A week in Ericeira, Portugal, camping with a baby.

Our destination all along had been Ericeira, surf capital of Europe. It is an incredibly surf orientated place, which before going I was not aware of. This was quite intriguing for us ladies as there were a lot of surfers, nice looking surfers.

Ericeira is not what I expected from Portugal, it was far more like a surfers paradise – lots of beach huts and cafes alone the sea, large coves with big waves and as I pointed out lots of surfers. Surfers everywhere, surf shacks, surf villages, surf shops, surf schools, even the campsite we were on was surfer based. This is fine, its actually an experience in itself and made me massively jealous that I couldn’t surf! I wish I had looked into the area more in hindsight; because we had already planned what we wanted to do we didn’t even think to book in a surf lesson! That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done, it was just that on the days when we were free, the weather was less than ideal, for me anyway, for a surf lover a bit of mist would not be a bother.

The town that accompanied the coves, was quaint and to be honest a typical Portuguese coastal town. It was lovely and hot, there were plenty of restaurants to go to and the beach was amazing. Ericeira is the ideal place to go to as it is so close to so many things worth seeing in Portugal.

After traveling so far in such a short space of time it is nice to be able to settle down for a period of time and pick out places you want to visit nearby. This way you get shorter drives to places, scenic routes; you aren’t always going the fastest route because you have more time.

Things to do in Ericeira

• Surf school – I imagine this would be a lot of fun if you have kids, they do kids classes. We wished we had done this but I wouldn’t have felt confident as while we were here, there was bouts of heavy sea mist. On the days when there wasn’t sea mist we had made plans.

• Have a wander along the coastline, it is picture perfect, during the evening there are some absolutely fab sunsets. There are so many fantastic beaches to lazy about on near by! even though some are crowded, if you spend a while looking there are some that are just perfect. If you don’t want to sit on the beach there are loads of cafes littered across the beach fronts, perfect for sitting and watching the surfers.

• Have a walk into town, there are whitewash buildings aplenty lining the streets and loads and loads of amazing fresh seafood restaurants (and the fish is soo fresh). I love seafood so this was perfect for me, if you don’t there are still plenty of other restaurants around.

• Explore Lisboa, I will be discussing Lisboa and places surrounding Ericeira to visit next week so keep an eye out for that.

2cv world meeting

The main reason we were traveling specifically to this area is to go to the 2cv world meeting. I have discussed my car before in previous posts, basically I travel through Europe with the specific aim of reaching a world meeting every two years. I do this with my friends (more like family as I have known these people my entire life). The world meeting is a massive festival celebrating the cars and is a pretty good excuse for a lot of drinking and dancing. I love it, it has enriched my life with some of the best (and oddest) people out there and I wouldn’t have it any other way. If your interested in our community have a good look.

All photography by Victoria Langford (please check her out)

We used the world meeting camp as a base for our exploration of the area, then in the evening we came back and regrouped to eat and drink.

Camping with a baby, useful suggestions:

We always camped while we were on holiday. To me it is cheaper and gives you much more freedom to get around. Camping with a baby can be tough, but it can also be really simple. Sleeping with a baby can be challenging generally.

• We had a double sided tent, a Quechua tent (you can easily find these in decathlon). This made it handy as we could keep all of our supplies in one side, Me, my husband and Joanie slept in the other.

• We also brought a baby camping bed, I loved the Koo-di traval bassinet. We found it really light weight and easy to use, there were some reviews, saying the mattress was to thin, but we found it ok and Joanie slept through the night fine. It came with a mosquito net in built, it was also perfect for day time naps.

• There are ways of bottle feeding (though I breastfed which made it much easier) cold sterilizing with Milton seemed to be the easiest option for bottles. There is plenty of access to hot water and boiled water for formula. If I had not managed to get her back to breast, I would have been expressing and sterilizing bottles, so I had looked into this.

• Bathing, we had, what I thought was a small blow up pool. It wasn’t it was massive. So until we found a replacement Joanie was bathed in campsite sinks or in the shower with me (which was a act and a half). When we got to Ericeira one of our friends had a spare (actually small) swimming pool so she was bathed in that afterwards. easy peasy.

• Play, we took a blanket to put on the floor and a few toys for her to play with, she was more than happy, most of the time we were out and about so she was super interested in all the sights she was seeing.

• Take a sling, it was a life saver on more than one occasion. Just so much easier to move around a campsite with a sling rather than a clunky pushchair. Even better when you go exploring as some places are inaccessible with pushchairs, (i.e. the beach is a lot easier when you aren’t dragging a pushchair through the sand).

• stock up on sun cream, you will need it!

Kate x

Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5