As we lead up to the August period the plan evolved even more, the decision was that we would drive, we couldn’t go until the October half term as Teresa is in education. It was a long way for just a week, we could only afford a week off work, but we could take a couple of days driving down and look around France and Spain on the way, just to be sure Portugal was right. If we were to take 2 days down then that would be two days back so 4 days driving, if we go Saturday that would mean we could get 4 days looking around and still get back by the following weekend, well it would be a start.
We are lucky in the fact we only live 5 minutes from Newhaven which has a car ferry that runs twice a day to Dieppe. After a quick visit to LD lines website (ferry operator) the ferry was booked. A 10:00 pm (UK time) crossing on the Friday would get us Dieppe at about 3:00am (French time), there is an hour’s difference returning the following Saturday on the 6:00pm which would get us back to Newhaven at 9:00pm allowing for the time difference, 5 minutes drive home, indoors by 9:30pm roughly. Brilliant!
Just need somewhere to sleep now. After a few hours on Google, finding somewhere that looked nice, wasn’t too expensive and was in the central area, the decision was the Hotel Amoras in Proença-a-Nova, the dates where available. Next bit done! The last bit for the journey down and back was how far would we get, this we just didn’t have a clue, so as it was the October/November time period, we felt we should be able to find somewhere en route, may be just for ease and cost we would try the Formula 1 chain, cheap and cheerful, but hopefully OK.
This was a first for us, doing something not planned.