In which Sid and Doris find The Continent cut off.
After a day of enjoying Lizzie and Les’s hospitality, doing an early Christmas present swap and touristing about in Portsmouth Old Town, the Doughy Duo and a very gleamy Hermann join the queue for the Santander ferry.
Covid barriers are crashing closed around us and France has already stopped tourist traffic across the Channel. There are lots of motorhomes checking in and the ferry is full – turns out that some of our fellow travellers have reworked their French holidays to go planning via a quiet trip over the Pyrenees. With other northern European countries announcing lockdowns and – the final doom-laden nail in the coffin – Boris assuring everyone that we are all free to party party for Christmas, this feels like the Last Boat Out. 
Sid and Doris toast their escape as they sail past the Spinnaker Tower with IPA and tapas.
The Galicia is a new ship built in Jinling shipyard, finished in Spain, leased from a firm in the UAE and sailed by a French firm out of Cherbourg on the UK-Spain route. So globalisation is not over yet.
After 30 pleasant hours with books and magazines with an occasional sortie on deck to see no whales we are on target to disembark in Santander at 8.15 am ship’s time.
But there is a thick fog.
We send The Silk on deck to bang a saucepan. Even so the Port Captain will not let us try to dock, even with a pilot boat or tug, until the fog has lifted. 
It is a sticky sort of fog but eventually it suddenly clears, as sea fogs do, and we leave the port at 13.50 Spanish time with 380 miles to do in a 1967 Mercedes Pagoda. 
Mmm, we are ready to settle for a stop if it all gets too hard.
Spain has a high desert middle, and we rapidly climb 3000′ up to the altiplano and settle in for some serious mile-making. 
Hermann is happy at 3,900rpm and 68mph and the sky is clear with plenty of moonlight even after the sun sets. So it does not get too hard, although there is a consistent stream of French and Swiss cars hurtling past us at 90-100mph – also fleeing the lockdowns on the final Saturday before Christmas, we decide. You can do the Paris/Geneva-Portugal run in 10 hours if you get a move on, and they are.
With tortilla and petrol all are fuelled and after 383 miles and 29,250′ of ascent (the engineering required to get the road through the later set of hills was very impressive) we make Braga at about 19.30 Portuguese time which is usefully an hour earlier than Spanish time. During parking manoeuvres Hermann stalls and makes disobliging clicking noises before starting again. We are cheerfully unworried (LIE DETECTOR ALERT).
Sid and Doris check into the Burgus hotel which is unusual in having a first century Roman wall in reception. Towns evolve and later this was part of the Jewish Quarter. Now it is in the old town and handy for dinner.