Today I woke up and decided that, as it was such a beautiful spot, we would stay put. There was no shade, but the forecast was only 26°C, so it would be a cooler day.

At 8am we took a walk up through the old town of Castelo Rodrigo. It’s a really neat place: a preserved medieval village high on the hill. As we wandered the narrow streets, I heard snoring reverberating through the stone walls and had to giggle. The town was still asleep.

We climbed a narrow but steep street to the castle, only to find it didn’t open until 9:30am. It only cost €1 to visit, so we decided to come back later.

After exploring the village, we returned to the van and spent the day marvelling at the view while working on a video.

I cooked dinner that night: pizza. A tortilla wrap in the pan, topped with cheese, ham and pickled onion, then another tortilla on top. Toast, flip, and serve. Simple and tasty.

That evening we took another walk around the village in the hope of catching a nice sunset, and it was worth every step.

But first, we had to have a little argument. As we walked up the hill, the sky was already a deep orange, and we had to shade our eyes from the blinding sun.

I saw some amazing light through an archway leading up into the castle and said I wanted to go up there. But Mike was on a mission to walk around the town walls first.

‘But we might miss the sunset,’ I said.

‘Sunset isn’t for another hour,’ he replied and kept on walking. But the entrance to the castle was calling. So we went inside. It looked like the sun was very close to setting, even though Mike insisted it wouldn’t set for at least another 30 minutes. So I Googled it.

Sunset: 2 minutes.

So we grabbed a spot up by the castle to watch it go down, accompanied by a running commentary of ‘I told you so’, ‘we could have missed this’, and so on.

As the sun dipped lower, the sky caught fire and cast a warm glow across the landscape below, and the commentary was replaced with ‘wow’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘glad we didn’t miss this’.

We turned to look at the castle, and its stone walls had turned to gold in the last of the evening light. It was perfect.

We wandered around a little longer afterwards. The village reminded me of Mont Saint-Michel, but without all the tourists. In fact, I’m surprised there are so few visitors here at all. I suppose most people head for the cities and the coast instead.

On one street there were some very little doors, way smaller than Mike. They looked like little hobbit doors and I wondered how often people bonked their heads going into their houses. I decided there and then, I wanted a house with a hobbit door. In a town like this.

There was just some residual light left from the sun, and it cast an eerie glow on the streets. Only a couple of locals were out, going about their evening. The same two old men we’d said hello to that morning, still sitting in the same spot, and another guy calling his cat.

And then I realised we’d forgotten to explore the castle. Maybe tomorrow. We scurried back to the van before we got lost in the dark among the back streets.