Motorhomers on Tour : Hill top towns, castles and a controversial dam!

Leaving Alcoutim, we took a short journey of 24 miles (38.4kms), along another very quiet and scenic road, that criss-crossed rivers to Mértola.

Mértola is a beautiful cobbled town, set high on a rocky spur above the Guadiana river and guarded over by the ruins of a Moorish castle. The Aire is down by the side of the river (N37.63805 W7.66204), where people come down to canoe or to get a boat trip up the river. There aren’t any facilities here, apart from a small water tap that you have to push down on and water gushes out 100 miles an hour but its free, so once again thank you Portugal!

Looking down to the Aire - Sonny (the motorhome) is nestled between a fellow Brit and a Belgique

We walked up to the castle in the old walled town and the old church, which was once a mosque.

View from the castle walls

We then had a walk into the town and enjoyed a lovely meal at Alengarve restaurant in the new town. You can always tell a place is going to be good when the locals are queueing up outside to get in. They were all waiting for large tables, as Sunday is a family time for the Portuguese. Luckily as we were only 2 people we jumped right to the front of the queue! Portuguese food is quite basic but reasonable. Starter was bread, pate and olives, I then had a lovely grilled tuna, potatoes and salad and Mel had lamb in some sort of sauce, followed by cheesecake. I always forget to take photos of the food, until it is all eaten! We washed it down with a litre of red wine and 2 glasses of port, all for €37.

Pretty houses near to the restaurant

Back at the Aire, we got talking to a Brit couple, Robert and Maxine, who have taken a year out of work so they could travel around in their motorhome. They told us they were knew to motorhoming and asked if we could give them any tips. We sat chatting for quite a few hours and it was nice to pass on any information and share tips that would help them on their travels. Although we have been motorhomers for 6 years now, we are always learning and still like to pick up tips from other motorhomers as well.

From Mértola we headed to Serpa, a small market town with a walled old centre, a castle and very narrow whitewashed streets. Unfortunately, the castle was closed, being a Monday but to be honest we weren't that bothered, as we had been in quite a few over the last few days. It was nice just to wander around the very narrow streets.

At the edge of the town, Mel spotted some lovely old cars, they must have been in town for a rally of some sort we think. The streets within the walls are so narrow, I definitely would not want to be driving around them!

Outside of the castle walls you get a good view of the 11^th century aqueduct that still has it original antique chain-pump at on end.

Leaving Serpa we headed to Moura, about 30kms north. Mel had read that there was an Intermarché supermarket there with fresh water and chemical toilet facilities, all for free you just get the key from the supermarket. So we stopped off to attend to Sonny’s needs and to do a bit of shopping, although we didn't need much as we had stocked up at the Lidl in Serpa. Motorhomers can stop overnight here, up to 48 hours but not sure why any motorhomer would want to stop overnight in a supermarket car park when there are some lovely free Aires to stop on in the countryside.

Moura - another town, another castle!

Then it was on to our destination stopover, an Aire at Estrela (N38.13937 W7.46021), where we parked up at the Barragem de Alqueva (Alqueva Dam). There are no facilities, however there is a tap in the town behind the bar that you can use.

It covers 250 square kilometres (of which 69 are in Spain) and is Europe’s largest reservoir created from the waters of the Rio Guadiana.

There was a lot of controversy around the making of the reservoir as over a million oak and cork trees were destroyed, the habitats of golden eagles and Iberian Lynx were threatened, 200 prehistoric sights were submerged and the village of Luz also submerged and relocated to a replica village above the waterline.

Estrela is a sleepy little village, with one restaurant and a bar/café and very little else.

There is also a large jetty that you can walk out on, but we never saw any boats.

And a church with a resident stork.

They have the rare black storks in this region and although we saw a couple flying over the reservoir they were too quick for us to get a picture. We have spent two peaceful and relaxing days/nights here watching the wildlife and enjoying our first barbecue. Last night we were joined by a couple of Brits and their dog in a 30 year old Hymer. They bought it 3 years ago and it had 50,000 miles on the clock, they told us that over the 3 years they have clocked up a further 25,000 miles. These Hymer motorhomes seem to go for years if you look after them.