Portugal

As a kid we were pretty poor I guess. We didn't have a car or a phone; two marks that you were going up to join the lower middle class. Of course we never went abroad instead holidays were at first at my grandparents on my mother's side who were kind of middle class but far from rich and had retired to Torquay in Devon. I can't remember much as they moved back to Leeds when they were growing weak and I must have been about six. My dad never got on with them. He was from very poor roots and I know he'd known hunger which I never knew. He told me the story of going out to get some space and ending up roaming the pubs as was his way. After many pints he'd got a bottle of gin and consumed this before inevitably having to go back. "Look at the state of you Edward!" My gran angrily saw him. It was hard for people of different classes to to mix back then and my parents love stretched across the divide. I lived in different times and could move around in different classes a lot more freely though there are always barriers and aspects of your being that just can't translate. My mother's parents always thought their daughter had married beneath her. So I was mixed class and have always felt out of place yet have a half dozen real friends . And of these there is only one I can tell everything to. I think I was 11 when my mother died of cancer. On her funeral day my dad had got a few plates and sandwiches for people to eat afterwards. But my grandparents took every one to theirs and after waiting a while and realising this my dad said we might as well go there. He slunk off to the pub where he remained for the next twenty years. He remarried a fuzzy haired woman who hated me. She said either I go or she would so I left home as I just turned 16. I look at 16 year olds now and I can see they're still children. But I'd found the counter culture. I'd already been to Stonehenge festival and seen travellers and hellls angels and mixed with freaks and punks who took me in and we lived in a shared house. I moved to a communal house in Cornwall and a couple of years. Discovered I could escape the city. Lived in the Yorkshire dales with a punk girl and returned to Leeds so I could move on. I established a shared house on got my first van. I met Andy who is my friend to this day and I see him a couple of times a year still. We started a business together. A market stall where we sold stuff we bought at jumble sales. I'd still never been abroad and Andy was an experienced traveler so we had a sale and went to the bucket shop where we bought cheap cancellation tickets flying to Portugal for 72 nights. The experience completely transformed me. As much as psychedelics had. We landed at Faro airport and just walked along the south coast towards Spain sleeping in a tent mostly. If we found a spot where no police were pestering us we'd stay a couple of days. Cooking on an open fire. When we hit the border we got a train to Evora and stayed in a hostel or pension. We then went on to Portalegra and met other travellers. Another friend who I wrote about not long ago was coming out to join us for a while so we went back to Faro and camped somewhere and it rained heavily. By the time Martins plane arrived the sun was out and we waited watching everyone come off the plane. It seemed he hadn't come at first but he appeared and we went off as a threesome. I had the poor idea to go to the mountains and we spent three days in bed; cold and ill. Then we headed for Lisbon. I didn't like it here. We were in a hostel that had three high bunk beds and felt like a prison. Martin didn't like it either so we picked a village twenty miles south and left Andy for a few days. It was here my story of Martin and me, drunk and stoned, out on the rocks as a wild sea storm whipped and nearly killed us both. After a few days Andy joined us and we met a couple in a van with a baby. They were slowly driving down the coast and me and Andy hitched a ride while Martin went off on his own. After a few days with them it became clear that our camping couldn't work alongside a van in many places so we slowly went down the coast camping. Down the Atlantic coast and on to the Algarve. Here we drank in bars and stretched out our money and eventually flew home.

I've not been back since but my partner has a step daughter she raised as a child when she was living in vans. Her birth mother is a traveller and she is now 38 and has lived the site life all the way. She now lives in northern Portugal near the Spanish border. I got a bit of money and thought this would be the last chance my partner will get to see her so we fly out there soon. We aim to land in Lisbon which is still a fair way to her place where she lives in a yurt with her children. There are other yurts and cabins and we'll be staying in one. We'll be there for a while so we'll use the hire car and go off exploring for a few days. Can't wait.

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