travel photography portugal

Autumn Road-trip – Serra da Estrela

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After we left the Monsanto region we travelled further north to the Serra da Estrela. We´d been sort-of hoping to catch a bit of snow but since it hadn´t yet started we weren´t really expecting it… and as it turns out, the first snows fell the night after we´d left… bad timing! But I´m also not sure how much fun it would have been to be in a tiny tent in the snow anyway, so I guess everything happens for a reason. The autumn colours got more and more vivid the higher into the mountains we went, and we became…

travel photography monsanto, central portugal

Autumn Road-trip – Monsanto

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Last November, a few weeks before we left to spend Christmas in South Africa we went on a very spur-of-the-moment camping trip in central Portugal and the Serra da Estrela. I´d been wanting to explore this part of Portugal for ages, particularly the town of Monsanto and it´s little houses built into the boulder strewn hillside… it looked like something out of a fairytale and I really wanted to see it for myself. And so, while checking the weather report one day (I´m a total nerd for weather reports) I saw that we had a full week of sunny days…

travel photography south africa

Karoo Road Trip – Calitzdorp to Prince Albert

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The last few days of our Karoo road trip were spent in the town of Prince Albert, right at the foot of the Swartberg Mountains. Our plan had been to drive the Swartberg Pass from the Klein Karoo over to Prince Albert, but the thunderstorms persisted and there was constant cloud on the mountains which meant there wouldn’t be much to see from the top, so we went around the mountain instead, through the Meiringspoort. We seem to attract the rain whenever we’re camping… it’s like the weather KNOWS that our tent isn’t particularly waterproof, and even though we went…

Lisbon

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Every time we come into Lisbon, for whatever reason, I always end up finding something new, discovering a side I hadn´t seen before or stumbling across a neigbourhood that we´d walked past a thousand times without ever really SEEING it. I love this city and I hope that I never stop being blown away by her changing faces, the subtle nuances, the play of light and shadow, old and new, silence and chaos. Lisboa, you have my heart.

Serra da estrela, travelling in portugal, central portugal

Serra da Estrela

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August is the month is which literally the whole country goes on holiday. And because we live in a seaside town which also happens to be one of the most fabulous place in the country, it means that everybody comes here for the holidays… August in Ericeira is to be avoided, as much as possible. So when the crowds descend upon our beaches with screaming children and pressure cookers full of garlicky bean stew for lunch, stinking up everything in a 30 meter radius, we head inland to the mountains and the rivers… less pressure cookers, more relaxation. We camped…

Portugals south west wild coast, costa vicentina

Costa Vicentina – Portugal´s south west coast.

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So it seems everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is getting ready for autumn, my Instagram and Pinterest feeds are suddenly full of various pumpkin related recipes and warm woolly jerseys… but summer hasn´t yet left our part of the world and I, for one, am not in a rush for boots and jackets. So what if the days are getting shorter? It´s still warm enough to swim in the ocean and I´m quite happy being in denial, thank you very much. Here´s to summer, may you last at least another month… or two…

Spanish North Coast road trip – Day 7: San Sebastian

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Click HERE for Day 6: Mundaka to Zarautz San Sebastian! Known within the Basque country as Donostia, this city was the reason for our trip and it was great to finally be here and see that it was all worth the effort. This is definitely a place to spend a few days exploring… it´s quite a bit more expensive than the cities we visited on the previous 6 days but there´s loads to see and amazing food at every turn. This is without a doubt a foodie´s paradise.

Spanish North Coast Road trip – Day 6: Mundaka to Zarautz

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Click HERE for Day 5: Bilbao to Mundaka Day 6. Almost a week of being on the road and just as many days of rain. This was the day that we finally cracked. Up until this point we had been cheerful and optimistic… “tomorrow will be better” “there´s nothing we can do about it so we might as well just embrace the rain” and all manner of positive phrases that we bounced about between the 2 of us. But then, when trying to visit San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (which is supposed to look like THIS) we encountered mist and rain…

Spanish North Coast Road trip – Day 5: Bilbao to Mundaka

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Click HERE for day 4: Perlora to Bilbao The main reason for this road trip had been to spend some time exploring the Basque Country, as I have long been intrigued by this completely different culture tucked away on the mountains of north-eastern Spain and western France. The Basques are an ancient race of people, with a language completely unlike any other found in Europe. Their strong sense of cultural identity combined, perhaps, with their geographical isolation in the mountains means that since the Neolithic Era (Stone Age) this culture and language has evolved along it´s own path, with minimal…

travel photography spain north coast

Spanish north coast road-trip: Day 3 – Valdoviño to Perlora

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Click here for Day 2: Portonovo to Valdoviño Day 3 took us via the town of Cedeira up to  Porto do Barqueiro, a colourful little fishing village perched on the edge of the cliffs that we figured was the northern-most town in Spain, although I could stand corrected, but it certainly looked like it was on the map. We stopped and explored whenever the rain stopped long enough for us not to ruin our camera gear, but after Viveiro, with the rain still beating down, we decided to hit the highway again and push on to the Asturias region, where…