Today we arrived back in Portugal! We had another 320km for the final leg of the journey from Valladolid in Spain back to our home. We found a great spot to stay the night by a park opposite the football stadium. It was well lit and there were only two campervans in the car park. We set the alarm for 8am today, a little later than usual as we planned to go food shopping before leaving and the supermarket didn’t open until 9am. That’s Spain – late starts, late nights and at least two hours siesta and lunch time in the day which quite a few shops close for.
At 7.15am we heard four cars pull up and park right next to us. The people who got out were chatting excitedly. Joey promptly barked at the interruption so Phil took him for a little walk and discovered that the people who had arrived were here for a hot air balloon 
ride. What a treat it was to watch them lift off as the sun rose. That’s two days in a row now with unexpected wake up calls!
One of the projects for this trip to Portugal is to start some planting on our land. Unlike the UK where visiting a garden centre is like an experience with plants, gifts and cafe/restaurant all in one, in Portugal, so far we’ve only found one small garden centre about an hour away from us which just sells a few plants. Spain does have garden centres though so we decided to stop at two on our route to buy a few plants. We were pleasantly surprised and they were much more like the garden centres we are used to. We came away with a few climbing plants and some colourful bushes that grow well in drought and hot climates.
This is my third and Phil’s fourth trip driving to Portugal and this time, it felt really familiar – like we were coming home. The scenery gets more and more beautiful as we get closer. The area we live in is in the vicinity of the Tejo International Natural Park. It is rugged, full of huge granite boulders and hills, olive trees and lots of birds and fauna. Think the Peak District National Park but very spread out and hot! Even now in mid October, the temperature has been 27 degrees today. Since we left in June, they have only had one day of rain. However it looks like we are bringers of rain as it’s forecast to rain next week – which of course is good news here.
As soon as we arrived back onto our land, we opened up the barn and got our storage boxes out and unpacked what we needed. We wanted to get the outdoor shower tent set up and have a warm shower but alas it was not quite to be today. First the pump to our well wouldn’t work, so we drove to the local well tap a mile away and filled up jerry cans with 75 litres of water from there. Most villages seem to have a tap where you can go and fill up. Then having got a water supply, we discovered that the batteries that fire up the water heater must have run out of juice. By this time it was too late to get new batteries, so it was a bucket of cold water topped up with a kettle of boiling water for the shower tonight! That’s off grid living though and all part of the adventure!
More fun planned tomorrow but for now it’s good night!
