Southwards to Setubal and beyond.

The coast of Portugal is a tad under 1800 kms long. Over five visits we have covered a surprising amount of it. One part as yet unvisited is the stretch south of Lisbon towards Setubal and beyond to Sines. That's where we are headed to now.

Any getaway before 11am. counts as early these days. One of the joys of worklessness is the total loss of a sense of urgency. That being said after a slow breakfast, a visit to the nearby supermarket, then a bit of a sweep up, we still were off our pitch by 10.45am. 

Our plan was to stop for lunch a few kilometres south at Fonte da Telha. Little more than a collection of beach shack restaurants serving the surfers who gather here, the place is also the entry point to a nature reserve consisting of a stretch of protected maritime forest and some old cliffs with dinosaur footprints.

I had plans to find them, but there were lots of rocks and no sign of the famous fossils. We gave up and sat on the beach instead and watched the surfers - always entertaining. When they do manage to catch a wave it's a thing of beauty, I can only imagine how exhilarating it must feel. They have beautiful bodies too, both the men and women, slender but muscular like dancers, which is a sense they are, partnering the ocean.

Surfer couples, mostly young, others less so, wandered up the beach towards lunch. The men carried boards under their arm, women balanced them on their heads. It would seem the there is some kind of random algorithm which ensures that the average width of a surf board fits neatly under the arm of a man of average height, but is inconvenient for a woman. I am still trying to figure out if this is an effect of physics, biology or patriarchy.

Our plan was to spend the night in the car park at Cabo Espichel, about 20 kilometres to the south. Four hundred foot cliffs drop straight into the Atlantic. A huge, half abandoned pilgrimage church dominates one hill, a tall, stately lighthouse another. The 'cabo' itself is about 500 metres beyond down a dirt track. A few ruined buildings of mysterious purpose mark the spot.

I know nowhere that better encapsulates Rebecca Solnit's notion of the 'Faraway Nearby'. Cabo Espichel feels disconnected and remote, yet looking north across the grey green pine forest of Costa Caparica, the western suburbs of Lisbon are clearly visible, a white ribbon merging into a bank cloud that hung above the invisible estuary of the Tejo.

It feels remote partly because of the landscape itself, a treeless heath of prickly grey shrubs punctuated by rocky ravines which fall away dizzily to the sea far below. For all the sense of space created by the ocean's horizon, the sound of the sea seems curiously muted. An effect of the cliff's height I suppose. The silence accentuates a sense of dislocation, similarly the bricked-up arcades of the pilgrimage church adds to the 'end of the world' atmosphere'.

Still, it's a popular spot for sunset watchers and star-gazers, at least half a dozen motorhomes were parked up for the night. Men with impressive telephoto lenses clambered out intent on stalking the cloudscape. Every single one became sidetracked by a nearby fig tree which was in full fruit. Have I discovered a hitherto un-noted connection between a taste for figs and a liking for the picturesque? Perhaps both reveal a smug satisfaction with easy pickings, a taste for low hanging fruit. Not to be outdone despite my want of a telephoto, I hopped out the van too, I caught the latter stages of the sunset but all the ripe figs had been picked.

That any of us are here is remarkable. The road to the place has been reduced to a potholed puddly track due to an on-going road improvement scheme which appears to have no prospect of completion anytime soon.

A glorious cloudscape marked the edge of a front sweeping in from the west. Soon it began to rain. Sharp squally showers continued overnight but by dawn clear skies had returned. We were in no hurry to get going, but our leisurely morning was destined to be interrupted. A white van drew alongside. There was a sharp rapping on the passenger side door, followed by a couple of thumps on the habitation door. I opened it to be confronted by a squat, somewhat fearsome looking woman who was shouting at me me in high speed Portuguese. At first I assumed she was a very assertive baker keen to sell me some morning rolls or croissants. I explained politely that I had no idea what she was saying and closed the door. 

Three more thumps, I reopened the door. Now the woman was bouncing up and down in fury, waving her arm towards the rear of the van and her high speed incomprehensible harangue was punctuated by a word I did understand - 'Policia, Policia!' I craned my head gingerly out of the door and looked towards where she was pointing. I noted an ancient Land Rover, painted in regulation dull green with cross-eyed headlights and a split windscreen. It was pulling a white chuck wagon. Now I understood, we had inadvertently parked in the spot destined for pop-up retail and it was a Saturday morning. I tried my best beaming smile, gave a thumbs-up with one hand and gestured 'five' with the other, hoping this might placate the irate would-be churros seller. It didn't, as I removed the blinds from the windscreen she was standing at the front of the our van, still shouting at us and waving wildly. If this was an attempt to chivvy us up, it was doomed to failure, I folded a towel with studied deliberation, moved the SLR from dashboard to camera bag with the care usually only lavished on a Ming vase. A puerile response? Maybe, but aggressive, bullying behaviour should always be resisted. We moved about 50 metres across the car park, by now other pop-up retail trailers were rolling up, destined to sell decorative conchs or 'Arabic' textiles made in Bangladesh.

