Living a Different Life in Portugal

Three years ago I had just left a job as a computer consultant and I was trying to think what I would do next. I had some savings so I did not need to find work straight away. Some friends were living on a catamaran and sailing around the South of France. They suggested I visit them. I had a Peugeot 405 estate that I had used for work, so I paid £550 for a second-hand caravan, hitched it to my car and set off from the UK . For the first time in my life I did not have a plan. I was just going to see what happened.

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What happened is that I travelled with my sailing friends for a while, following them from port to port by road, along the Mediterranean coast. I met many other sailing people and crewed on a boat from Gibraltar to the South East tip of Spain . In Gibraltar , I realised that I was going to want to do this kind of travelling a lot longer. I decided to sell my car and caravan and buy a motorhome. After many months, my friends set sail from Spain to Brazil . A few days after our goodbyes, I got a call to say that they had been blown off course, the boat had been damaged by the strong winds and they had taken shelter at a port in Portugal . They set sail again a few days later and this time they made it safely across.

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After some weeks in Portugal I met two English couples, who regularly spend a few months of the year abroad in their motorhomes. Like me, they free-camp most of the time, only visiting campsites when they need to do laundry and charge batteries. We talked at length about our lifestyles and motorhomes, and exchanged notes on good places to stay. “You should write a book about all this”, said my new friend Mike. It seemed like a good idea. So I began driving around Portugal and exploring places that might be of interest to motorhome users. I wrote it all up in the form of a motorhome travel guide.

It is funny how we get fixed ideas about a country before we even visit, based on what we hear at home. Eager to get some advanced take on our destination, we ask everyone for their opinions. That is what I did with Portugal before I visited. My Caravan Club international campsite guide told me that free camping was flat illegal in Portugal . Lonely Planet said that it was possible but only some places. Sailing friends I met in Spain said that Portugal was a bureaucratic nightmare in general. I prepared myself for a difficult time.

How wrong I was. Portugal is one of the easiest places I know to visit with a motorhome. It just takes a bit of redefining what we mean by “Easy place for motorhomes”. At a recent meeting of camping clubs of Portugal , speakers were bemoaning the comparison between the facilities in France (thousands of motorhome service points) and Portugal (one or two service points). So how can I say Portugal is easy for motorhomes? Well, it may not say “motorhome service point” but there are thousands of taps in Portugal (almost every village has a water source). Drinking water is about 30 pence for 5 litres from the supermarket. Quality fresh food is available cheaply from the many municipal markets and perhaps most important of all, there are loads of places to park for free.

There are municipal car parks, on the edge of historic towns, with views of castles and viaducts. There are a couple of municipal campsites with water and electricity, free for short term visitors. One is situated at a spa resort, where you can swim in mineral water at the height of summer. There are beachside car parks, where you throw a stone out of the window of your van and hit the water. There are spots with great crashing waves, that softly roar and gurgle all night long and send you right to sleep. There are some spots that are easy to park in and offer great access to tourist attractions, like the UNESCO world heritage site at Evora. My favourites though, are the spots next to rivers and lakes.

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When I tell Portuguese people about my guide project, they often ask what my favourite place is. I always answer that it is the countryside North of Evora and, in particular, Lake Divor . The lake has two large areas where a motorhome can park right next to the water. There are various birds of prey there, snakes that live half on land, half on water and herds of goats on nearby farmland. The goat bells in the distance make a soothing tinkle tinkle sound. Otherwise it is still. At some times of the year, at sundown, you hear a racket of frog croaking. Occasionally when I am there, I share the lake with picnickers who feel they have to play their music at full blast all day. This is a pain but one of the perks of being in a motorhome is getting to enjoy the place when all the others go home.

I have a boat on my motorhome (I still can't get anyone to call me “Captain James”). It cost me about £20 from a Portuguese hypermarket. It is an inflatable kayak (two person mind you). I intend to try it out on Lake Divor very soon.

There is another reason why the lake is special to me. It was there that I first met my travelling companion, Santen the dog. Santen was an abandoned dog. He survived by begging from visitors, who came to the lake to have a picnic. When I first saw him, he was in a terrible state. I now know that he was covered in ticks (some the size of cherries). I thought that they were tumours. I fed him on pate and frankfurters for the first couple of days. I decided to keep him and knew that my first job would be to take him to the vet. He was very nervous about getting into the motorhome and even more nervous when it started to move, so nervous that he lost the contents of his stomach. Santen was thoroughly checked out by the vet and is now in good health. The transformation in him over the months has been very pleasing to watch. He is still a bit nervous of my driving. In fact, I think I have improved my driving quite a bit as a result of his “feedback”.

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My vehicle for all these travels around Portugal is an Andrade integrated motorhome from 1986. First the Ford Transit chassis was made in England , then imported into Portugal . Next the motorhome was made and imported into Britain . The van was later taken to Gibraltar , where I bought it and drove it through Western Spain , to Portugal . I have had to do extensive work on the van to keep it running and comfortable to live in. To keep this in perspective, the cost of all this has been nothing compared to my London rent before leaving the UK . What's more, I have done much of the work myself, and been an assistant on the rest, so I learnt a bit about engines and bodywork in the process.

All this is quite a change from the kinds of things I did in my previous work. The whole experience has been unlike anything I did before and I think that has done me the world of good.

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