Christmas and New Year 2014 in the Alentejo

After the return from Lisbon's sights a rather debilitating cold took over for Christmas with sleepless nights and stuffy days but the excellent weather encouraged me to get outdoors during daylight and enjoy the local walks and a couple of bike rides. The clear blue skies and warm sunshine lifting the spirits whilst wifi at Campimg Asseiceira enabled me to keep in touch with friends and family. Yolande and Colleen invited me over for a Christmas meal with all the trimmings of crackers and decorations accompanying a prawn starter and locally shot venison main course. I had gone over in the van so could enjoy the wine and stayed the night.
A pleasant trip across to Lisbon saw Sarah safely collected from her Bristol flight and after a shop in Portalegre we were set up on the site, carefully placed to catch the early morning sun as overnight temperatures were dropping to -3 or so.
New Year's Eve saw us lunching at the Barragem de Povo before repeating the excellent walk from Cedillo along the Tejo with the ferry to Morocco and the Customs paperwork booked and completed online that evening and the necessary documents printed off - we sail on Monday morning so have plenty of time to meander down to Tarifa in southern Spain.

New Year's saw the return of Gary who also had a bad cold so we let him retire to bed and took Mya on a 3 hour walk through local tracks and lanes and acrosss the Roman steps.
That afternoon we popped up to the small chapel overlooking Castello de Vide before heading to Marvao for a memorable sunset followed by wine and beer in the cosy O Castello bar where the resident parrot was squawking away merrily.
The Pau de Canella restaurant in San Antonio served four of us a delicious meal giving me a chance to thank Yolande and Colleen for such happy memories since early October and we set off today for southern Spain leaving you to enjoy some piccies here.
We will send our location daily so have a look here and hope to get a SIM for an old dongle in Morocco to give us internet access so in the meantime 

  A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL