28th June Cascais - 4th week

Nightsong
Sat 27 Jun 2009 12:19
Hi blog
Another busy week working our way down the
Portuguese coast from the Spanish Baiona to Cascais near Lisbon ( very smart and
expensive resort). Tomorrow we go on to another and cheaper marina nearer
Lisbon, having cruised over 900 nm from Plymouth.
![]() The weather has been good (tho' winds have been
light and largely contrary & it has not been so hot as last
week) and the 250 mile long Portuguese coast with the honourable exception
of Viana do Castello not very interesting - featureless coast of sand dunes and
only one island Ilha Berlenga. This however is a jewel, transported from the
Hebrides to warmer climes, very rugged and unlike the sandy gems of islands off
the 4 southern Spanish Rias, Ria de Musos, Ria de Arosa, Ria de Pontevedra and
Ria de Vigo. At Berlenga, we anchored in 40ft of water and I set the anchor
alarm for drifting only 150ft (which we didn't till 7am and then only 'cos the
boat swang). Despite no wind we rolled all night - in fact I thought it was
worse than at St Kilda. Anyway photo attached shows some
The other highlight of the week was to hire a car
from Povoa de Varzim and go up into the hills to see the magnificent town of
Guimaraes (the former capital of Portugal - a 16/17th century gem) and the
wonderful church at Braga, a picture of which is attached. Povoa incidentally
was the cheapest marina I have ever used - it cost Euros15 for 2 nights about
1/4th of the normal and 1/8th of Cascais
![]() A 2 week break to pay the bills and then back to
take the boat to the Algarve firstly with the Nicholsons and the with Thomas and
4 friends for a couple of weeks. No major problems with anything but we must
have the wind thing fixed before the ARC
AJB
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