Background

We decided to attempt a drive down into Portugal this year, for a little off-road exploring. After having travelled substantial mileage last year, we decided to take a week’s more holiday and have a more relaxed approach to the trip. Spending 2 nights in places so that we could enjoy the places we stopped at.

Introducing Tusky – The Defender

This would also be our first year with Tusky and our first trip with her. This year we bought a fridge and Dan hooked it up to a leisure battery he installed. He also installed power points across the Landy for charging so if we required entertainment for Cassie, we could plug the netbook in and let her watch a movie. We bought some boxes for clothes and cooking equipment, making packing the Landy very neat. Dan also put some cargo netting off the roof lining where we stored all our bedding, sheets and towels. Keeping it all out of the way and clean.

Meeting a new friend

Dan had met a fellow Land Rover Owner on one of the forums who lived in Portugal. He very kindly agreed to meet up with us in Valence, Portugal and take us off-roading for 3 days in the Alto Douro region of Portugal. This was an amazing experience and was brilliant to spend a few days with someone local and learn about the region.

Did we mention that the area is World Heritage listed?

We started our holiday by meeting up with Dan’s sister again on the West Coast of France on the island of Ile de Re’. As we would be celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary, we made the decision to drive the whole day from Calais down to Ile de Re’ so that we could maximise our time there and have 3 nights down there instead of just 2 nights. Unfortunately, Dan’s sister and her partner experienced car trouble with their Freelander and ended up being a day late. We only managed to see them for a meagre couple of hours on our last night.

From Ile de Re’ we moved to Spain as we had a deadline date for meeting up with Barros in Portugal. After driving for a while, we decided to stop in a small town called Mitriku just outside San Sebastian. The campsite was lovely, up on a hill overlooking the small harbour down below. We were only stopping for 1 night this time.

We wanted to get Santiago de Compostela into our trip and headed for there next. Stopping for some lunch in a breathtaking sight in front of a lighthouse on some sea cliffs. In Santiago, we camped in what we think might have been the only campsite for the city. It was very busy and the site we were given was not very accessible to the Landy. We had to ask for a different site. To say the word cramped would have been a little understated. Still, it had a swimming pool and that was all that mattered to Cassie. We explored the city, walking into the centre to view all the churches etc. It was lovely and as to be expected, full of Pilgrims!

We were making good progress and had experienced no issues with Tusky so far. The only issue we were experiencing was the decision to take Cassie’s bike…and her having not used it yet. The space it took up was immense and irritating. We were now heading for Portugal and our meet with Barros in Valencia. We arrived in good time, actually experiencing a slight confusion at one moment because the local time changed and we couldn’t figure out if we were early or late. We eventually found Barros and headed off into the Portuguese hills for our 3-day adventure.

The first night we camped in a National Park. Unfortunately, we cannot remember the name of the campsite. As our tent is rather on the large side, it was hard to find a site big enough for us here to set our tent up comfortably as the sites were tiered and you were not allowed to take your car to the site. This also meant us lugging all our gear back and forth. However, saying this it was a lovely, peaceful sight.

The 2nd day of off-roading saw us driving through the tiered vineyards of the Alto Douro Region. The scenery was amazing. We stopped for lunch in the mountains. When stopping to check the views under a wind turbine, we noticed a storm heading our way. Barros advised that we’d better get down the mountain to save us from having an uncomfortable journey down in the driving rain, or worse being stuck. We headed to Vila Real where we stayed in a B&B. Barros went home as he lived close, to see if he could tempt his wife to join us for the last day. Unfortunately, when he returned in the morning, he did so solo.

We continued to drive through Northern Portugal with Barros eventually taking us to Aramante to camp. We stayed here for 2 nights and just had a rest and catch up. The town was small and lovely on the river. The campsite had that all-important swimming pool for Cassie. We waved goodbye to Barros and thanked him for his time. We had a blast! Aramante was a typical small cathedral town. We enjoyed some tasty treats at the café and had a look at the cathedral.

Offroad Route

The track of the journey is below, you will notice that the route includes where we stayed and the roads to and from the area we explored.

Continuing on

We made the decision to stay in Portugal for another 2 nights, but to try and head back towards the Portugal/Spain border and stay along the coast around there. To say that the circus was in town was a little understated, the circus was actually in town and taking up most campsites. After finding a campsite we liked, we registered, were given a site, drove to our site and upon seeing that it was right next to the toilets and shoehorned into a small space, we decided to leave. Well, we actually ended up driving back into Spain, which we did not expect. We made the decision to stay in Tui, just inside the border and in a hotel as it was getting late, too late to set up camp. A hotel stay was a lovely change and once again it had that all-important swimming pool for Cassie. We had a quick shower and disappeared off to search for a beer and food.

Last year we travelled through the Picos de Europa and through the town of Potes, Spain. It had looked so picturesque that I had said to Dan it would be nice to go back there. We made the decision to head for Potes. Along the way, we needed to stop as the distance was too much to do in one day and as we were ahead of schedule now we had time to enjoy the scenery and towns. We stayed in a small town on the Camino trail to Santiago de Compostela called San Fiz. Here we did our good deed and helped a young German girl on the Camino who had hurt her leg to the nearest German hostel. We also discovered here that Cassie was a snake charmer, much to my alarm when she picked up a small snake she found next to the river by the campsite!

On the journey up through to Potes, we passed some extraordinary scenery, climbing up into the Picos de Europa. The camp in Potes that we stayed in was very smart and full of English people, much to our surprise. The campsite also had a lovely pool, where we engaged in Cassie’s love of swimming and lavished her with a full day by the pool. The only downside was a bizarre rule where you had to swim with a cap on. These could be purchased for 2 Euros from the camp shop. We tried the local paella but found it to be lacking. Potes were very expensive.

From Potes, we headed back to France. Wendy wanted to go back to the beach, so we looked for somewhere to stay along the coast up from Bordeaux. We happened upon Mimizan and stayed here. It was a lovely little coastal town with great pizza. However, the campsite we stayed at was quite a distance from the town and the beach which meant we had to drive. It was also a very sandy campsite with a pool that didn’t allow men to wear swimming shorts, Dan couldn’t swim as he refused to wear a Speedo.

We moved to Chinon after a 2-night stay at Mimizan. Chinon was a lovely Châteaux town on the Vienne River. It was a very beautiful, medieval town. We visited the Châteaux, which was busy being restored and wandered through the old town. Unfortunately, everything in the old town was very much closed. On the way to Chinon, we stopped at a Decathlon store and bought Cassie a Quecha 2-man pop-up tent. We had started to feel that our tent was just too big for this kind of trip. We bought the Quecha with the view to buying another 2 man tent later on back in the UK. We would then go away with the 2 small tents and an awning for the Landy, making it much more compact and easier to travel. Setting up time was hugely reduced.

The plan was to have one more stop after Chinon and then find a B&B just outside Calais so that we had no rush to the ferry on the last day. We ended up staying very close to Calais in Les Andelys. It is a very quiet town that lies on the River Seine. The campsite was quite far from the town and again we had to drive in to get to the shops. There was a swimming pool at the campsite, this pleased Cassie as I’m sure you can guess.

We packed up and moved on to our last stop. We were making good time and arrived in a coastal town just outside Calais to try and find a B&B. Unfortunately, so did the rest of the UK-bound travellers. We decided to stop for lunch and then head onto the port to see if we could get an early ferry back. We managed to get an early ferry, it did cost us though. We were now homeward-bound after a wonderful 3 weeks of exploring.

Back to reality…

If you are interested in the route we took, you can download a GPS track file here.