Tomar, Pelinos and Lousa

Campsites in Portugal are few and not very good to put it mildly. There are plenty of places to stop though in a camper but these are usually basically a car park with facilities such as water and waste disposal - sometimes called an "aire". When we visited Tomar there was an old campsite virtually in the centre but is now used as an aire. it's like visiting an old ruin! The town council stop it from being totally overgrown and we can just pull up, park and stay for free.

The Portuguese love their tiles!

There was the castle to visit and various museums, including a matchbox museum with about 64000, from different countries!

An ornate seat at the castle

A lovely walk from Camping Pelinos, run by a Dutch family, where we stayed for a couple of nights.

From Camping Pelinos we stopped at Lousa where we had an amazing Menu del Dia (menu of the day), consisting of a starter, drink, main, desert and coffee all for 10 euros but it was also one of the best meals we have had. Lousa had a nice feel to it and was set in a great position surrounded by hills.

From the town we could hike to the castle in the hills and also the nearby church and river beach. The beach is dammed in the summer to create lovely cooling down pools.

More trees downed in recent storm

Swimming area when it is dammed

Church in the distance

Always good when a road is closed as
there is no one else around!

Nice bike!