Site No 163 - Parque de Campismo de Almornos.

This is the first site in thirty three years of caravaning, which amounts to many more than the 162 of the retirement travels, where we have refused to stay on a site.

The staff were very helpful, the receptionist being called back from her lunch to book us in, the gatekeeper tried to help but without the English to quite understand what the problem was. the pitches were of a reasonable size and each one was provided with electricity, water and grey water disposal: almost unheard of in a Portuguese site. Unfortunately what is not unheard of on Portuguese sites is a complete and utter absence of maintenance and on the site we had selected had an earth fault as did its immediate neighbour. The adjacent pair of pitches did not register earth faults but would not dispence electricity as required

We are told that businesses in Portugal are not required to carry third party public liability insurance as they are not responsible the customer is responsible for keeping his/her self safe so there is no incentive to maintain. This however is heresay and we cannot confirm this is correct but it would explain the lack of safety rails and doors that have no floor on one side that we have seen in many times in this country.

I did not use the facilities on this site but Sue described them as very, very basic.

There are several local alternatives to this site so I cannot ever see a return visit.

© Stephen Ghost 2015