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Our main objective today was Aveiro, known as Portugal’s Venice. Our route, mainly on the back roads, continued to take us through much of the area that suffered massive forest fires last year. The scale, even of the limited area we saw was extensive, and uncomfortably close to towns in places, where fresh coats of paint were common.

We had one or two diversions to see a couple of aires. There’s a brand new one in Guia, in a smart new open carpark, but it’s so fresh that I don’t think the cassette emptying section was fully commissioned due to there being an immovable circular filter over the top of the part where the cassette would empty into. Hopefully, that’ll soon be removed for future users.

This left us no choice but to visit the aire at Leiros, near to the aptly named Costa de Lavos. This had been our plan A, for the previous night. We were pleased to have topped up our fresh water and emptied our grey water at Guia, because at Leiros, the grey was blocked and overflowing, but people were still adding to it. The cassette emptying point was fine though, although precarious due to the pool of grey water around it.

We left this popular aire to the existing punters and headed to Aveiro, which involved some interesting routing by SatNav lady, which was enhanced by some diversions down some dubious rough tracks.

Being late in the day, we decided to find somewhere nearby to Aveiro, so that we could give the place a proper visit tomorrow. So Park4night led us to a pleasant stop overlooking the entrance to the harbour at Barra, where Sophie’s enjoying snapping the homecoming fishing boats with their entourages of seagulls. We have about half a dozen neighbours tonight, there’s loads of space, no overly intrusive street lighting, and no surf, so all looks good so far.

En route to Aveiro, we did a drive-by of Costa Nova, a town known for its primary-coloured stripey buildings. That done in 30 seconds we continued our drive to Aveiro, where, to their credit, they provide a large free carpark for motorhomes, just spitting distance from the old part of town. SatNav lady was not overly familiar with the access roads, and had decided that an 8 kilometre detour was necessary, so we ignored her and just followed the signs instead.

The town has canals and large colourful fishing boats that have a resemblance to gondolas. Any similarities to Venice stop there, but it is an interesting visit, particularly the historic centre. We also had an excellent meal sat outside in an attractive little street in the old part of town, and enjoyed excellent food, and very good service. Main course, large glass of red wine, plus coffee – €7.50 per head. Brilliant.

*** Just to mention that our blogs tend to be a couple of weeks behind reality, as we’re always in catch-up mode ***