For the average holidaymaker, Portugal’s southern coast ( known as the Algarve ) probably gets more attention than its Atlantic coast, but the Atlantic side has its appeal as well. Last week we’d explored the northern city of Porto – this week would take us directly south, through myriad smaller beach towns and quaint inland villages, the world famous surf town of Nazaré, historic Óbidos, Peniche, and of course, the capital of Portugal, Lisbon itself. Fortunately Portugal is small and these places are all close together making for an easy travel week.
I’d seen countless Youtube clips and read many articles about Nazaré’s gigantic waves so we were especially keen to get there. Lots of other nice little communities on the road south, of course, but we ( and, it seemed many other van travellers ) were beelining it for Portugal’s most famous surf town. Researching it in advance it appeared we may even get to see some “big ones” ( the big wave surf season runs October to March, peaking from November to February ) – alas, our arrival was probably a bit early and while the surf was active, there were definitely no big ones during our visit. Check out the YouTube clip below if you’ve not heard of Nazare – the waves there just boggle the mind !
South of Nazare, and just north of Lisbon, both Obidos and Peniche warranted a visit. The former, a historic walled city and very well-preserved, was certainly interesting if perhaps a tad over-touristed, the situation during our visit not helped by the fact that three large cruise ships had pulled into Lisbon early that day and the day trip to Obidos was obviously one of the popular excursions. It really felt like most of the people from those cruise ships must’ve been in this tiny town !
Just a bit further south lay Peniche, also a walled city and one with a significant maritime history given is strategic location on a promontory just north of Lisbon. While the town itself was a little bit uninspiring, both a surfing competition and a parasailing competition were being held as we passed through and provided an afternoon of easy entertainment.
The plan after Peniche was initially to head straight to Lisbon, but on a whim we decided that, since we were almost passing right by, we would drop in and take a peek around the town of Sintra, famous for some well restored palaces and castles among other things. To be honest, we were starting to tire of castles and palaces ( one sees so many in Europe ! ) so it was not a terrible disappointment that the insane traffic and super narrow access roads to Sintra made visiting with the van practically impossible, a problem, quite likely compounded by those very same cruise ships in nearby Lisbon 🙂. It actually reminded us very much of the situation in Segovia, (back in Spain) a small town with much the same history and similarly inaccessible streets ! Not to worry, this gave a little more time to explore beautiful Lisbon and we used to full advantage. A run of consistent great weather held and our days exploring Lisbon could not have been better.
During Lisbon’s golden age ( the 16th century) the city was one of the richest in the world and many legacies of that period of discovery and global trade domination are still visible in the city today. It was fascinating to explore it all – with Lisbon being much bigger, the city was easily able to absorb thousands more tourists from yet more cruise ships ( another 3 big ones in port during our stay ). It seems Portugal is a hot destination in the cruise circuit.
South of Lisbon lay yet more picturesque villages, beachside towns and some nice rural campsites which we took full advantage of – Portugal has so far been a dream country for travelling in a campervan ( and, no surprise – there are many people travelling in campervans here ). The Portuguese do a great job providing campers with lots of park-up options, with an abundance of full service traditional campgrounds, basic camper parks, municipally designated overnight safe parking areas and just a multitude of wild camping spots along the coast. We’ve been very thankful for them all !
Till next week….
