. So off went the gas and on went the engine. We drove off and had breakfast in a supermarket car park.

We then headed off to find a tourist office and ask them about the roads as well as the skiing. We established that the roads were still closed, due to them not having many snowploughs and the ones they had were only on the major roads. Although all the roads to the ski station were closed we were informed that the ski station was open! Yeah, work that one out. We drove around the outskirts of the national park and towards the town we were due to be picking up some parcels from.
We headed away from the main roads onto the smaller roads through the villages. The roads started getting smaller and smaller, with walls on either side. It got to one point that Lorna decided to get out and have a look further on down the road. I was very glad she did as the road got too small for Hymer, so we turned around and headed back to the main roads. We ended up stopping the night under a Castle in a small town called Belmonte. In the middle of the car park were the remains of a huge bonfire, still with massive tree trunks that hadn’t burnt. After having a good chat later to a group of three students from the town, although one was from Brazil. I learnt this was a tradition, to light a huge fire on Christmas Eve that normally burns till new years day.