Batalha

Monday 28th April 2025

Our first stop today was Obidos an interesting historical town, and it is described as enchanting which is why until 1883 Obidos was the exclusive property of the Queens of Portugal.You enter through the southern gate of Santa Maria which is embellished with 18th century “azulejo” decoration.

The whole town is encircled by its walls of fortification and if you have a head for heights you can walk along them.

In the centre there was a building that looked like a church but when Michelle entered it turned out to be a library.

Another very interesting building was the church .

Our next stop was the town of Alcobaca where after lunch we walked across town to the Alcobaca monastery. This monastery was founded in 1153 by the first Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques. This association with the royal family lead it to become the richest and most powerful in Portugal until it closed in 1834, the church and monastery were the first Gothic buildings in Portugal.

For reasons we didn’t discover until later it was closed.

From there we took another short drive to the town of Batalha where we planned to stop for the night, it is famous for its monastery a UNESCO heritage site. Its construction began to commemorate the victory over the Castilian’s it is a masterpiece of Gothic art. It was designed by an English architect Master Huguet and its most dramatic feature is to be found in the centre of the chapel: the enormous medieval tomb of Dom Joao 1st and his wife Queen Phillips of Lancaster, also buried there is their son Prince Henry the Navigator.

My photos can’t do it justice it is magnificent.

We discovered during the day, that lasting for about 12 hours, there had been a huge power outage across Spain and Portugal which had brought most of these countries transport system to a stand still. Shops, fuel stations, cafes and bars were mostly closed, a few bars stayed open by flickering candle light and cash only payments . For us it had the effect of making our ipads and iphones inoperable cutting us off from communication and also navigation systems, thankfully as we are self contained it had no effect on our normal living. We were staying in an area with parkland and sports facilities but we could see shops and apartments from Homer, suddenly at 10 pm the lights came back on and there was a cheer from the people sitting outside.