Wednesday September 26, Sao Teotonio

A very impressive display at the roundabout

It has been a really big day, much long than we planned but more later. We decided to not use motorways today and take the lesser roads for our four-hour trip down the coast to Sines. We were keen to check out more of the coastal region further south. Decided to give Lisbon a miss, evidently a beautiful city but felt we can’t do everything. Thoroughly enjoyed our drive which took us through small towns and villages, areas you don’t see when on the motorways. Obviously, this is a more fertile area with lots of crops including apple and pear trees, figs, melons and maize, and even areas of rice on the lowlands by the river. The roads were pretty good and the traffic fine apart from the outskirts of Lisbon which was really busy. 

The IC1 route south of Lisbon took us through a very different area, very flat and soon realised that these were cork tree forests in amongst the pine trees, some were a lot younger and others were obviously very old, but you could see where the bark had been stripped off, just up to a certain height. While we drove, I used Google to find out about this industry.  Evidently a tree is 10 years old before a small amount of bark can be taken off, and then it is removed every 10 years. It is illegal to cut a cork tree down and even if it dies it cannot be removed. We came across yards with great stacks of cork bark. There are big concerns within the industry of the many countries now using screw top wine bottles, and that it could be the end of it . We just couldn’t get over the hundreds of hectares of country that the trees grow on, although I doubt that the land would be much use for anything else as it is very barren orange dirt.

I needed to wash sheets and towels and read that the Intermarche supermarket in Sines had the outdoor laundry machines as well as all facilities for motorhomes to dump and refill. It was after two when we arrived so I grabbed some bread from the supermarket, put the wash on and had a very late lunch while it was getting done. It is very warm with temperatures in the 30’s, had been hoping that they may have cooled a little but no luck. After getting our supplies and laundry all folded we set off to a nearby place I had seen beside a beach and a restaurant, but it wasn’t very good although the beach looked beautiful. There were some other places around Sines but read about a campervan parking area right on the beach about 45 minutes south that sounded great. Unfortunately, the two km drive off the main road was gravel, and it wasn’t long after shaking ourselves to bits on the corrugations that we turned around and back to the main road. There are many beaches down this coast that had parking places available but realised from the comments that as this is a national park area it is not actually allowed to camp. Many do and get away with it, but a number of comments said they had been visited by the police during the night and made to move on, or get fined. Decided that we didn’t want to risk it, so more investigation and another half hours’ drive to this very new camper park just off the highway on private property. We were very happy to finally park up, and pay the €10 for the night, it was in a very nice rural area with a wonderful breeze and we were welcomed by the owner. Not long and the chairs were out and we were having a cold one. It was such a balmy evening that we sat outside till quite late enjoying our dinner of barbecued salmon and salad.

Cork tree forest

This tree has been debarked several
years ago.

The Pine trees look like they have been manicured.