Thomas woke to the hollowing of the same owl he went to sleep to. The day ahead was a relatively easy 152.2 mile ride to Castelo Branco heading towards Northern Portugal with an estimated journey time of only four hours. The morning was a cool 24’, much lower than usual. Thomas put this down to the altitude. What few campers were on site still slept. Along the way, Thomas pulled over to re fuel, and then decided to leave his bike while he visited a local market near by the Portuguese border. Thomas was still on the hunt for a ‘snail bag’ for the Mrs. He had missed the opportunity to buy one in Estepona and the wife had made him regret his decision for the rest of the week so before they parted ways he promised he would search for another one on his return leg. There were no ‘snail bags’ for sale but Thomas is sure the locals took great amusement to his impression of a snail as he tried to describe what he was looking to buy. Nearing the border, Thomas and Nomad crossed one of many viaducts which stood on tall stilts above the damn and figured this is was the local power source. Once he crossed the unmanned border into Northern Portugal’s National Park, he also noticed field upon field of solar panels pointing towards the sun. The Spanish and Portuguese had obviously invested billions of Euro’s into renewable energy. Approaching midday, Thomas arrived at his national park campsite. It was empty, apart from a static caravan over in the corner and a camper van. In the campsite reception, Thomas requested two trees instead of a pitch. The receptionist looked backed at him puzzled. After he explained using sign language (as his Spanish still wasn’t good enough to interpret the replies) she agreed a reduced rate for the two trees. Whilst stringing up the hammock between the two trees, the owner of the static (Spanish he thinks) came over and advised him what area was best to remain in the shade and out of the midday 36’C sun. The old man invited Thomas down to the pool; he accepted and gathered the old man just wanted to escape the nagging wife. The campsite belonged to a chain of campsites but looked tired and dirty. The poolside was infested by large black nipping ants which came to investigate the Brit abroad. To the amusement of other bathers, every so often Thomas would leap from his sun bed and do a weird rave dance with his hands in the air as he tried to brush off the attackers then jump into the pool. Thomas had crossed the Spanish/Portuguese border for the third time and had given up altering his clocks and never new when to try and speak Spanish or Portuguese. Although he was on holiday and time didn’t really matter. To eat, he normally settled for gallons of coffee and water in the day then a large dinner in the evening as his body never seemed to know when to eat breakfast or lunch. That night as the moon shone through the tree tops, Thomas rocked himself to sleep using a guide line but then learned if he clenched the right buttock and then the left, he could swing the hammock using this method. Once the warm breeze picked up he had to do neither. The coffee definitely showed its strength when writing this log, or was it the loneliness?