Portugal: Peniche de Cima

We snuck out of Nazare in the early hours. The humans realized, in the morning light, that they had moored up in a private Marina on the wrong side of the port. How they got themselves backwards, I will never know? So they rushed me out early in the morning before anyone arrived to tell them off.

As the sun was rising we could see Nazare on the hill top above the beaches. It looked really cool. Maybe next time round we will visit.

Leaving early, did mean we made the next port early. This made a nice change, since we have crept in after dark at the last few ports. This also gave us the rest of the day to have a look around the town.

Peniche has a nice collection of forts and baroque churches. The city is fortified by cliffs to the sea and town walls up the river that crosses through it into the sea on the other side. It really makes the peninsula more of an island if it were not for the bridges and low tide. The beach on the other side of town is quite impressive with at least 2 surf school we saw.

I enjoyed running around the beach, but the humans got all excited about a discount food shop called Lidl’s. Some thing about stocking back up on canned and frozen food for cheap. They also found a shop that sold Camping Gas and the bottles for a reasonable price. Both are reasonable here because the Government subsidies it.

The port and the Marina docks with in it are nothing to write home about. The sea wall offers great protection from the waves outside, but not from the wake of huge fishing boats that tear through the harbour at full speed. We are lucky as one of the harbour patrol boats is in for a service and we have stolen his spot on the inside of the visitors pontoon. I would not want to be on the outside of the pontoon as the wake from the boats hits everyone.

It is still very awful out their with high waves. Some people say it is the remains of Hurricane Nadine, others say it is the result of low pressure systems trapped over Britain due to the jet stream moving south. Who knows. Short trips down the coast are all we fancy until it settles. The humans want to remain here another day to stock up and see if the waves soften a bit.