Veronika Wild

  Aveiro's beautiful old station suggests that it is more affluent than some of its rural counterparts which I've seen along the way. Although there's a newer station next door, it doesn't quite have the same character Here is a closeup of some of the tile work showing ordinary people engaged in traditional work such as fishing and salt harvesting The second place I fell in love with was Aveiro (pop. 78,000) which is about 3 to 4 hours North of Lisbon depending on which train you take and an hour South of Porto by train. This train leaves from Apollonia Station, which is a nightmare to get to because of roadwork in the area, though you can also get the train from Oriente, one of the larger stations in the suburbs.  Things didn’t look too promising on the way up – lots of desolate country with scraggly trees, quite a few of them Eucalypts. Eucalypts? Yes, I suppose the terrain is rather like much of inland Australia. I don't know how much they are contributing ...

The Highlands Power Trail I hadn’t really planned on doing the Highlands Power Trail but I wanted to avoid the steep valley where my van gave up the ghost last year. Now, belatedly looking at the brochure, it seems I did most of it anyway. Apart from the fact that the C 178 was unsealed and narrow and there was always the risk of meeting a fast moving ute flying around a blind corner, it was a lot more interesting than the A5. This was obviously where most of the action was before the main road came through. Farmsteads with freshly -shorn lambs clung to hillsides, elder trees with frothy flat flowerheads lined the banks of the Shannon River and puffy clouds drifted overhead. It looked altogether more lived in than most parts of the A5.  I shouldn’t complain about the road. Had it not been for the Hydro Electric Commission, most of Tasmania’s roads would still look like this and many parts - especially in the West, would still be inaccessible.    Waddamana -where Tasma...