Blog entry 27.3.2020
Today was a relaxed, if not to say boring, travelling day.
Almost the whole distance led us over motorway or double lane federal roads to our parking place at the 3rd reservoir in a row. The Spanish roads are almost empty. Only a few trucks pass us. Yes, yes, they all have more power than our Big Fredi. Even on the motorway he only hums along at 80 km/h. 
After Salamanca, Tordesillas, Valladolid we also circled Salamanca and Burgos.
In order not to arrive too fast into the cold homeland, we went to a recommended town square in Briviesca. But already at the city entrance the police checked. 
Although we could get past them, as soon as we arrived at the parking lot, barriers blocked the entrance. Corona is omnipresent.
So we moved back to the highway and because Wilfried was still in good shape we sailed around Vitoria Gasteiz and a few kilometers further on to the third reservoir in a row for an overnight stay: Embalse de Ullibarri. What luck! A few kilometres away from the motorway a natural paradise all to ourselves. 
Best equipped for motorhomes there is a parking lot for the day and an own one only for the night. There are also countless parking spaces along the road around the lake. A clean shore design and huge lawns on gravelled shores indicate that there are many swimmers in summer. A bathhouse, which even has marble-lined washing-up facilities, looks very clean, but is marked with a note that it is closed until March 12th. Apparently the coronavirus crisis has continued immediately, because everything is still locked. 
I inspected the extensive grounds and because I find it very attractive for a relaxing stay of a few hours for tomorrow, we will enjoy the morning here a little before we continue to the French border.
Nobody can dictate the pace of our journey. And as it is supposed to get very cold and maybe even frosty on Monday and Tuesday, we prefer to stay as long as possible in the warm south and hope that it will remain more bearable here.
The heating in the evening hours is already pleasant again. During the night it is not yet necessary to heat through. But this morning we had only 7 degrees inside. Outside it had 1 degree.
With heating the temperature goes up to 20 degrees minute by minute and when breakfast is ready, it is nice and warm.
The scarf, the headband and one more jacket are now also attached during the car ride. Something that we haven’t used for months is unpacked again step by step. And heating during the day during a car trip was unthinkable since last November when we entered Portugal.
The cuckoo and some songbirds are the only sounds we can hear outside. The fact that there is not a single motorhome next to us is only due to the corona crisis. Almost everybody has driven home before us and so the beautiful landscape belongs to us alone.
By then it was already almost 4 pm.
With only a small detour we reached the Barragem do Roxo, where we spent a very quiet night.
The formalities at the border were unspectacular, apart from the number of police officers and their appearance: Face masks, rubber gloves and a machine gun. We were the only ones at the border. A halfway good, at least endeavoured English speaking policeman, whose mouthguard slipped all the time, asked about our nationality and if we wanted to go home. He handed us a piece of paper with the date and time of our entry into Spain. He registered the number plate on his list which stayed with himself, it is not written on our note.
Only then we saw the first big truck.
Only 7 km detour and a true natural paradise on one side lined by snow-covered mountains, on the other side hills with villages scattered around. In the middle there is the Embalse de Santa Teresa. On one of the headlands our Big Fredi is now standing, the tyres already very close to the water and offers us our driving quarantine.
It was already dark when we left for Aljezur. We had already made our way there several times in daylight and the drive to the parking lot of the soccer field we could glide along nice and slowly. There were also hardly any cars on the road.
During one hike I met Sofia, a Portuguese teacher. We talked at a distance of 10 meters, she explained to me that she is currently looking for a technique to offer her language course online, because from now on she is not allowed to meet with her students in the cultural center anymore.
Now the number is complete: We had already met Bernd and Marion again at the beach of Amado. Yes, the energy to meet nice people here in Carrapateira is very positive.
He emigrated 20 years ago and bought a big piece of land here. An organic farm with chickens, pigeons, a swan, cats and a dog, as well as 8 milk cows (they are standing on the pasture outside in a valley) are his animals.
He has had a fascinating childhood with absolutely unconventional parents. A one year long journey with planned wagons through India with a group of 20 people and the attendance of the Waldorf School with a subsequent study of technology have left an important impression on him for his current project. The atmosphere was absolutely relaxed but in no way sluggish as one often finds in a hippy community. Everything was orderly, creative and with a high potential for development among the helpers. We were allowed to take part in the lunch and felt quite comfortable with our neighbours: the family of Carolina from Milan. They are currently visiting their son, who has already been living for 5 months at the farm of Klaus and gave a quite satisfied and relaxed impression. Carolina is professor at the Politechnikum in Milan at the Institute of Urban Architecture and invited us to Milan.
His bitter oranges were processed by me into jam in the evening and passed on to Klaus for tasting in the morning. We were given vegetables from the garden, delicious freshly baked rye bread from the bread oven as well as a load of drinking water for our tank.
It was a very special experience, the best pizza, authentic Italian pizza with wafer-thin dough, little yeast, but a whole day program for making the dough. The first pizza of my life that didn’t lie in my stomach like a medicine ball. The motto is: all you can eat.
