Friday 26th
The morning passed smoothly enough. We packed up our stuff into the car once more and, after an early lunch of pizza from the campsite shop set off once again onto Portugal's motorways through Porto back south towards Tomar. Deciding one again to completely ignore Sat Nav Kate's advice we headed along a new motorway to the campsite and by Kate's own admission chopped fifteen minutes off our journey time. We arrived, following her GPS coords, without problem and discovered a quaint site run by a Scots lady and her Dutch partner in the middle of apparently nowhere. After erecting the tent for the final time we ate and then headed for the bar where we met with an Anglo-Welsh couple spending their summer touring Europe and swapped stories into well after the children's bedtime. We decided that tomorrow would be a simple visit to Tomar with visits to the local caves and dinosaur remains to follow on Sunday.
Saturday 27th
Tomar is a very lovely town to visit. There's a river with a weir, The Convent of Christ to spend ages exploring, some fantastic restaurants and even (currently) a beer festival. The Convent, which as it happens also turned out to be the ancient headquarters of the Knights Templar and incorporated an entire monastery took all morning to look around, and we still missed bits. A tour guide would have been helpful as the place is huge and has such an important history. But, we have kids instead, so we just found our own pace exploring all the nooks, crannies and interesting looking spiral staircases.
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| The river and weir in Tomar. |
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| The Church of St John. |
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| Statue of Gualdim Pais, founder of Tomar. |
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| View of the Convent of the Order of Christ. |
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| The old entrance to the Chapel at the Convent. |
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| The famous Chapel house Window at the Convent. |
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| A Lego recreation of the Window featured at an exhibition in Tomar. |
Sunday 28th
We started out early following the directions of our hosts to find the "Dinosaur Footprints" and after that follow the road into Mira de Aire to the caves there. Well, we didn't find the caves and soon found ourselves in Mira de Aire. Perhaps we would find the dinosaurs on the way back? So we bought some tickets for the cave sand waited patiently for our guided tour to start. The guide led us into a room where we watched a short video about the caves and how they were formed, when they were discovered and about the geology of the area, all in Portuguese of course, but I got the general idea from the pictures alone. Then we entered the caves and the guide led us first down the steps into an open cave. It was spectacular! After stopping to talk and get everyone to line up for photographs (to be sold to us later!) she proceeded to lead us from cave to cave in what turned out to be a very extensive set of caves leading ever downwards. Unfortunately, none of my photographs from the caves turned out very well, so I'll just link a
Google Image Search here for you, to give you some idea of what it was like. Over lunch we talked about heading for the Dinosaur Footprints and decided that as we didn't really know exactly where they were, that instead we'd head to Batalha and look around the stunning Cathedral there. And it did not disappoint! We were very lucky to pass by the Chapel of the Unknown Soldier just in time to witness the changing of the guard. With their commanding officer barking out orders, the guards performed what seemed to be a highly ritualistic "stamping" march along the cloister's corridors! Across the other side of the Cathedral was a room containing the tombs of some of Portugal's royal family including that of King John I and his Queen,
Philippa of Lancaster, whose marriage in 1387 secured the
Portuguese - English Alliance, which is the oldest alliance in the world that is still in force! All in all, a very impressive day out!
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| The Cathedral at Batalha. |
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| Rather impressive statue of a man on horseback. |
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| The front entrance to the Cathedral. |
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| The changing of the guard in the Chapel of the Unknown Soldier. |
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| The Lamp, standing over the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. |
Monday 29th
A quick stop off at the market in Ferreira do Zêzere to buy some bread, cheese and fruit for our picnic lunch before heading to the "floating pools" at Castanheira for a swim in the river. Then a drive down the other side of the river (lake) to take on a quick view of the dam at Castelo do Bode before returning to camp for a much earned glass of beer.
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| The dam at Castelo do Bode. |
Tuesday 30th
Just time for a pony ride for my youngest followed by a quick dip in the pool to cool off. Tent packed back up into its surprisingly small bag, and we're of back home again.
A fabulous trip through three campsites. Yes, I would do it again. Probably next summer!
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