Roadtrip to Vilar

People are finding alternatives for their summer holiday in Covid-19 times. Our land is roasting under the August heat. The earth needs to settle, and needs some showers of rain to glue the dust back into place. No workers around, so we decide to have a little vacation ourselves on the nearby beaches, about 25 km away. Working from a distance continues from this village.

By the end of August we take the car from the Netherlands to Portugal. We need to transport some more stuff we cannot take in our hand luggage by plane. And we don’t want more expensive car rentals from Lisbon airport. Planning a road trip feels uneasy in this time of again increasing Corona infections. On the route we plan, more and more regions become ‘orange’ and even ‘red’! It gives us a lot of stress. We wanted a relaxing road trip full of interesting stops in ancient cities and hikes in beautiful nature. But it turns out to be a hasty ride of two days through France and Spain. An endless empty highway, rough plains and finally, the north east border of Portugal.

At the end of 1817 km we have arrived in Portugal , a little north of the city of Bragança. In the Parque natural de Montesinho we are allowed to go out and play holiday for a week.

It is so so quiet here, and it smell so good, and… you hear wolves howling in the distance!!! (Apparently nobody believes us at home when we tell this, but the local villagers are not surprised. And we found proof in the form of true Iberian wolf poop!).
The only other hikers we heard coming were speaking Dutch (of course, grmpf… ) but we hid and waited till they passed and we could not hear them anymore.

These days we roam along the Doura and the frontier with Spain. A rough area full of castles, forts and overwhelming nature.

Against the slopes along the river Douro, the grape vines are terraced up to gain maximum sun exposure.