Monday 16th November Evora to Monseraz – 49km

We woke to a grey and cloudy sky with a strong wind, which as Murphy’s Law dictates, would be in our faces. We set off without breakfast, hoping to find a cheap supermarket on the way out of town, but we were unlucky and in fear of finding nothing else, we stopped at a garage and brought petrol for the stove and water.
The road was straight and flat through featureless countryside, just cereal fields as far as the eye could see and little signs of habitation, let alone cafes. After about 15km, we passed a road side font which had a large perimeter wall and a circular cattle watering trough. We took shelter from the strong wind while we ate breakfast. It was not the nicest of stops as it was obviously used as a toilet and in the waste bin there were rabbit remains. As we had not been able to shop we ate what we had in our tuck boxes and quickly got back on the move.

After about 25km, the countryside became more interesting. It was moiré undulating with boulder strewn pastures dotted with pine and olive trees. The wind did not abate continuing to blow straight in our faces slowing our progress.

We passed through the town Reguengos de Monseraz, stopping briefly to look at the church, which was untypical of others in the region and came out into the countryside gaining our first view of Monseraz, standing remote and proud on top of the hill.

As we drew closer we could appreciate the full spectacle of Monsaraz; the castle on the right hand side, its walls stretching the length of the town and surrounding the white washed houses.

The road takes you around the back of the town and up a steep hill to a viewpoint where we stopped to look out over the Alqueva Reservoir, which seemed to fill every valley as far as the eye could see, right up to the border and beyond into Spain.

This controversial project produced the largest mad-made lake in Europe and provides valuable drinking and irrigation water to this arid region as well as bringing in new tourism to the area.

Due to the strong wind our stop at the viewpoint was brief and we continued up the hill into the small town, through the gate. The town has two narrow, parallel streets, paved in slate and traditional white washed buildings. Apart from resident’s vehicles, no cars are allowed in the town and it is a delightful place to wander round.

We found the tourist office and met a Canadian couple, Ted and Elaine, who were staying at the very nice Estagem Inn just outside the town walls. They invited us for a drink of wine before dinner and we were enchanted by their rooms which had a great view of the town from the rooftop terrace.

Later we enjoyed a meal with them at a local restaurant. It was nice to have other English speaking people of a similar mind to laugh and joke with.

We found a less expensive village house which had a nice little courtyard at the back, overlooking the plains below. It was very peaceful and quite. We had the best night’s sleep we had for a long time.