Spain and Portugal – Braganca to Freixo de Numâo

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We are camping in our motorhome at Braganca in Portugal, rain has fallen all night, torrential at times with thunder and continues to rain in this way most of the day washing all the sand and grit down off the soil over the (what was) clean paving.

We have a quiet morning writing and catching up and researching Portuguese toll roads. The toll roads in Portugal are not straightforward or easy to understand. There are different systems depending on which type of road you are driving on. Some Portuguese toll roads have a manual payment system, so you pay for what you use immediately. Other Portuguese toll roads use a fully electronic system that is driven by number plate recognition. To use the fully electronic system for Portuguese toll roads you first have to register using a payment card, a debit, and your number plate. Once you have registered you can use the toll roads but only the fully electronic payment roads, and you will be billed directly from your bank account. There is a small handling charge for each transaction. We spoke to someone about the toll roads and they advised us to be careful and make sure that we were registered because the Portuguese authorities always follow up vehicles that have not paid and impose heavy fines on top of the charges.

To be on the safe side, we register the Hymer on the electronic system using our bank account in euros. After lunch we leave Bragança on N15 to Macedo de Cavaleiros and then IP-2 (which is not a toll on this section) to Pocinho and the station, the end of the line for the class 20 loco hauled train from Porto. There are places to park the Hymer and we look round the station, take a photo of the timetable and Mr C. talks to a local. We can park here all day and it would be OK.

There are no trains for another hour so we continue our drive through Foz Coã and over the narrow mountain road to Freixo du Numão (the place we stayed in March 2020 and were asked to leave because of Covid) and meet Francesco again when he comes to collect the ‘rent’. He does not remember but invites us into his ‘port cavern’, aka the shower room which is kept locked. It is full of 5 litre bottles of red and white port, a fridge, glasses and storage equipment. He invites us to taste the port, it is his own made from the vines we see on the surrounding hills. It is good and we buy 5 litres of white (and later 1 litre of red which is poured into our plastic milk bottle). The sky is threatening rain so Fransico drives us down the road to the mercado, which is closed so he goes to find the owner next door and she opens for us. We buy cheese, her home-made chorizo and walk back to Hymer just before the rain starts, it is very heavy thundery showers (and rains on and off in the night).

We enjoy aperitifs of wine, chorizo and crackers, and later chicken stirfry. In the evening we look at the possible options of taking the train from Pocinho to Porto or staying somewhere along the way. We decide on the latter, to stay at Régua because we can park by the river, within five minutes’ walk of the station.

Gallery Braganca to Freixo de Numâo

Click at image to enlarge