Diary Entry – 7th February 2023

Finally got a base set up for a few days, after we left Cascais we went to visit something called Rocha de Inferno which roughly translates as The mouth of hell or something like that. It was basically where the sea has broken through some rocks as part of the coast line and when waves go through the hole it spills out. It was quite cool and i have done an absolutely appalling job of explaining it. There was also another section on the rocks that i ventured to which was some kind of a funnel where the water gets pushed up from below and it makes a big whooshing noise and spat water out like the funnel on a whale, it was very cool. After we had done that we had completed Mafra palace, cabo de rocha, hells mouth, the longest bridge in Europe, 3 park ups in 3 nights and drove 200 miles to Albufeira. It had been a very hectic few days so i was glad to find a site that we could get the awning up and stuff like that. I will tell you more about the awning shortly.

The drive was a relatively chilled one, Rory was not on his best form. That was our fault as we had woken him a couple of times to see the Rock and as we got out of the car to get something to eat. So i couldn’t complain, the drive took us about 3 and a half hours and to be fair we took a detour so we could go over the bridge which goes over the Sea of Straw. Don’t ask, we tried to google it but even google didn’t know. The bridge is over 10 miles long and it is some mean feat of engineering!! As we drove through Lisbon we got to see 2 football stadiums (Benfica and Sporting Lisbon) and even got to see some clouds. Something we had no done for over a week.

After a last minute campsite change we decided to stay at ‘Camping Albufeira’ and instantly felt touristy. There were people sitting in the sun with there tops off have a beer or 2. After the solace of last 30 odd days and feeling like the only British people in the world. It was nice to see. The Vanlife people will wince as this contradicts there ideology of what VanLife is supposed to be. I definitely believe there is space for all types of folk in Vanlife. Not just the living in the woods lot. Anyway, i digress, so we got to Camping Albufeira we paid something like 60 euro for 4 nights with electricity and an awning. The instructions were don’t park within 3 metres of anyone but park where you want. Jesus, what a nightmare, vans parked everywhere, we drove around about 3 times to find somewhere but managed to squeeze Tango in somewhere, but there was no chance i was getting the Outdoor Revolution Awning up , so just the sun canopy it is. It has actuaslly turned into a nice spot to be fair. So 4 days in Albufeira it is!!