Portugal and the most Westerly point of mainland Europe
I have to admit, I knew nothing of Portugal's Geography, other than it was stuck on the side of Spain. Let me just say that Northern Portugal is hilly, in the same way as the Pyrenees are, except that Portuguese roads are much more interesting! Narrower, steeper and twistier, they may not be quite so high (but not far off) but they certainly are stunning, and as for the small towns and villages..
Much prettier than Royal Tunbridge Wells, thats for sure!
As for the route, absolutely no idea. I was going to follow the compass west, unfortunately it only ever pointed South East. Time to relocate it, have you any idea how strong those sticky pad things are, that are used to attach compasses etc to your dashboard? Yeah, you guessed it, I know have a compass that is in three parts. Still at least the pointy bit, now points in the right direction (if I hold over the middle seat for long enough). So with that resolved, west I go, via any interesting roads that I find. This method of navigation does take you through some beautiful places (as well as the occasional private driveway) and I do recommend it, as long as you're not in a hurry.
After going west for a while, I guessed it was time to turn to the South, as
Portugal isn't endowed with a huge selection of non-toll roads that lead North-South.
So I resigned myself to going from Guarda to Torres Novas mainly by dual carriageway.
There was one point where I got a bit bored, and tried to find a shortcut, but
interesting though it was, it didn't really help much.
After following roads like these for an afternoon, I gave up, and returned to the Dual carriageway, about 20 miles further south than when I'd turned off. Still it was good fun! From Torres Novas, things did get fun on the navigation front, as most of the main roads leading to Lisbon (both of them, hey, this map's lousy!) So it was again back to narrow and gravel roads again, until I finally made it to the coast, and followed it south Cabo da Roca, which I hope, is the most westerly point on mainland Europe. One down, three more to go!
From there I gave up on avoiding the toll Roads, and headed round Lisbon, passing over a fairly impressive suspension bridge with a dodgy road surface, that kept pulling me to the railings. Then on to Setubal, where I could easily get off the toll roads.
From there it was south to Beja, and stay on that road into Spain and on to Sevilla.