Day 59 - storks, ostriches and the sea

The Marla Bear yet again woke us at 6:30 - although to be precise it was 6:29 this morning.

We had breakfast and I then went off for a shower while there was still plenty of hot water. The site was predominantly filled with Dutch people who all seemed to be up and about very early! We took Marla for a short walk along the trails behind the campsite and then packed up and headed off.

First stop was a supermarket - our fridge was looking surprisingly bare! Charlie went into Pingo Doce for supplies, the only thing they didn’t sell was yogurt. Luckily for us there’s an Aldi next to the Pingo, so I popped in there for some yogurt. I ended up buying an almond tart each and some other treats.

We couldn’t check into our next campsite until a bit later on today, so we headed for a local beach.

We noticed a lot of Stork nests on the drive, they build absolutely massive nests on the top of power / phone poles. We saw so many poles for miles but no sign of a Stork at all. A quick google search told us that they migrate for the winter to the sub-Saharan desert. About 2 minutes after finding this fact out, we saw a stork sitting in its nest! We saw a few more over the space of a couple of minutes, but then nothing again.

In this area of Portugal, the bus stops are all very prettily painted blue and white, in keeping with the houses. I couldn’t resist stopping to get a photo.

We made it to the beach, parked up and had some lunch, cheese rolls. We then headed down for a walk and play on the beach. Marla had fun hopping in and out the sea with Charlie. Every time she came out the sea, she rolled around in the sand, then would launch herself back into the sea.

As we were just leaving the beach, Charlie noticed in the field opposite the car park there were three ostriches!

For our next campsite we have gone for the premium pitch as it’s hard standing / gravel so we finally have a couple of days off of glittery orange sand being continually trodden into the Van.
It’s a nice big pitch and the site seems nice - although there are a few children around.

We had spinach and ricotta cannelloni for dinner tonight followed by some honey and cinnamon biscuits - very tasty.Read more