Walking in the woods

It is very tempting when you are in a campervan to spend the whole trip 'touring' rather than setting off on foot and just explore where you are. We were determined that while we were in Portugal that we would spend our time in and around the village, with the occasional foray by bus to the nearest big town, for Banks, groceries etc.

This area of Western Portugal, Leiria, is dotted with beautiful sandy beaches and very well managed forests. We spent Sunday walking through the forest before picking up the path down to the coast. It was lovely walking through the woods, taking the time to see the things that you miss when you are in the van, pine cones the size of house bricks, little picnic areas set back from the road and the cups hanging from the trees to gather the resin. It was while we were taking a well earned rest at one picnic area that we started to think of all the things that we hadn't spotted so far around the village; birds (believe it or not) snakes, gays (I kid you not, we hadn't seen one guy couple for at least 300 miles) or bears (we were getting silly by now)

As we set off back to the path Dave stopped suddenly and said 'My God there's a snake' Now I'm no expert but I didn't think that stopping to look at a snake was such a brilliant idea, but I must admit it did look good weaving it's way amongst the undergrowth. A little way along the path we both looked up in surprise to see, what looked like, a hawk hovering over the forest, 2 out of 4 in 10 minutes, spooky. Having a welcome cooling beer when we reached the beach, we were joined in the bar by a very nice gay couple (Dutch I think) so we nervously kept to the coast road on the way back, didn't want my last words on this earth to be 'shit five out of five'