The neighbours behaved themselves, and so a tranquil night was enjoyed by all. Easter national holidays begin today, for Spain at least, and being one of the first villages across the main border crossing at Vilar Formoso, there were a lot of Spanish day-trippers, mainly in cars, throughout the morning.

A phenomenon of Spanish motorhoming, quite unlike the majority of European and British van travellers, is that it’s really popular with young families. This is to be congratulated, but of course if you’re peace-loving motorhomers like us, this can really increase the risk of disturbance from their little darlings. We’ve also found that very often there doesn’t seem to be a speech volume control for the Spanish. They’re just a very exuberant race, which is great, but our preference is for peace and quiet where possible 😉.

Not far up the road was the fortified town of Almeida. This seems to be a popular place, and it certainly has interesting defensive walls, surrounding a little town. It was useful to us in that we had a walk, and there was a very handy motorhome aire, with the required facilities.

Next stop North was Castelo Rodrigo. We saw this impressive looking old hilltop town highlighted in the sunlight from many miles away, and decided that this definitely looked worth visiting. It has suitable and convenient motorhome parking, and if it were not for the several coaches delivering people up here from their Duoro River cruises, the place would have been virtually empty.

After topping up our water from a nearby fountain we headed to the bottom of the hill where there is a large parking area with hard standing, picnic benches, and great views of the attractive town as well as to the distant hills. Sophie suggested we overnight here at this Park4night, and so here we are.