27th June to 28th June – Vale Paraiso Campsite - Nazare, Portugal.

Hi everyone – Graham here, doing a sort of supplementary blog on our arrival in Portugal, as I thought it would take some of the writing load off Sue.

So, it was a 250-odd miles, five and a half hour journey (including stops for comfort and lunch) from Santiago de Compostela to Nazare in Portugal. Just for once we had an uneventful trip, if you don’t count getting lost as we got to within a few miles of the Vale Paraiso campsite. It wasn’t the sat-nav’s fault insofar as I’d programmed it to take us to the N242 (the only address we had) and once we got on to the road we happened to travel in the opposite direction to where we needed to go (S - I told him we were going the wrong way but he wouldn’t listen!). I think it’s called sod’s law or something similar. However, after a while (S - He finally listened!) it became obvious something was amiss so I turned around and after a short while we duly arrived.

The site is a lot larger than the one we left at As Cancelas in Santiago de Compostela and it feels much more open and spacious. The bloke on reception told us to pick whatever plot took our fancy and to let him know so he could give us the key to the electricity box. Those of you who know Sue well will be familiar with her habit, when visiting a restaurant, of trying out several tables before deciding on where to sit. Choosing a camping plot is no different. We had to drive around the site several times, getting out of the car occasionally for a more detailed inspection, before she eventually decided on the spot. We were all on our own opposite the swimming pool and near to the bar area, with the shower and toilet block a short walk away. On the face of it, a good choice you may think. Having gone through the usual rigmarole of unloading the car, positioning the caravan (sorry, I meant Freda) and doing all the things necessary to make life comfortable, the bar’s sound system was suddenly turned up to a level that would have competed with Concorde taking off - and the Saturday night disco got underway.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of music as much as the next person, and then some probably, but there’s a time and place for everything and as far as Sue and I were concerned it wasn’t just then or anytime soon after. However, it was a fait accompli really and so there was nothing to do but make the best of it and try to get some sleep. Sue’s solution was to stuff wads of cotton wool in her ears, which made her look quite cute and a bit like Tufty the Rabbit (S - It didn’t work and worse still I awoke in the night with an itchy ear and wondered what on earth was in there). But all to no avail. We had to bear it until midnight, after which the blare of the music was replaced for an hour or so by inebriated revellers deciding to regale the campers with their own impromptu and somewhat out of tune renditions of the latest Portuguese pop songs. But after a while a blissful peace gradually started to creep over the camp site and sleep beckoned. Or at least it did until about two o’clock, when we were rudely woken by torrential rain hammering on Freda’s roof. Geronimo and the whole Apache nation could have performed a war dance to its accompaniment. It must have been about three in the morning before the rain eased off enough to allow us to fall in to a reasonable facsimile of sleep.

But that’s camping for you. Never a dull moment!

The next morning at nine o’clock the music in the bar area was promptly switched back on at much the same level it had been during the previous night. The fact there was no-one there to listen to it other than us didn’t seem to bother the dim-witted prat who’d turned it on. Then, with a revelation that was almost biblical in its clarity, I realised why no-one else had elected to camp in this particular area. To paraphrase an old saying, “If the mountain won’t leave Muhammad, Muhammad must leave the mountain.”

The choices we had were either to move to another site altogether (Plan A) or choose another plot (Plan B). We’d passed a nearby campsite the previous day and decided to drive there and give it the once-over. It was quite nice and VERY quiet. Sue did her usual performance of minutely inspecting the whole site, noting the pros and cons of toilet and washing facilities, etc., before deciding it was TOO quiet!

Back to square one! We decided to adopt Plan B.

After driving back to Vale Paraiso and consulting with a nice girly in reception, I then had to endure a further round of inspections until Sue decided on a plot approximately a hundred yards away in the company of some other caravans and their owners who’d obviously had the experience, not to mention the good the sense, to park away from the bar area. That night (Sunday) we slept the sleep of the innocent as well as the exhausted.

And as it happens, the music had been turned down so low by then you could barely hear it within two feet of the bar. I’m wondering if Sue’s acidic remarks to the reception girly had anything to do with it.

Very probably!