Sites in Portugal -report.

As a newbie i decided to make this contribution. It's our last trip to the mid west/north and we hope to get back there in September.

We came in from Salamanca and registered our van with the credit card. Not as expensive as we had feared.

Belmonte 40.363933 -7.340832
Viseu 40.664689 -7.917444
Fatima 39.633546 -8.671014
Coimbra 40.199596 -8.428871
Nazare 39.596758 -9.068561
Pataias 39.659453 -9.015349
Fig De Foz 40.147687 -8.867065 (AIRE)
Fig De Foz 40.164552 -8.857161 (CAMP)
Aveiro 40.643621 -8.659435
Angeiras 41.267041 -8.719997
Vitoria 42.865324 -2.685292

We left Salamanca and headed West on the E80, Ciudad Rodrigo was our diesel top up. Fuel is about 20C/l dearer in Portugal.The road improves when you get into Portugal and we did the decent thing and had our van reg matched with our credit card. We decided on Belmonte from the Rough Guide and while the town is cute the AIRE at the bottom of the hill is part of a bus stop. We were awakened early in the morning, not by buses but a garden sprinkler that hits 3 of the 4 vans that can park there. All in all its not worth going out of your way for.

Viseu was the next stop and again an AIRE. Point noted on this trip. About 40% of vans are French, maybe 25% local and the rest a mix. The AIREs are much more common than in Spain. They are frequently not official. We liked Viseu and we noted that like Belmonte it had a very defined Jewish section. We ate Kosher in both places. The old part of the city is lovely but like most of these places its at the top of a decent climb. Viseau is nice, worth a visit if you're in the area.

When we were so close we said we had to visit Fatima and while the town is nothing special, lots of religious tack, you have to give credit for the job they did on the Basilica. You could have the Rolling Stones at one end, U2 at the other and space in between for the kids to play. Massive. Motor home parking is in the car park nearest the Church and facilities are excellent, if a little sloped.

We took a small hop to Coimbra and there is a huge parking cum AIRE just across the river from the centre of the city. We parked in the bus section, with a lot of others, might be a problem high season. Its a lovely place, the town is quite touristic and the university is at the top of a very steep hill is lovely. Teresa told me that because she climbed up there while I lay out in the municipal pool that is part of the park. There is a restaurant right beside the pool which was excellent. Eating in the city was hit and miss. The place gets a big thumbs up.

I'm going to post the rest of this later as someone else wants the laptop. I will finish the report asap....

Part 2

Belmonte 40.363933 -7.340832
Viseu 40.664689 -7.917444
Fatima 39.633546 -8.671014
Coimbra 40.199596 -8.428871
Nazare 39.596758 -9.068561
Pataias 39.659453 -9.015349
Fig De Foz 40.147687 -8.867065 (AIRE)
Fig De Foz 40.164552 -8.857161 (CAMP)
Aveiro 40.643621 -8.659435
Angeiras 41.267041 -8.719997
Vitoria 42.865324 -2.685292

After Coimbra

We headed for the coast and decided on Nazare. Good choice. The town is on two levels. The lower part is only built in the last 150 years since the bay filled in. The older upper part is reached by funicular and is a bit touristy. Worst lunch of the 2 months up there. We stayed in a rough Aire that google maps shows as an empty field. It sometimes had more than 20 wagons. There was no official AIRE and to empty out and top up you had to go 10km down the road to an Intermarche in Pataias. And we did. We had our best fish meals of the holiday in Nazare. The beach is lovely and sunsets were magic. We never explored the beach on the upper northern side which looked interesting. We tried the Orbitur campsite on the edge of Nazare initially but it had very small sandy pitches with a tractor on site to pull you out. Night halt only, we thinks.

We popped up the road to Figueria de Foz and stayed in a campsite there located at the North end of the town beside a couple of shopping centres. The pitches here were also small and sandy and we ended up with most other MHs in the car park of the campsite. We moved to the AIRE for a night. It is huge and right on the beach. The beach itself is over a 1km deep, about 2km long and despite expecting it too be great it was just ok. Feng shui maybe. Bad meal experience here also. I'll find the name..

We then trotted another bit North to Aveiro. This was nice. On Google maps I couldn't make out where the centre was but the AIRE is a 5 minute walk from it. The AIRE is under a motorway bridge and despite what you might think it was fine. The town has a gondolo and Jarvey business going on, but nothing too Killarney. We would definitely call again. Two lovely meals, one upstairs in the fish market and another right beside it.

We then headed back to where we had visited 5 years ago. Angeiras is about 6km North of Porto and the campsite is close to the coast. The last part of the drive is a bit boketty. The sat nav can send you round narrow little back streets so set her for Angerias coast first and then back in, about 1km. We stayed on an Orbitur campsite that is nice (avoid the resaturant !!!). We ate in our old haunt on the coast, tractors pulling boats onto the beach and a filling station almost in the sand. Good cycle route to Porto. We were checking out an AIRE and another campsite on the southside of Porto when word of Ophelia arrived. They were praying for rain, so we decided to cut our losses and head back to Salamanca. On our journey, completely unbeknownst to us 45 people were burned in forest fires. Wind but no rain. No mention on RTE about the fires? That's the second time in two visits we have run out of Porto.

The motorways were magnificent and empty, we thought we would be billed a big one but when we got back VISA only charged us €19. €40 in Ireland , €140 in France. Should we charge the French their rates when they come here?

We headed for Vitoria Gasteiz, the official capital of Pais Vasco. Another AIRE, in a huge car park on the main thoroughfare into town. The city is a modern rectangular design but the old town is lovely and small while the the shopping was lovely and huge. Public transport was excellent and it has the Basque food culture without any tourists. Our local bar (Foronia Berria) handed out some small pintxo with every drink. Fab luss as we say down here. The barmaids brother is living in Ashbourne. Fab luss says we...

Again as a newbie let me compliment the regulars who are polite, informative and witty when I get it.
File this away in case you do ever visit his part of the world, Its really good value but not a patch on a sunny Achill.