Cascais and Sintra, Portugal

Cascais is a gorgeous place. Very picturesque but with great yachting facilities, shops and restaurants. As its just north of Lisbon I guess that a lot of the city people come here for weekends. We have been anchored here for nearly a week now which was not our original plan but this is the only place on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal that we can get some work done on our sails as the next port with a North Sails loft is in the Med. and we aren’t going there. There are areas of chafe on the sails that must be sorted out before we do the Atlantic crossing in February and at the moment we are waiting to hear from North’s in the UK as to what they recommend the loft here does to solve the problem. All very boring but at least we get to spend extra time in this lovely area. We hopped on bus yesterday and went up to the hill town of Sintra about 20kms from here. What an amazing place full of dazzling palaces and beautiful old homes. The Moors built a huge fortification there and when they were overthrown the Spanish kings built Palaces, gardens and had hunting grounds there. If you ever get to visit Portugal Sintra should be on the top of your list of towns to visit. We haven’t yet had a chance to go to Lisbon but plan to catch the train down some time this week.

October edition of Yachting World has a great article about Wolfhound!

I apologise in advance for the excessive number of photographs of buildings but I can’t resist the fairytale architecture of the area.