Time for a break....: Day 64 & Day 65 – 12/06/13 & 13/06/13

Peniche

We were going to have a look at the main beach here on the first day, have a nose about and then go fishing, culminating in a huge fish barbecue back at the tent. All these things did happen, the only departure from the plan is that we had to buy the fish as I didn’t catch anything. I am blaming the equipment at the moment, I needed a better float (I was just using the cork from my old setup (poacher's hand line)) and the tide condition wasn't too perfect. No biggie as the fishing spot was right outside the camp-site anyway. The beach itself is huge, maybe 5km long, on the unsheltered side of the island. We took a bit of sun whilst watching some surfers getting the first lesson. The waves looked perfect for the first attempts, and the bottom was all sand. Wed planned to bodyboard forst tomorrow, with wetsuits. It is still a bit cold in the sea.

We bought a big Dourada, and a couple of of other fish a bit like Herring (whats the name?). With some roasted peppers, and salty boiled baby potatoes it was still very nice, even if the cheapo barbeque needed more fettling than expected. Next time I will catch the fish though! Johanna is secretly starting to doubt that I have any fishing skills (I think ;o).

Second day we went down into the main town and had a look at the big Fortress. Also good fishing spots here. We then did a half-day bodyboarding (for 35 Euros with board, wetsuit and flippers). It was good fun but it got progressively windier until the waves were more of a choppy mess and it was difficult to take anything. Still fun. We made a deal with the guy in the shop for a good price for surfing lesson tomorrow at 10.45am also. He was worried about the wind (it was gusting at over 40kph) but said there would be a quiet spell in the morning we could still go out.

We tried fishing again still with no luck even though one guy who arrived as we left caught a couple of Whiting. We cycled over to the other side of the 'island' to have a look at the Supertubo wave, which happily was working. The surf shop guy was bodyboarding over there. It looked like a lot of fun, and not too serious. Apparently this place is totally mobbed in the high season. Being on the south side of the 'island' it was a lot more sheltered than at our campsite. We made a chorizo, pepper and onion with pesto pasta dinner hiding behind a bungalow away from the tent and it was still super windy. Tough going.

That night was crazy in the tent. The wind was so strong in the evening we considered moving the tent to behind a wall on the other side of the campsite, but it stayed put for two hours whilst we hid in the bar so we decided it would be fine with all possible pegs in the ground. It took us a while to drop off as the tent was literally flopping from one side to the next in the hurricane winds. Strangely, we both had the best nights sleep for ages, waking up at 8am, with the tent still madly blowing around like a soap bubble stuck to a windscreen at 80mph. Nothing had come loose, nothing unzipped. The flysheet seems to be a bit baggier since that night now but it still is fine, just needs pulled a bit tighter than before. That a tough old tent ,we can trust it now.

We decided to skip town when we made breakfast hiding behind a wall again.. The wind was even worse than yesterday and the surf shop wasn't yet open to cancel the lesson (which would have been cancelled anyway). This was better than moving the tent to a more sheltered spot as that would mean rebuilding it again anyway. Ericiera was the next big surf location, and only a short half-cycle away. We packed up in the gale force winds and left. The bill was very small as we got a 30% discount on our total bill (which included 13 Euro washing and drying). It worked out at about 7 Euros a night. Cheap and cheerful.