While the cat's away...

We left the festive Viana Do Costello and continued south to the port of Leixoes, just north of Porto. After a very miserable welcome by the port authorities, Tom finally decided to call his Uncle Peter to let him know we were in town (I don’t think he even knew we were in Portugal) and an hour later we were having drinks and dinner in a local fish restaurant. Having met Tom’s Uncle Peter things became a lot clearer about Tom and his certain mannerisms….

We stayed in Leixoes for a few days and having walked around the town, seen all the famous Portuguese architecture, beaches and parks, we went to the most exciting place on the journey so far… a huge shopping centre and Ikea!!

In actual fact we were very impressed with the shopping centre, managing to cater for all. There was a Zara for Tom, 2 large electrical shops for Mark and Ikea for me! The boys were delighted to find a huge food court, offering every type of food possible and offering a meal with a beer and coffee for only 5euros! This became our obvious meeting and refueling point, so we didn’t end up leaving until 11pm. It’s amazing how exciting these soul destroying places can be when you’ve been deprived for so long. Mark lost his Ikea virginity and we obviously overspent just because it was cheap. I refrained from the tea lights and a plant this time!

We left Leixoes with a new spice rack, grill pan and a carpet in the cabin, and continued to head south. We unfortunately only made it as far as Ria De Aveiro. Having heard and read many bad things about boats being destroyed whilst attempting to head up the tidal river due to the strong currents etc. we braced ourselves and headed in. We were immediately hit by huge breaking waves and powerful swells and managed only a little way up the river before realizing we weren’t moving, so Mark steered us into a canal tributary, dropped anchor and waited for the tide to change. Once the current was in our favour, we moved to an anchorage point further up the river for the night.

The next day we set off for more fun and games with tidal rivers and their currents to Figueiro da Foz. Thankfully the time of our arrival was more favorable to the current but we still nearly got into trouble due to an extension of the sea wall. As it is still in the progress of being built, it was not on our charts and did not have a single light on it. Thankfully as we approached we could see the shadow of a crane and therefore managed to avoid it. We spent the night in the port but set off again for Nazare whilst we still had a window of good weather.

Our navigational ‘bible’ of the Spanish and Portuguese ports raved about the small port of Nazaré. A cute town with sandy beaches, the ports’ protection from bad weather and a quaint marina run by a delightful English couple, you can imagine we were pretty excited to get there. 

We arrived at night and as a result the marina office was closed, to us not unusual.

A strange banging on the boat quickly awoke us the following morning for us to find busybody Michael Hadley. This curious chap of nervous disposition had got up early on his day off to tell us off for not reporting in the previous night.

Over the next few days we had numerous early morning visits from Michael informing us of our wrongdoings. As a result it became very tiresome and put us off having much good to say about Nazaré.

 A welcome suprise was bumping into Sara, Kristina, Lou and Daisy.

A brief break in the weather on Christmas Day took us to the rainy and unfortunately electricity-free marina of Peniche. With no mains electricity and therefore no heating we spent the remainder of the day in a bar playing chess, polishing off numerous bottles of red wine and eventually surrendering to cheese toasties for Christmas dinner.

On Boxing Day with heads still slightly sore we left for Cascais, the holiday destination to the nearby capital of Lisbon.

Cascais is a very attractive town just 10 km from the centre of Lisbon. With many shops, bars and restaurants it makes for one of the best ports we have visited so far. However as we walk through the town in search of food we are bombarded by touts in front of every restaurant trying to pull us in to eat at their traditional Portuguese English pub!? 

Lisbon itself is a very undulating pretty city, a maze of back streets and squares, bars restaurants and shops. There is something for everyone… if you can find your way around the place and not too confused by the curious tram routes. But very nice all the same, for a weekend trip it is well worth a visit.

 

The view across Lisbon

 

 

 Portuguese Christmas decorations

 

Tina has gone back to cold snowy England for New Year and Mark is out with his father who is visiting for a few days. I (Tom) am left alone on the boat with the worst hangover I have had for months after Mark and I being accosted by a group of Norwegians the previous night to have a few “quiet” drinks with them… two bottles of Tequila, two of Vodka, three of Sangria, a bottle of Ferna Branca and a few beers maybe and evidence of a few rounds of Singstar on their PS3. I’m not too sure what happened to me but Mark somehow was persuaded to get a taxi into Lisbon to find a club…. Oh dear! No matter where you go in the world there is always a group of Scandies wanting to get you hideously drunk.

  Tom has a way with the ladies..                                                                      

  and unfortunatly...


Tina is now back at the boat, leaving only with hand luggage she has returned with not one but two suitcases of goodies including cheddar, 126 cup-a-soups, a moon cup  and loads of newspapers and trashy magazines. For a moment I wasn’t sure if she was coming back or not!

We are now preparing the boat and doing some food shopping before leaving tomorrow for the Canary Islands. Bring on the warm sun and sea.