Our plan for today was to visit Sesimbra a nearby small resort on the south side the Espichel peninsula. Aside from the Algarve, Portugal has few south facing coasts, around Sesimbra is one of them. Protected by the Sierra da Arrábida to the north, the area has a unique micro-climate, famous for rare Mediterranean flora. The town itself is beautifully situated on a broad bay overlooked by an ancient fortress on the hill. It is reminiscent of the eastern end of the Riviera near the Estoril, but less developed, more local. It even has a fully functional municipal food market just behind the esplanade, not something you would find these days on the Cote d'Azur.

We stopped for a coffee at a place selling Segofreddo. The waitress was Portuguese but the hubbub from inside was distinctly Italian. No wonder it was a great expresso, we had stumbled upon a place selling Italian coffee run by Italians, and it had a sea view which was just as blue and sparkly as the if we were sitting in Liguria or by Bay of Naples.

By early afternoon we were back at the van having a late lunch. It is possible to overnight here but it is a public car park without any facilities overlooked by apartments. At weekends it was likely to be noisy into the small hours. We decided to move on. A dozen or so miles down the cost we found a 'paid for Aire' at Outão, a small village on the outskirts of Setubal. The place claimed to be an 'eco- camp' which can mean anything from having questionable sanitary arrangements to a trickle of electricity which only works properly when the sun shines, which to be fair is more often than not hereabouts.

We had a choice of routes, a challenging pretty one, or a straightforward boring one. After our experience with the €400 wing-mirror glitch we chose the latter option. A pity as the narrow corniche road which wends its way along the seaward side of Sierra da Arrábida passes some famously beautiful beaches and stunning coastal scenery.

In truth, even doubling back on the main road to Setubal through Palmela was not entirely uninteresting. This area is the heartland of Setubal's famous vineyards. It is a classic bucolic land of plenty nestled behind the Sierra da Arrábida, prosperous, fertile and productive.

We needed to shop. A sign pointed the way to 'Pingu Doce' Portugal's up-market supermarket chain, a bit like Mercadona in Spain a place where you get interesting regional products as well as everyday provisions. This particular store was running a pre-holiday week wine sale - the upcoming 'semana' in question must be All 'Saints' early next month we surmised. What was on offer were some excellent Setubal wines, normally selling for 10 euros or more, reduced by 50% - 60%. 'Are there any we should look our for especially?' Gill asked Sarah in Lisbon via WhatsApp. 'Comporta' was the reply. After a hunt we found a bottle, and bought half a dozen others that also looked also interesting.We are looking forward to sharing the bottle of Comporta with Sarah and Rob when we go camping with them next week.

From our next overnight stop we should be able to see the the long sand spit that forms the southern shore of the Rio Sado estuary, running from Comporta in the south to Troia at the far end just across the water from Setubal. It's Portugal's Spurn Head. Of course by any objective measure it is not possible to taste how a landscape looks in a glass of wine, its 'terroir' certainly - the soil, rocks and climate, but not its appearance. So we know it is fanciful, but somehow the most memorable wines seem to come from geographically intriguing places. Is Comporta destined to be one of them?

One downside of taking the main road to Setubal was that in order to get to Outão we needed to drive through the middle of the town. From what we saw our Lonely Planet guides' assessment that the place was 'not visually appealing' seemed spot on; however, we need ports and industry, not everywhere can or should be lovely to look at.

Ecocamp Outão is situated in a protected area of pine forest to the west of Setubal, outside the built-up area but close enough to be run by the municipality. Though it has a few camping bungalows to rent it mainly caters for motorhomes and campervan's. It's cheap and cheerful, the most popular pitches are those directly overlooking the estuary. Down river you get a great view of the big sand spit. It would look wild and untamed but for the clutch of high-rise hotels in Troia. Tourist boats ply up and down. The Sado estuary is home to a resident pod of bottlenose dolphins. Dolphin watching is a big thing.

The view downstream is more industrial, towards the cranes of Setubal's docks, the twin red striped chimneys of a power station and other industrial plant, judging by the occasional eggy whiff, quite possibly petrochemicals of some description.

Really to badge the place as an eco-camp is somewhat aspirational. Some of the attempts to assert 'green credentials' verged on the ridiculous. For example the sanitary blocks had been constructed in rough concrete, hardly the most carbon friendly or renewable material. To maintain a patina of ecological concern the concrete was daubed in shades of green and strips of wood nailed to the walls near the entrances to give a nod towards natural, renewable materials. Even more tokenistic - the 'green' power plant. The site's electricity sub-station had been painted too, this time with giant images of hummingbirds, quite amusing really, considering what sub-stations do - they hum.

I could go on, the grinning dolphin on the side of the reception, all of it reinforcing the point - the eco-camp was merely a marketing ploy, a brand pitched at people who believe that by watching 'Blue Planet' they are saving the world - all a bit demoralising really.

It's been an odd few days, a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. As we wait to see when we can go camping with Sarah and Rob we have ground to a halt. Perhaps travellers are like sharks, they only thrive moving forwards, if they stop they suffocate.