1 year, 173 days since the start of the 1st lock down in March 2020
I felt better this morning than yesterday that was just as well as our stay in lovely Marvâo has come to an end and we had to pack up to move on to our next stage of our trip. All was going well until I accidentally managed to trip the electrics by unplugging my phone... we searched high and low for the fuses but luckily the owner arrived within literally a minute or so to reset it and all was well. It was really sad to go as I’m very fond of the little town and our house has been lovely as well with stunning views (even a couple of dying cockroaches could not change my opinion).
Colin drove out of the town and is a dab hand with the narrow street now as we headed for the nearby Roman ruins at Ammaia. It was very hot but very impressive ruins. I thought I’d better give the car a go at this point as I’ve managed to avoid driving so far. It really is big and it takes a while to get back into using manual gears and also driving on the opposite side of the road.
I drove to Estremoz - one of the three marble cities in the Alentejo district. We were looking for a petrol station as well which seem to be quite lacking on the minor roads so I can only think there are more on the toll roads which so far we’ve managed to avoid. I spotted a car park in the centre of the town with plenty of parking so we stopped for lunch. It was excellent and so nice to be eating outdoors - the three guys on the table next to us even offered us to share their wine but we thought we’d better not as driving!
Estremoz was supposed to be one of our stops in our original itinerary but I then changed our plans as the Pousada was quite expensive and we would have had to pay for breakfast and eat out each night. We walked to the castle which had been converted into the Pousada. It was in a good position but to be honest the town seemed pretty dead so I was glad our plans had changed.
I Googled for petrol stations and we drove out past three and stopped at one (no idea what ‘simples’ fuel is though). Onto Evora which was quite an easy drive until literally the final turn! I was following the SatNav and had printed out maps but unfortunately the turning chosen (which had looked fine online) was way too narrow to allow for the swing of the car into the road we were staying in. Things got worse as I tried to reverse back as the car has an automatic handbrake which simply wouldn’t hold the car and it was rolling dangerously forward toward a stone wall. I conceded defeat and Colin managed to crawl across to the drivers seat but then the car stopped altogether. As a crowd of local elderly ladies gathered to offer encouragement and other people wandered up to view our dilemma, one woman and her partner came to our rescue. He swiftly realised the car wasn’t working as I had the keys and had left the vehicle. The car started once I gave Colin the keys but it was still rolling forward so I managed to throw my ancient pencil towel over the bonnet in an attempt to prevent scratches from the wall now only a couple of inches away!! The man offered to reverse the car for us and so we very gratefully accepted his kind offer and he managed with not too much trouble at all to reverse it the entire length of the road and advised us to try the next turning which worked perfectly, plenty of swing. We waved to the old ladies who’s day we had clearly livened up and I managed to get all the luggage upstairs to our apartment not even stopping to look before racing down to navigate to a proper car park close by. What a day. The car park was easy to find, was huge with lots of parking so it was a huge relief to leave the car there and walk the five minutes back to our home for the next six nights.
We finally got a chance to look around after we had managed to get the door codes to work - I can see they are going to be an issue. The two bedroom apartment is very nice and best of all has a terrace with view across the rooftops and church bells of the city. Only problem is that I was convinced there was a washing machine and clearly there isn’t so we’ll need to find a laundrette in the next few days.
Later in the evening we wandered out for an explore and found a nice open air restaurant opposite a church for dinner (blackened pork with chips for me and we shared a traditional pudding with a preserved plum) - a good end to a rather stressful day.
