Dr Mark's Tardis

Evora ,Sunday 31 March Well Portugal actually, but it certainly rained: All day, except for a 20 minute break in the weather that tricked us into walking into Evora. Since Evora was the same 20 minutes walk from the campsite, that left us sightseeing in the rain and we returned soaked through, as a well -deserved consolation we bought a bottle of wine at the supermarket on the way. It’s not easy taking pictures in the rain, we would have taken more if had had a waterproof camera! Technical note: The eberspacher heater worked, and the new installation turned the shower into a functional drying room. My trouser were dry and back on in 30 mins. Underpants took a bit longer. The custom here is Easter bread, baked with an egg inside. The dough was light and sweet and flavoured with aniseed. More water on us than in the fountain Easter, egg Roman temple, I-spy

Estremoz, Saturday 30 March  The rough guide advised us to go to the Saturday market “early” 8am so we went out; yes even before breakfast and walked the half a kilometre to the Rossi (market square); only to find that many stalls were still setting up. So early was not 8am, not like it would be for a fish market. All was not wasted though: we bought some cakes for breakfast and saw that it was fine to move the Tardis to the main square. There we enjoyed breakfast while watching the market set up properly and the Rossi car park fill up haphazardly. 10am we joined the market a second time, bought some sheep’s cheese and honey. 11am after returning to the Tardis we set out once more, past the busy market and up to the old castle and up the restored castle tower, now part of a posh hotel. Marvellous views, see the photos further down. 2pm returned to the market, which was still busy, though with signs of packing up. Karen bought me some sausage and tomatoes (clear...

Salamanca Thursday 28 March 2013 Holy Thursday, Salamanca, religious procession. 

Fromista, Wednesday 27 March 2013 Fromista delighted us, I’ll explain later why our expectations were minimal. It had two rather interesting churches, complicated in style, with a rich history – one was now a renovation project. The calm Spanish village, had a small shop which sold mushrooms so big they could have been in a museum. And for the first time we saw storks – nesting on a water tower and the church towers. After that we saw them everywhere, nesting on every man-made tower and pylon in the whole of Spain and Portugal. What do they eat? and how so many are sustained? is puzzling. What did they nest on before we made so many towers for them? Or are they a very, very recent product of evolution? We first found Fromista by accident on our way down to Morocco. We had turned off the main road looking for a quiet side road and layby for the night. Once we had turned off, we saw signs to an “aire” of sort - a simple but adequate, parking space with a water tap and a ...

Ferry crossing, 27 March 2013 Following on from the success of “I-spy Morocco”, we did an I-spy for Portugal (this includes Spain because it’s really an abbreviation for our “Portugal” holiday).  We learnt an earlier lesson and missed out rare animals which we are as likely to see as a Polecat in Napton. Sunshine:   one hour/ all day / too hot / sunburnt Almond Blossom. Waves:  Bigger than me/ Bigger than the Tardis Religious Procession. A vehicle that is stuck: any other one/ ours/ one we help A motorhome like ours. Standing Stones.  Dinosaur footprints. A deserted beach. Drink water from a mountain spring. A barrel of Port in Porto. Christopher Columbus. Roman ruins that are: big/ interesting / breath-taking. Sea creatures dolphins/ whales / mermaids / others. To see how we did read the outcomes at the end: I-Spy results

I just got some pulley wheels from the scrap yard. Astonishingly hard to find new. That's the last piece I need (until the next one) to get the on board compressor working.

Walls stripped down. A bigger job than I had anticipated!! Frame rebuilt using sapele wood, loose polystyrene replaced by celotex fixed to the panels (that should be a vapour seal. Ply arrived Vohringer. Cutting the first panel tomorrow.