Portugal

For a handful of days we ran south through Portugal roughly following the Douro river on the border with Spain. The river valley is a vast wine producing area where grapes are grown to make the famous Port wine. Almonds are cultivated here and every hill appears covered in olive trees. We were quite captivated by the pretty rolling hills and winding roads, which we enjoyed, despite the persistent rain. Here and there, we saw trees stripped of bark. Evergreen Cork Oaks. A protected species in Portugal harvested in-situ to make corks for wine bottles.

We crossed a new reservoir. So new that it was not on any of my maps. We also found some particularly good hairpin bends. One of the down sides of travelling in a truck is that getting it around corners is, on some occasions, problematical. It is usually possible but can require several shunts. Fortunately for this corner there was no traffic trying to push past and no horrendous steep drops to worry about.