The king left the area around the Vilariça Brook, which was rich in grain when he arrived there, stretching out for up to a league, as it was the month of May. But although the king had commanded that the crop should not be damaged, his order was followed only for a very few days, because the pressure from his many troops was so great that they could not be prevented from availing themselves of the crop, with the result that all the corn was used up, and nothing was left over.

The king and the count set off with their troops, crossing the Douro into the province of Beira. When the king reached the foot of the hill on which stands Castelo Rodrigo, which had declared for Castile, he ignored it, as it is strong, and chose not to tarry there, because he was in a hurry to invade Castile. He headed for Almeida, which had also declared for the enemy. When the king arrived there, the township of Almeida was held by a Castilian governor named Lope González Pie de Hierro, who was waging war from there against Pinhel and other places which claimed allegiance to Portugal. The king set up camp with his troops near Almeida, not intending to attack it, but just to sleep there that night.

While the king was settled in his encampment, a number of foot soldiers, porters and muleteers spotted some beehives close to the town's fortifications and had a good mind to go and seize them. They started calling out to one another, ‘Aha! Martim Eanes! It's Martim Eanes!’ For these beehives which they wanted to seize indeed belonged to Martim Eanes. So they began to cry out, chattering and shouting, and set off to seize them. The inmates of the castle emerged to defend them, and so intense was the contest between the inmates and those from outside that it soon turned into a skirmish. The king sent orders telling them not to skirmish in that fashion, since it was not his intent to attack Almeida, but rather to proceed on his way as he had been doing. Nevertheless, the skirmish flared up so vigorously that several valiant squires joined in, and the numbers of soldiers from the encampment grew.