Today was the sort of day that when i started the planning the trip we would be having every few days. Which was wake up early, quick pack up and then a day trip on the way to our next stop over. However, this is absolutely not been the case and to be fair was probably not sustainable either. The challenge is just the time most things to take including the bottles to wash and sterilise, then the bottle making etc. But we managed it yesterday headed to south to a place called Penniche. It is a small sea side town that operates boat trips to an archipelago 10 miles off the coast called Berlengas. I thought that would make a nice trip on the way down to Sintra. The boat trip started at 14:30 so we had a deadline and we quickly managed to get the camper down and set off from the Nazare park up. I have to say that park up was my favourite and Nazare was definitely one of my favourite places. I have a tendency to hype things up in my head to the point that when the actual thing happens it is a huge anti climax. Nazare was not one of those things. I dont know why it was so good, but it just was, and that is enough for me!
One of the rare times we set a deadline and made it in time. We arrived at about 13:30pm and as it was in the harbour i took the chance to do a bit of fishing, caught nothing as usual but nice to be able to get the rod out for 15 minutes or so. We checked in and decided to nip off and get something to eat as we had not had anything to eat all day and i was starving. The lady told us to hurry and we couldn’t find a supermarket so the easiest thing to find was a kebab shop. So 2 donner kebabs it was, i was starving so i scoffed mine as quick as possible. All was good, until we set off in the boat to get to the island. HOLY SHIT! It was horrendous, within 5 minutes i was sweating and feeling travel sick. I am not a great traveller at the best of times and this was next level stuff. It was awful, quite possibly the worst trip ever. I cannot express enough how bad it was. It was truly an awful ordeal. It last 20 minutes the trip did, i did manage to avoid being sick but spent the last 8 minutes with my head in a blue carrier bag. ONce we managed to make it to shore i couldnt move off the harbour for the first 30 minutes as the world was still swaying.
It took at least 90 minutes for me to regain some normality in my head and body so after that it was rush around the island to try and see some of it, there is a fort on the island, we missed it, there was a lighthouse on the island, we missed it, but we did walk around a bit and see the sun set partially. The frustrating thing was we paid extra to do a cave tour of the island but there was no way i was getting on another boat unless it was taking me home. After we arrived safely back to land and having another 20 minutes fishing from the harbour we wanted to get something to eat before we set off south and managed to find an Indian restaurant and had a starter, madras, karai, rice an amazing nan. After that 50 minute drive to a place called Mafra where stayed on a free park up again. 3 night hot streak continues!! It was under the shadow of the palace of Mafra. Very nice. Pop top up in bed ready for sleep by 10:20. Fortunately the Wee Man is sleeping through again, so that really helps!!
