We arrived in Portugal !

 

Today we arrived in Portugal !

Not before some confusion though.

It's my first time to mainland Portugal and I hadn't expected it to be in the same time zone as the UK.

I had assumed it would be one hour ahead like Spain.

The first sign of confusion was when the sat nav estimated our arrival at our destination 7 minutes from departure rather than one hour 7 minutes.

That had me scratching my head, then Sue said the time on her phone had changed, sure enough mine had too.

Apparently it's all down to Spains dictator Franco who wanted to align with Nazi Germany.

"In 1940, Francisco Franco changed the time zone by changing 16 March 1940 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time to 17 March 1940 00:00 Central European Time during World War II. This was made permanent in 1942 in order to be in line with German-occupied Europe"

So Portugal stayed on GMT.

I wonder where that left France who are GMT +1

Every days a school day as they say.

Unfortunately I missed photographing the border sign on the bridge over the river Minho.

Concentrating on driving of course, ha ha.

Our first call was on Viana do Castelo, a small town at the head of the river Limia estuary.

It has an imposing castle on a hill high above the town but climbing that was not on the agenda. 

Instead we had a wander through the town.

It's a nice enough town and ample free parking is provided on the port quay.

Viana do Castelo castle on the hill

Viana do Castelo, Christams decorations going up ?

Our overnight stop is in Esposende a little further down the coast.

It's a nice enough parkup with a breakwater for the fisherman and a beach for everyone else.

Thers's a great cycle track around the lagoon so I rode around the bay after tea and watched the sunset over the sea.

Tomorrow we'll head further south past Porto and closer to Nazire.

Parking in Porto seems difficult, most motorhomers seem to recommend getting a train or bus in. So we'll give that a miss I think.