Blog entry April 5, 2020
After eleven days of travelling we arrived home yesterday at about 3 pm in Nußdorf
Was that a nice surprise at the door, attached by our neighbor Rosi:
„Welcome home“.
In the kitchen we found a second and bigger surprise: a delicious Sachertorte and a bouquet of sky keys. How I would have loved to pick a few on our trip, but a full vase in the wobbly Big Fredi just doesn’t suit travelling. Now I am all the more pleased that I can enjoy the celestial keys in the vase.
And the cake was simply heavenly. Thanks Michaela, thanks also for emptying the mailbox and taking care of our house. Also the grape tree was already cut and can now go full in juice.
I hope Michaela can also enjoy the fresh grapes later in the year when we are gone again!
It was pleasantly warm in the afternoon and that as long as the sun was shining. The house had been ventilated by Michaela for days and filled with warm spring air.
But without heating it would be too uncomfortable in the house and in the studio and so we voluntarily extended our travel feeling in Big Fredi.
Now we have to live in quarantine for two weeks due to the corona virus.
But our todo list goes far beyond two weeks.
Yesterday, we already worked out a strategic plan for the implementation.
The sunny and ever warmer weather will support us well and the many offers of help from our friends are a loving cushion.
Thank you for having accompanied us so patiently on our journey so far. We are now taking a blog break during our work phase and will get back to you as soon as we have new plans for our trip and would be happy if you would follow us again!
Today it was empty except for a few pedestrians and cyclists. It also served only for lunch. The buttered potatoes are a quick but warm lunch, they are not heavy in the stomach and we both enjoy them.
But it became a short friendly stay at the border. We showed our passports and the very young official asked us if we were coming back from holiday and if we knew that he had to send us to quarantine now, noted our address on his list, filled in a form, had it signed and we drove a few kilometres further to Andorf. 
Hopefully it will be a quiet night here before our last part home.
An American school bus, apparently to be converted into a restaurant, aroused our curiosity. 
The work is currently – as all activities in tourism enterprises – stopped. However, photography is not prohibited and so we stopped Big Fredi to get a picture of the big road cruiser. Looks really fascinating, such a bus.
The last kilometer went at walking pace. The policeman checked our passports and wanted to know the destination of our journey. That was it and we were already done with the control.
The beginning of spring was not accompanied by the sun. Good that there is no snow on the road. Our tires would not be suitable for that.
Only about 20 km away from the small village Fromental, where we stayed last year. Our daily stages are quite similar to those of last year and even with a few days difference we are back on the same route.
At the end of the 4th day of our journey we found again a place near a lake to spend the night. We had already noticed the place in the forest positively exactly one year ago. But at that time we didn’t find the lake during a walk, because we marched in the wrong direction. Today we came here on another way and passed the lake shore. So the walk for tomorrow is already fixed.
After the frosty night and our morning walk around the Spanish reservoir Embalse de Ullibarri in bright sunshine, the drive here was so much more pleasant than we had experienced the last two times. One year ago on our return trip and also in autumn when we entered Spain we had only experienced the area in rain, a lot of traffic and stress. Now, without traffic and in sunshine it was even bearable.
Although we could get past them, as soon as we arrived at the parking lot, barriers blocked the entrance. Corona is omnipresent.
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.
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.
