After all the deliberating and worrying we drove down the track pretty easily. I drove the camper van as far as the village, while Brett drove the truck (from the campsite); then we parked the camper and drove to the quinta (in the truck), parked up the truck and walked back to the camper – it was hot. Brett drove while I walked in front of the camper, walking backwards, and guiding him through any tight spots (I rode between bottle necks, I’m not stupid). The bit between the building and the stone wall, by Luis’s olive grove was easy; we didn’t need to go through his land. The only tight spot was on the track nearest out land and we managed that without any mishaps.
We’re a bit worried that we can’t find continual shade for the camper; you’d think with all this land and 300 odd trees there would be the right combination, but the olive trees aren’t high enough and the cork oaks tend to be planted in isolation, so there’s shade for part of the day but as the sun moves it goes. We might have to buy a tarpaulin to put over the top of the van, because it gets very hot in there when the sun’s been on it for a while; we can afford to spend a bit of money on getting comfortable (we’re not going to buy anything that won’t be useful later) as we’re saving on campsite fees, 70€ a week and diesel, 80€ every ten days.
At the moment we still have a charged battery in the camper (the drive from the campsite charged it), so we were able to (sparingly) use the lights in the van once it got dark, around 10 p.m. We have 360° views of mountains, villages and olive groves; it’s easier to see habitation at night as the lights are on. And as there is hardly any light pollution the stars are very visible – there was no moon tonight.
The noise of the cicadas and crickets was incredible; there was no traffic noise at all.
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