Leaving Portugal more than once.

In fact I am a little hazy about just how many times we actually left the country, but I'll get to that presently.

We did extricate ourselves from Coimbra aire's small bay and soon were tootling along the xxx towards Viseu. The road follows the valley of the Mondego which is wide, wooded, and in the Spring sunshine rather lovely. Soon you are climbing, out of an arable landscape into a pastoral one. Deciduous trees give way to eucalyptus, the sky grows bigger and the valley sides steeper. Central Portugal is beautiful, green and not developed to the same extent as similar countryside in the more industrialised north.

Deciduous trees in the valleys.

Evergreen as you climb

We arrived at Viseu which looked a prosperous place judging by the outskirts. There was nowhere obvious to park Maisy, so we decided to press on, after calling into an Intermarché to stock-up. The road climbed and climbed crossing a series of ravines on tall viaducts as we went. Past the Barange de Frangile we stopped off at a service area to buy a pass for the electronic toll. The cashier advised he did not sell them but the next area did. Very confusing, back on the road climbing higher, over the gorges of the upper Dao of vino fame.

Parked-up with the trucks, failing to buy a motorway pass

The next area did sell tokens for the motorway toll. But only those where you had to phone a call centre. Our attempts to buy them interrupted what appeared to be a protracted row between the formidable lady cashier, and two truck drivers, one Hungarian, the other Portuguese. They too were mightily confused about the system. In the end the cashier informed us that we could pay our dues at the border. So off we went.

Towards the Spanish border the motorway reaches 3000ft+

Beyond the mountain town of Guarda we reached a high. desolate plateau, wobbled across a huge viaduct as Maisy was buffeted by cross winds strong enough to blow the roadside windsock horizontal; then we reached the border. There were no toll booths to be seen. We pulled off into a lorry park. An old rusty fence separated the now defunct custom posts between Spain and Portugal. The pedestrian gate was half hanging off its hinges so I hopped over into Spain and walked back towards Portugal to the nearby building which sported a large I for information sign. There was no one in. Back through the fence and back down the road to a Repsol garage we had spotted. The cashier advised Gill that the booths were actually in the last service area in Portugal, 14km back down the motorway. About turn.

As you head towards the service area foreign vehicles are directed through an automatic gate. You stick a bank card in the slot, a camera snaps your registration number, and that's it. From that, any time you pass a paypoint your card is automatically debited. Aside from the fact this seems as secure as a sieve, the whole system presupposes that foreign cars will enter the country on a toll motorway. It does not acknowledge that some people will enter on a trunk road and leave the country by motorway. Goodness knows if it will cope with the fact that some of our motorway use happened prior to registration. I hope I don't get a red letter some months hence. The entire system is utterly bonkers.

So how many times today did we cross the Portuguese/Spanish border..... Gill and Maisy 4, Pete 6, if you count my short jaunt back and forward through the rusty fence. Quite frankly, it's a relief to be back in Spain heading along a free motorway towards Cuidad Rodrigo.