29/07/18 – 30/07/18 – Guimarães, Norte Region
This was a strange one, having been on a high form Porto, we arrived in Guimarães late on Sunday afternoon at around 18:00. There were 2 overnight parking places on our apps so we headed to the first one only to find that the road at the bottom leading to it was closed. We circled around a few times to see if we could find another way in but sadly not. The second camping spot directed us the middle of a roundabout so I had the bright idea of trying the first stop again but by avoiding the closed road on the sat nav. It was a 5 km detour, but we thought what they heck, lets do it.
It took us up some narrow steep hills and tried to direct us through some ridiculous streets – I was learning to trust my gut by now, and if I had a bad feeling about a turn-off, we avoided it. We eventually got to a wide road leading back down the hill. The streets quickly became narrow and VERY steep. It was a good job we were heading downwards as the hill were around a 1 in 4 gradient and we would have certainly been screwed had we been headed in the opposite direction.
Having negotiated what must have been the steepest hill I’ve ever driven down in any vehicle, we ended up coming out where we initially started. A complete stressful waste of time that was! We tried the first stop for a final time and noticed there was a man on the barrier. As we approached, we waited and he pointed and opened it for us. It turns out there was a fair on and the road was closed for pedestrians. So as we drove up, we got some very strange looks from families enjoying their Sunday evenings entertainment. After all that, when we got there was no space for us as all parking was taken by the fairground operators. It seemed like we just couldn’t catch a break today.
I did manage to walk 200m up the hill with an almost overflowing toilet cassette and managed to get some water for our tanks, so all was not entirely in vein.
Rather that missing the place entirely and moving on (Something I was initially keen to do) Lorraine talked some sense in to me and we found a relatively quiet residential road near to a park, (GPS 41.4475971,-8.2859808,1091) got ourselves settled and took Marley out for a walk. We would try the town in the morning.
We were both still feeling somewhat short with each other the next day, perhaps from a lack of sleep (Note to self not to sleep on a road in the Moho again as we were rocked a couple of times by passing vehicles – I’m sure it’s a pretty dangerous thing to do).
So our visit around the town didn’t last particularly long. Just enough to get a general feeling for the town. We walked past the church near to where we had parked and in to the historic centre. The town felt more French than Portuguese. Maybe it was because of the somewhat rustic granite buildings or the fancy boutique shops. There were still hints of Portugal in there though with many of the buildings still covered in colourful hand painted tiles. After about and hour or so of walking, we decided we had seen enough and made our way back to the Moho.
Sometimes life on the road can get on top of you and I think that our experience of Guimaraes was perhaps somewhat marred by our mood. On our way back to the van we did manage to crack a smile at the local ‘Farturas’ wagon. We are still childish at heart 😉
