Churches, Castles and Cobblestones

Following our few days in Lalín, we travelled south into Portugal stopping at Lamego, for a picnic lunch and a short walk.

We had a lovely day for driving and enjoyed more beautiful scenery along the way. Our destination was a small village, in the district of Castelo Branco, called Vale de Prazeres where we had booked a self catering property perched on the hillside. As soon as we arrived we knew we were going to love it. Peaceful, private and with a traditional feel, it had a big view across the plain, a cosy log burner and plenty of space inside and out. The owners, Rogerio and Billy, were very friendly and we were grateful for the eggs from their chickens too!

We decided to explore the local town, Fundao, on our first day. Our tour of the town started at a café for coffee and a traditional Portuguese tart. We then followed a walking route, but didn’t get far before stopping at another cafe for lunch! With the town walk completed we headed off to stock up on essentials from the supermarket.

Castelo Branco was our choice for a chilly, overcast Saturday. The embroidery museum made an interesting stop, as did the Bishop’s Garden. We decided against the steep climb to see the castle ruins though!

The area we were staying in had some interesting villages, so we decided to explore a few. The first was Monsanto where nearly all the buildings used the big boulders as part of the construction of the walls or the roof. It was very steep. Summer valiantly pushed Racheal as far as a small restaurant where we had lunch, but then it got too steep to continue. We meandered our way back down, admiring the view.

From Monsanto we drove to Idanha-A-Velha where the footprint of the village still remains within the wall of the original castle. It was very quiet, but we did find a small café open and saw the old olive oil press. We explored outside the castle walls where Summer enjoyed stepping stones over the river. On our walk around the walls we also saw the one hundred year old oak tree which is slowly ‘eating’ the stones as it grows.

The last day of our Portugal portion, we visited another village Castelo Novo. Although it was very pretty, everything was closed because it was Monday apart from the castle ruins which were totally inaccessible for Racheal. We had a short walk round before returning to our little cottage to relax for the afternoon.

Too soon it was time to pack again, but not before lunch outside, a few games of boules and Summer had tried out her hammock. We really liked this area of Portugal and it’s a country I’d like to see more of.