Surprisingly, for a midweek night, there were a few rowdies just further round the lake. They did go on very late and into the extended early hours, beyond 3am. Whilst Sophie couldn’t sleep through this, I seemed to manage. Just strange not to have the perfect silence, that we’re accustomed to.

We spent most of the day generally catching up with blogging, backing-up photos, baking etc and come 3ish it was time to hit the road. I have to admit to not having a great sense of direction for today’s onward drive. It was sufficiently late in the day and so I needed to plan in some potential overnight stops, but Park4Night was just not hitting the mark for me.

I put a couple of local dolmens into the route, on the off-chance they might have great, out of the way rural, peaceful parking, but that came to nothing. We were really enjoying the late afternoon drive across fascinating terrain though, so we just kept on driving.

At one point the SatNav tried to slip us onto one of Portugal’s dreaded electronic toll roads, which was a surprise because I’ve had a word with the SatNav before about this and it definitely knows not to do that sort of thing. So we just went straight on instead and found a great country road that wound along a valley.

Whilst we were still enjoying the picturesque drive in the still warm early evening sun, we were now open minded to stopping should we find the right candidate that would suit. We’ve both got to have that gut feel and after a couple of “not sures”, we came to a viewing area with picnic benches, a wisteria-covered pergola, and a lovely view across tree-lined hills and also down to the river below. This also seems to be a very quiet road.

All being well, we will add this place to Park4Night in the morning, thereby providing another possible stop for future travellers in these parts.