Having said goodbye to Belem the night before, we left the campsite and drove back down to Belem. We waved goodbye to the tower again, turned right and headed along the coast road through Cascais and out to Cabo Raso, where we turned north again and found Camping Guincho set on the hill above the beach. We could have walked down to the beach, but the pleasure of not walking anywhere further than the laundrette, was overwhelming. There’s always amanhã.
After a late breakfast and another visit to the laundrette, we found enough energy to stroll the boardwalk over the impressive sand dunes, which are now a nature reserve. Sticking to our normal behaviour we plodded along the full length of the beach and back, paddling our toes in the chilly water as we went. A longer route back across the dunes had us gasping for a cold drink at the nature reserve café and then we completed the uphill climb back to Eileen. Two hours spread out on sun-loungers with a couple of dips in the swimming pool felt like a really lazy afternoon. So after dinner we walked back down to the sand dune café to watch the sun slowly set in to ……. a sea mist that was hanging over the horizon. Ah well, it was still a lovely pink, so it will be another nice day on Friday and we still haven’t seen a drop of rain the whole time we have been in Portugal.
We got up early on St Anthony’s Day and drove the long way to Sintra via Colares. The mist hung low over the coastal towns, but it had lifted by the time we reached a car park near the Sintra railway station. Somehow our noses pointed us in the right direction for the information centre who provided us with details of all the palaces around town.
Just as we arrived at the Quinta da Regaleira the clock struck ten and the cashier opened the gate. This is a fabulous place, built as a summer residence for a very rich Brazilian at the turn of the last century. The ‘farmhouse’ itself is rather lovely, if a little over the top with all its towers, turrets and gargoyles. The grounds were what we really came to see. It is steeply terraced and filled with beautiful trees, pathways, waterfalls, a chapel, follies, caves and grottoes. There are stepping stones across one of the ponds and they lead you into a dark tunnel which has various routes and exit points.
We ended up at the base of a huge empty well with archways and stairs spiralling back up to the top. There’s also a labyrinth that leads underground to an aquarium and back up to the surface above it. Armed with our torches we felt like a couple of kids playing hide and seek and we really did enjoy the place. By the time we got back to the town centre we were already tired.
The restaurant we chose for lunch was precariously wedged on a street that was composed only of steep steps. It was a little strange sitting outside eating, whilst puffing, red-faced tourists grabbed the rail next to your arm to haul themselves up the hill. We had agreed that we would take some form of transport up to the next palace, built on the highest peak of the Serra de Sintra, but we stupidly started walking uphill to the point where it seemed silly to go back down and find a bus; so we kept walking. It took us 45 minutes to get to the entrance gate to the Parque da Pena and I was now a puffed, red-faced tourist. We stopped for a cold drink at the café and then paid €3 for the two-minute ride up to the Palácio da Pena.
We wandered around inside the crazy muddle of a castle. It has a little bit of everything, Moorish, Gothic, Manueline, Renaissance and Baroque styles, all built in to its 19th C walls around the remains of a 16thC monastery. The views from the terraces and battlements are wonderful and I’m sure we could, almost, see our campsite back on the coast.
We had intended to wander around the grounds for a while, but time was getting on and the trek up the mountain had done me in, so we paid another €3.50 to a very smiley young man to take us on a tour around the grounds in an overgrown golf-buggy that seated twelve people. He stopped at various spots and explained details and the history about each one. A water wheel, five lakes, one with two black Australian swans in residence, a chapel, fancy duck houses, an Islamic pavilion, two fern valleys, one for each queen. I guess if the first queen had one, the second queen would want one too. Mind you the second queen, from Switzerland, managed to get a whole chalet built for her in Tyrolean style, at the far end of the estate. It didn’t look overly Tyrolean to us with its fake wood and cork decoration, but I can see where they were aiming…..?
Two more buses got us back to the railway station and we drove Eileen via a much shorter, quicker route back to Guincho. The hot shower revived me a bit, but I slept like a log and didn’t wake up until 8am. It would have been nice to see more of the palaces in Sintra, but as Rodney keeps saying, “how many more can we do?” We’ve only got five weeks of travelling and we’re a long way from England.
