27th Sept. Great Dams!

Apparently, all the motorways in Portugal are now privately operated, and so have tolls. The route that we want to take leaves us no option but to take them. We were expecting to be charged at toll points, but it turned out that they operated a plate number recognition system, and because we hadn't registered our debit card when we entered the country, as we hadn't intended using them, we haven't paid! We are half expecting to get a bill in the post! On the plus side, we started making good progress, but we encountered a strange phenomena - something we hadn't seen since we left England six weeks previously - heavy rain! Even thunder and lightening! The dogs loved the rain, they had a whole day without panting! I even turned the heating on, but I was still wearing shorts and T-shirt!
We had been using trusty Tomasina to find us a camp-site for the past couple of days, but today she let us down - or should I say Portugal let us down. The nearest site involved a 50 mile detour!
 Dams have been our saving grace today. We had lunch at a parking spot next to one, and then found an old road that must have pre-dated another dam several hours later. It was just a track, but we found the old road signs still on it.

We took the dogs for a walk, and on our way back to the van we came across a flock of sheep in the lane. We kept the dogs on leads, for their own protection rather than the sheep's. They all had massive horns, and they were sheep with serious attitude! The shepherd or shepherdess (not sure which) stared at us, and then stared at the van even more. We smiled and said hello but she didn't respond, I don't think she knew quite what to make of us! The feeling was mutual! We are in a beautiful spot, so much nicer than a camp site. We had fresh dorado (bream), Nick's favourite, bought from a Intermarche in the morning. Used our grill in the van for the first time. The fish was washed down with 2.45euro bottle of Portuguese wine that tasted even better than the Spanish wine we had been drinking - though the Spanish olives are definitely better than the Poruguese variety. This is the life!