Our truck had more than enough resources for us to survive without staying on a camp site but in Portugal wild camping was strongly discouraged. We were happy to pay €20+ per night for a site that offered security for the vehicle, enabling us to go and explore on our motor scooter. The price charged also included filling our 400 litre water tank with drinking water, electricity (usually), refuse collection and recycling, toilets and showers and, if you were lucky, even wifi.
We were always drawn towards the sea and we found a promising site by a lagoon on the Atlantic coast south of Lisbon but it turned out to be more like a run-down holiday camp in end of season mode – rows and rows of deserted caravans complete with dusty awnings all crammed together. Undeterred, we found a pleasant spot under the pine trees with a view of the distant lagoon – but there was no electricity and we were sternly forbidden to use our generator. We discovered that the toilets had no seats or loo paper and the “restaurant” served freezer to microwave pizzas on to tables covered in bird excrement.
We left the following morning and headed onwards towards Spain. We stopped for a few days at a site opposite a sandy beach on the Gulf of Cádiz surrounded by dunes and shaded by pine trees. There was a restaurant at the camp site but it was about to close as we checked in.
What the receptionist neglected to tell us was that there was a beach restaurant situated just 100 metres away behind the pine trees. We had an excellent lunch there the following day and later on we returned to the beach for a swim.
