Occasionally there's something like "no fracking" but most of it doesn't have much meaning for us.
We're crossing into the Parque Natural de Monteshino.
The shiny new road (IP5) is still being built but much easier than we'd expected. With very little traffic.
The bridge on the far side of the valley is about 20 minutes away.
Vineyards.
Beside grape vines.
We somehow expected Portugal to be a bit more run down than Spain but so far the opposite.
So we stopped beside this bridge for the night. Our altitude is below 200 m. The Rio Coa
Almost tropical, at 14°C. And our clock goes back an hour. First time later than GMT (UTC or call it what you like).
And the streets became narrower.
We waited. Which earned us a wave.
No sheep dog. And "mum" left "dad" to it once the sheep were across the road.
The unmistakably distinctive shape of gum trees.
Complete with sunshine!
Not enough to completely feed the solar though.
Portugal has "fontes".
Continuous running water into troughs at the roadside.
We add a bit of chlorine and filter it just in case!
The pipe comes out of the wall to the right of the steps. Under the road to the outlet.
Its also a church.
We then took a short detour, followed a brown sign to "S. Pedro".
A small church on top of a hill.
A cheery wave and smile as we pulled over to let each other pass.
We've also had drivers overtaking us give us a wave.
Its small things that make a big difference.
The walled town and castle are on the edge of the hill.
The walls predate Portuguese times. The angular castellations are Moorish.
Our knowledge of the history of Portugal is abysmal.
First restored in 1172. And a few times after that.
We decided not to wait for 2 hours.
A lot of the wall has been replaced with houses.
We think its headed roughly in the right direction.
We are headed to Chas D'Egua.
We spotted an "Aires" - a sign with the camping car icon.
Somewhere to empty our loo and grey water.
The ute driver kindly reversed for us.
Found a flat spot for the night. And admired the colours of the oak tree.
The sunshine didn't last long. It seems the mornings are misty and the afternoons sunny.
Misinterpreted the gps and found ourselves in a maze of increasingly narrower streets. Our excuse is that the sometimes a bit slow to catch up and loses its sense of direction when confined and moving slowly..
The scratches on the house walls, and chips out of balconies should have been a clue. We folded in the mirrors and had at least 150mm each side.
We were rescued by a passing woman who found another, French speaking, woman. Between them they guided us back to the main road. Smiles all round. Portuguese people are friendly.
Mostly drums with one horn, with a simple three note melody..
Not sure where they were headed.
There are also Massey Ferguson tractors.
And these small 4wd vehicles that seem to be propelled by lawn mower motors.
We continue our journey roughly southwards.
Set up the edges then fill in the middle.
Must have taken a lot of labour as there were many km like this.
This is the site of "A Arte Rupestre De Chas D'Egua".
Spiral rock art and wheel marks on an old road.
Alas. The small museum was closed.
We were also a bit confused as the lat/long coordinates we had were about a km out.
As the tourist info at the next town explained - "no-one can see them".
A bit touristy - a seller of things carved from slate.
The village looks largely rebuilt.
Narrow, winding, roads.
Even this two lane road is a bit slow. A case of "don't look down".
Being right had drive and high up its quite unnerving looking out the side to a steep slope of several hundred meters to the valley floor.
And never too sure what's round the corner.
We camped not too much further along having driven about 120 km in 6 hours. Tiring. But fascinating country.
We camped within 300m of a couple of turbines.
We slept well and it was quiet inside Tardis.
Outside we could hear the turbines. A sort of continuous rumbling and a whooshing sound as the blades rotated. Not intrusive, but we wouldn't want to live next to one.
But very little evidence of logging.
The gps seems to know about all the small roads which look like logging roads to us.
Next to the Rio Zezere.
Just occasionally our path crosses a valley so we wind our way down then crawl back up. Most times 3rd gear but sometimes 2nd. With so many corners and narrow roads our progress is "slow".
We are traveling north to south and most of the rivers are east to west.
A bit unusual for us to be high up for so long.
To the west of us are larger towns on the valley floor. At last sun in the morning as well as evening. Warmer as we move south.
Sometimes, instead of us going looking the action comes to us.
After all our thoughts on the lack of logging this truck arrived about lunch time and left its load of timber near us.
About 4:30 the first truck plus tractor with trailer arrived to load the artic. Not sure what occ health would say but it worked.
A ute with a couple of people that we'd seen during the day turned up.
Everyone knocked off and the big truck drove off into the sunset.
5 people, a very big truck, a big truck, a tractor and trailer, and a ute. Where big is bigger than our truck.
Most of the timber was gum trees with some pine.
We decided not to follow the truck to find out where its going and what the wood is used for.