Croft's Shetland Sheepdogs

 

                                                                                                                                                                              

& Drentsche Patrijshond

On our trip-sites you will find pictures and maps from the trips we have made during the last months in Portugal........

We have travelled so much...the first months we were constantly around looking at new places....to get this wonderful country to know.

Portugal is full of history....lovely small villages...big cities and some destroyed places along the beaches in the South. It is amazing to see how the nature changes in just a short distance...You can drive around a curve and suddenly a totally new environment opens...

It can change from dessert to green valleys....from big cities into lovely countryside nature...Flat land goes into hills, and suddenly it shows up a lake or a lovely river along the road.
Hope you will enjoy the trips we have done...

While we stayed at Serro Da Bica in Ourique we travelled a lot in the South only, except for one trip through the Douro-Valley. The green roads are the most lovely...the nature is stunning...

 As you see we have been driving almost every road in the South...except for a small part in the South-East.  Beside this roads on the map we have been driving hundreds of kilometres on roads....not on the map...The worst time was when we wanted to go from Santana Da Serra to Almodovar...to a market. We took what we thought was a shortcut...and ended up in the dessert. Quite a scary trip...since we were totally lost in nowhere...On stony, sandy roads...sometimes no road at all. It was just after the heavy rainfall for weeks...and a lot of roads were gone with the flooding. You will find a green spot on the map where we were lost for several hours.  In the end we saw the highway very far away in the mountains...but how to come there. After tens and tens kilometres we finally reached the civilisation again.  We did not take such chances later...

Another scary trip, was when we drove through Moura in direction of the Spanish boarder and Barrancos. Early afternoon we arrived Barrancos, and wanted to have dinner before we turned home again. We ordered food on a lovely mountain-restaurant. We waited almost an hour for the food to come...and in the meantime it started to get dark. We had to cross more than half South of Portugal to come back home again.  It went ok in the beginning...but when we came back to Mertola, about half way home, we picked a short-cut to Castro Verde....close to home. We had to drive 40 kilometres in shit dark on a stony road from the roman time....We will never forget it...afterwards it was a lot of new noises in the car...everything was shacked loose.

If you would ask us to pick something very special and memorable...it must be the visit in Monchique some days before Christmas.  A small city high up in the mountain, full of charm and atmosphere. Unforgetable!!!! Also Barrancos in Spain was beautiful.  Mertola and the enlightened castle by night was stunning....

And ugly Lagos and parts of the Algarve coast....Overcrowded Setubal....and the terrible traffic in Lisabon....

 The trips we have done in the middle of Portugal we did mostly after we moved to the lovely rural camping Quinta Da Sao Jorge, 14 kilometres South of Evora. You find it marked red on the map. It is a wonderful, quiet camping-site....in the middle of a huge farm. We will write more about this place on another page.

Beside going around to have a look at places and historical monuments, it has been some trips to Lisboa Airport. One trip to Braga, Porto and Bathalja, to visit dog-shows combined with vacation.

 The more up North...the less we have seen. Only 3 trips....North of Portugal is too wet and humid in Winter, but lovely nature, and just marvellous in Summer.

 The trip through the Douro Valley is unforgettable...nothing ever can be compared to that memory....It was like driving through another century, in another life....The light that day was also very special, which made the valley and the river mystic and dark...Huge high mountains we had to climb...I don`t know how many hundred metres it was down to the bottom.

In end of April we hope to go to the North again, to Viana Do Castello, and to Penaphil. We will stay at the same Quinta as last time, like a small castle from the roman time. Hope you will enjoy the pictures from our round-trips!

 

 

 

 

 

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