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Campo Maior, my stay
Yesterday I arrived at the camping next to Campo Maior. Principal plan is to stay here some weeks, the price is right and there is only one "valley" 💪 inbetween camping and town. Also is it dutch owned so will attract dutchies with whom I can have a chat to practice my native language. The only occasions in which I could speak dutch this year were in march (for one hour maybe) and one month ago (for 1 day).
I will also have to make up my mind regarding the short term future. I am not familiar with the portugese climate but autumn will arrive soon. I emigrated with the motto to never have cold winters anymore, and I won't. But I knew from the moment I stopped my Africa tour and returned from Morocco 🖱️ I would be confronted with this wrong climatechange.
Portugal has a more savanah like landscape at an avarage height of some 300mts. But land raises up to 1000+ mts and the highest peak are the Serra da Estrela, Portugals 5-star mountain range. Cycling further north will bring me exactly there 🌡️.
Luckily there was a very nice spot available for me. That very old olivetree there had grown so big that it is no longer possible to install anything "normal" sized at this spot 😄. For bicyclists only ! And the whole rest of this strip offers no shade at all, so it is lickely I will not have neighbours 😀.
Trees are another wonder of Nature. Then How do Trees Grow 🖱️ if there skin is not flexible ❓.
And exactly that olivetree made it very comfortable there. Shade in the morning, shade in the afternoon and shade in the evening. Plus some protection for the colder morning breezes. It was clear from the very first moment that this was my place to be 🏆.
I cycled into town almost every day. There are some nice terrasses at the main square were I had a tostada plus coffee in the mornings. Or a beer in the afternoons. However I forgot to take any picture of it 🙃. But as usual the whole town-"hill" was inbetween the camping and the supermercados 💪. For sure Murphy creates those situations on purpose.
Besides that cycling in town is extremely uncomfortable since the roads are paved with the traditional small marble blocks. The shaking is so bad that it is impossible to judge the view in your mirror.
When you arrive at this camping you get an extensive brochure to lent in which a lot of information about the town and the area is listed 👌. That is a good system to help you plan your days according to your personal interest(s). Drawback is the brochure is completely explained to you at the reception which takes some 15 minutes 💤.
However, in practice there is just very little to do here. There are some interesting towns in the neighbourhood but they are hard to reach by bicycle (and along boring and crowdy roads only). Most churches are closed and so is the castle. Even the famous Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of the Bones) is closed. It is a small chapel that is fully covered with human skulls and bones but it is "Without visit", and without any further information 👎.
And I am not impressed by the Portugese food, recommended or not in that campingbrochure. Decent vegetables are rarely served and the ever served french fries are always crunchy as elastic. Ratatouille is ofcourse much more easy to produce but bites and tastes like (wet) cardboard ... This is common everywhere I was until now so it obviously is a national tradition. And this is not just my opinion and personal experience but also based on my 🔍 investigations at other people's dishes. My urgent advise to all chefs is : Serve More spruitjes 😋, erwtjes, wortelen, bloemkool en sperciebonen.
But I was lucky since there is a kebab restaurant in town, run by a turkish owner. His kebab and chickenwings are delicious, the french fries were really crunchy and they came with a decent portion of fresh salad. To have nice food you have to find a "foreigner" owned restaurant. And the plates at the bombeiros canteen were very good also. It seams to me that the more simple a restaurant is (run) the more ⭐'s it actually has.
I was in the mood for a relaxed bicycletrip to explore the emptiness.
The camping has prepared two cycling routes but they are to my opinion to much into the regular (e-bike) world.
I therefor created a more remote alternative in my laptop and loaded that track in my gps.
I even found two offroad tracks, but rather short.
And although this land has an extreme mono-culture (actually only grainfields and olivetrees) there is still a lot to discover.
If you have trained "the eye" to see your 🧠 brain to Notice.
So one day I made that bicycletrip and really was in the emptiness. A few farmes, located far from the road, and one hurd of curious cows was all there was. Along borders you always find the most remote and abandoned areas since borders have always blocked communications. Which also ment to not build roads. In this whole area are no roads entering Spain.
But I did find a HowTo Poop trainingfacility for dogs 🙃. Or is it actually for their owners ?
I turned south and cycled at the "last road" of Portugal.
Suddenly a Huge shadow flew over me, and one more, and three more. Vultures 👌, vultures 👌 and more vultures 👌. They were landing behind the very next tree, so I returned 50 meters and parked the OnTheRoad 4.0 🖱️.
These are griffon vultures, their wingspan is about 230cms to 270cms, they weigh up to 11 kgs and age up to 40 years.
This picture selfie of us is on an estimated 1:1 scale and shows you they are actually a lot more impressive then I am 👌.
But I win on weight 😀.
Birds achive that special volume-to-weight ratio by having hollow bones.
Luckily I remembered the "Inspector Clouseau course, part 1" (and also part 13 ...) I joined so long ago and started to sneak towards there location.
The next blog is a 📷 Special and all about these beautiful and impressive YesVultures.
The next two days I had to compensate for all that vulture excitement so I studied the olives 😉. Without highspeed burst cameramode that is.
And as usual there are also ants living here. Just get yourself a pen and a piece of paper now and write down the number : How many ants are there on our Planet ??? To help you with that answer I created a special Ants show 🖱️ in the Nature chapter.
