Once again our wedding anniversary arrived, and as has become the norm in recent years, we took a short holiday to celebrate.
Last year was a special event and we went to Venice but on this occasion we were much nearer home.
Janet booked a few days at a hotel in Penhas da Saúde which is located between Covilhã and Serra da Estrella at an altitude of about 1400m (4,600 feet).
Janet finished work early on the Wednesday and we set off in the evening hoping to arrive around 7pm.
Having checked in and settled into the room, we went to the hotel restaurant for dinner which was a self service buffet with a very large selection.
Then, as it was already dark, we retired to the room to relax. The room was quite spacious with a second bedroom and a full bathroom to the side.
The weather forecast was for rain overnight and in the morning, this proved accurate.
We awoke to a rather grey, damp, and windy morning.
Unperturbed, we had a hearty breakfast and trusted the weather forecast that it would clear up later in the morning so we stayed in the room and watched TV.
By around 11am the rain had almost stopped and the sun was occasionally showing through. We decided to take a chance and geared up for a walk in the wild, although there was little rain, the wind was still blowing quite strongly.
We set off along the marked trail PR13-CRV, up the hill into the mist. The going was slow, the wind was gusty, and the clouds kept dropping to reduce the visibility.
At least the waymarkers were mostly visible, especially as other people had balanced a pile of stones on the rocks to identify the markers hidden in the brush.
We walked for a while, uphill all the time and some of the terrain was awkward.
Having reached the summit of one section we turned around and headed back down for some lunch. Predictably, it took less time to descend the hill back to the village but it was still a challenge. Overall the walk was only about 4km but it seemed much longer.
We stopped in the 'Restaurante Alta Clube' across the road from the hotel and enjoyed a typical Portuguese lunch.
Re-energised, we had a brief stop at the hotel to decide the next walk.
This time we chose the opposite direction towards the local barragem (reservoir) which is physically less than 1km from the hotel as the crow flies and probably 1.7km walking the route.
After a number of wrong turns and an embarrassing amount of retracing our steps, we eventually reached the barragem.
We encountered some wildlife, not sure what this is but it looks scary enough.
The weather had cleared up a lot although the wind was still rather blowy and clouds were still very low, hiding all of the higher mountains.
After walking over the dam wall we headed to the main road in order to return to the hotel with the minimum of fuss. The entire walk was just over 6.7km and a little more than 2 hours including all of the mistakes 😄
Another nice feed in the hotel and back to the room to recover from the day.