11/11/17 – 12/11/17
Every now and again there comes a time when we need a break. Although constant travelling can seem like a stream of new and exciting experiences, just like anything else it has it’s own routine; a cycle of getting up, making breakfast, packing a lunch, going out and doing stuff, returning to the van, moving on, deciding what to do on the following day, cleaning (us and the van), making and eating dinner, blogging. It’s not a difficult life and is very rewarding and fun but sometimes it’s nice and necessary to step out of the routine for a while.
We realised we’d got to that point when we crossed the border into Portugal. We found a campsite at Caminha and suddenly found we didn’t have the motivation to do anything but sit by the van and chill. Of course we did end up doing some bits and pieces, but we didn’t leave the campsite for 48 hours. The chairs went outside and we sat in the sun, we did laundry, we called Aaron to wish him happy birthday, facetimed friends, downloaded TV and had a little holiday from our travels. Paul felt so lazy that he couldn’t even be bothered to go and buy tobacco, so 48 hours without smoking, we’ll see how long that lasts but fingers crossed.
What else did we do in our down-time? We made mint sauce. Paul is using our whizzy gadget, a manual food processor, to chop some mint we gathered which was added to a hot mixture of vinegar and sugar before decanting into a sterilised jar. The mint sauce seems to pass inspection.