I always love to watch their activities, they never stop working as long as there is daylight left. Which however implies their days are a bit shorter then mine 😉. Then, when they have returned underground I create a timelapse 🖱️ about them while they are resting. However, are they resting, and how, are they sleeping the way we do ??? How little do I know ...
To really see how specialized ants can be have a look at the silver ants in the Sahara dessert 🖱️ 💯. Yeah, Great Nature docus at the BBC, Make your World Bigger docus at Discovery Channel and indepth articles in the Volkskrant newspaper (dutch only). How "little" do you need ? Then the more you know the less you need !
One day ( a sunday ...) I found the Igreja Matriz church open and took a look. Another beautiful building, regardless whether or not you are religious.
Portugal is a very catholic country and you can even see that by the way the days of the week are named. The saturday is called sabado and sunday is called domingo. But the weekdays are not named but numbered. The monday is called segunda-feira, the tuesday is terca-feira, the wednesday is quarta-feira, the thursday is quinta-feira and the friday is sexta-feira.
You probably recognize the numbers segunda (second), terca (third), quarta (quarter, fourth), quinta (quinze, fifth) and sexta (sixth). Domingo is the most important day, so the monday is the second day. And so on.
Some 3 kms outside Campo Maior (interspersed by some vertical meters) the Delta coffee factory is located. It is the national coffee (I think) and next to the factory is a nice coffee museum. It shows you all aspects about coffeeplants, the history, the trading and the roasting. Quite some interactive displays make things understandable too. There also is a very nice collection of coffeegrinders, highpressure and lowpressure coffeemachines and beautiful coffeecups. At the bar in the entrance you can taste as much coffee as you want. This is one of the rare places in Portugal where they also present english texted information.
Unfortunately it is not possible to have a look in the real factory. That is a whole different piece of cake. My cake actually, having been an industrial automation engineer. Just contact me if you need any factory ⚙️ 🛠️ 😉.
Being quite far away from artificial lights I had a very nice nightsky. Only Badajoz in Spain was clearly poluting the sky at night. Campo Maior did not since there is a hill inbetween (and if the footballfield was not used). So I once more created some startrails 🖱️. Far, very far up there are the Voyagers 1 and 2 🖱️, travelling at about 15,000 kilometers Per Second . Since 1977 that is and Away from Earth that is.
But in the meantime the weather was clearly changing for the 🌡️ worse and it seemed that the real cold and wet autumn season was on it's way. And I didn't feel at home at the camping anymore after some weird discussions with the owner. Unfortunately there are an awfull lot of optimists and each one of them makes clear to me why I prefer realists. Opti-mists Always make the "mistake" to call realists negative. He also forbid me twice to drink a whisky since "that stinks" while he himself is smoking tabacco 😬.
I had already visited a small appartment complex even further outside town.
But it was located very remote in a quite hilly situation and actually only was a hotelroom.
It didn't even have a decent chair and table so I rejected that.
I also had the option to stay at someone's second house in a town at some 80kms north.
This was a
Another aspect would be that travelling into the remote north would mean to be more and more limited in whatever. Which is oké in the summertime but not in the cold seasons. It was obvious I had to make up my mind Now. Then luck was at my side once more.
Some guy mailed me that I could rent an appartment at the Atlantic coast from a friend of his. The price would be € 350 per month all included, even with a dishwasher, and several pictures were included. It looked quite oké and it took me 1 second to decide to make my winterstop over there, so I confirmed and he re-confirmed.
Then I cycled into town to buy longdistance bustickets for the 86kgs of me and the 17kgs OnTheRoad 4.0 plus the 50kgs of luggage 🖱️. It took me a whole 40 minutes intown up- and downhill to find the travelagency. I had the adress with me and asked 5 times how to get there. And 5 times I was sent in the opposite direction (again). I stopped for a coffee and a tostada at a cafe and that woman knew the agency was just around the corner. Behind some houses ... She made a call, I walked over there and the owner showed up some 10 minutes later.
The man was very scared to sell me the tickets since he was very unsure about all the luggage. He called to the headoffice of the buscompany four times about this. Finally he was "convinced", which means he now had enough witnesses to not be responsible for whatever. The two tickets I bought were actually still not covering the total weight but nobody would be able to check that. For some unknown reason I could only take the friday bus (where it travels every day of the week) and I think that was due to the bicycle, but anyway.
When I arrived in Campo Maior the bombeiros could not host me since they had no room available. But on my return from the busoffice I stopped at the 🚒 bombeiros once more and this time they offered to host me from this same moment on. That was really great so I cycled to a moneymachine, then to the camping, payed the bill (cash only), packed, shook hands and left, all within two hours. All stuff had dried up decently today so I did not even have to unpack anything anymore later on.
I stayed at the firefightersstation for three nights and had good breakfasts and prato del dias in their inhouse canteen. No elastic french fries but decent rice and beans. That friday at 15h00 I took my belongings downstairs, the bus arrived, I put everything in it's downunder and at 16h00 I was Off.
There actually is nothing to do or to see in Campo Maior. So I had (created) a really good time here. Now I would travel by bus for some 450kms to the Atlantic coast. First to the central busstation in Lisboa for a stopover and from there to ?
Read about that in the 2nd next blog ! Then the 1st next blog is that special about the Yesvultures 👌.