Adeus Portugal and hola España!

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It took a few days and she’s not likely to win Crufts anytime soon, but the dog is now showing off her first home haircut!



We’re already taking bookings!



As we continued our meander along the Algarve, we had an interesting trip to a little chapel near Almancil. The interior of the Igreja de Sao Lourenco is covered in tiled depictions of the life of Portugal’s patron saint, St. Lawrence.

We spent two days looking round Faro, the capital of the Algarve. The city is a really nice surprise and not the tourist mecca you might expect. Defensive walls encircle the small old town, and you can climb the cathedral tower for great views of the city and the mud flats and islands beyond.



The Igreja do Carmo is an interesting church which seems fairly straightforward as you enter. But after paying a euro you go outside to a little chapel decorated with the bones of 1245 monks. The remains were put here after part of the graveyard was built on, and at the time it was considered a way of remembering them. It’s quite eerily impressive.



Faro was also where we, unintentionally, had our most expensive meal. A lot of the restaurants in Portugal sell seafood and fish by the kilo which is fine if you have a clue when it comes to weights and measures! Sadly, we don’t. And when the bill arrived it was quite a surprise to find David had eaten £25 worth of Sea Bream!

Whilst in Faro we decided to go back along the Algarve to do some of the things we’d missed because of the poor weather, the main one being a boat trip along the coast from Lagos to see the caves and rock formations. We did this aboard a colourful sailing boat and were transferred into a little motorboat for the exciting part - darting in and out of the caves.





From Lagos we headed to two of our favourite places visited so far, Ferragudo and Tavira, via the impressive Roman ruins at Milreu.



Ferragudo is a lovely traditional fishing village that’s unspoilt by development. It sits just across the estuary from Praia da Rocha, one of the most developed tourist resorts. We found an excellent place to camp that gave us amazing views of both.



While staying in the beautiful town of Tavira we were lucky enough to catch the end of the Feria de Serra, a festival which saw the town’s riverside gardens filled with stalls selling a wide range of local produce.

The coast in this area is fronted by a series of sandspit islands. Little boats and water-taxis ferry people to and fro so we spent a lovely day on the Ilha de Tavira, with its huge sweep of golden sands.



We spent a fantastic final night in Portugal at the Barragem de Beliche, one of the reservoirs away from the coast. We’re unable to use the shower in our van and, as we were in the middle of nowhere with no one around, we stuck the hose out of the window and had an outdoor shower. It was only later that we spotted the small security camera on a nearby fence! Someone got an eyeful, but we’ve not been arrested yet!



On our last day in Portugal we popped into the border town of Castro Marim where David got into an altercation with a rather rude Frenchman, whilst wearing Marrigolds!

From there, it was ‘adeus’ Portugal and ‘hola’ España!

For a brief look at our top ten of the Algarve, click on the map below.


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Storms, ticks and haircuts!

View April 7th - 16th 2010 in a larger map

Having spent a few days soaking up the sun at some of the beautiful cove beaches on the western Algarve (the beach at Figueira being our absolute favourite), we started to move east.

We’ve seen some of the main package tour destinations on the Algarve this week, including Lagos, Praia da Rocha and Albufeira. There are some gorgeous beaches here, backed by huge red cliffs or lined with beach front cafes. But the amount of development is overwhelming, with villas, hotels and apartments crowded into every available space for miles.



There are some very pretty villages that have managed to escape development and keep their Portuguese feel, where narrow cobbled streets are lined with little houses covered in colourful tiles. On the coast highlights were the little towns of Alvor and Ferragudo, while inland the villages of Silves and Alte were particularly nice.




Away from the coast the land is surprisingly beautiful, with green undulating hills and the smell of orange blossom filling the air. We went for a walk along the river Arade near Silves, where two very persistent hounds followed us for about a mile – disappearing every now and again only to reappear and bark at us from a different angle!



You have to feel very sorry for those who’ve come for a short holiday on the Algarve this week as the weather has been awful. We’ve had several stormy days with rumbling thunder and lightning. We’ve been told that Portugal has actually had its worst winter since the 1890s. Everyone seems a little unsure what to do when it’s raining and only the bravest Brit would attempt a swim in the sea. We visited a large shopping centre near Albufeira one day as a way of killing a few hours and found it filled with tourists milling about looking rather miserable!

Earlier in the week, Alex got his haircut in Lagos by a blind Portuguese barber who couldn’t speak a word of English - interesting choice! This lead us to realise that a bit more protection from the sun was needed, so a number of interesting hats have now been purchased – none of which would be worn at home.



We celebrated Alex’s 25th birthday (ahem!) on the 10th April... by washing the dog in a baby change sink at the campsite!! We’re only staying at campsites every 4 or 5 days, so we had a good day making the most of the Wi-Fi connection and swimming pool before enjoying a good Portuguese meal in the evening on the seafront at Luz.



Charlie still seems to be enjoying herself and is doing a lot of swimming and digging. Unfortunately, we found that she’d brought some stowaways onboard this week – ticks! At this time of year they’re everywhere, waiting to jump onto any passing traffic. Luckily we came prepared and were able to treat her straight away. The next job is to give her a haircut - something we’ve never done ourselves. It could be the second interesting hairdo in as many weeks!

All the way to the end of the earth

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Olá, and greetings from Luz on the Algarve!

We’ve spent the last week or so travelling down the west coast of Portugal to the Algarve. The journey has taken in some fantastic looking beaches, but they were a bit too windswept and pounded by the Atlantic to swim or sunbathe. We’ve seen a lot of surfers braving the cold water and huge swells to show off their skills though this week.


One lovely town we visited was Sesimbra which had a great Moorish castle overlooking it. The dog seemed particularly impressed with the Azulejo, the traditional Portuguese tile work in the church, as she went bounding in before we had a chance to stop her! Good job it was empty!


One evening we came to a road-block a mile or so from our overnight stop which meant a very long detour on a higher road through the Serra da Arrabida. This is a hilly area with fantastic views. One thing that keeps cropping up is the lack of tarmac on many roads; after a nice stretch of smooth road you can suddenly plough onto a gravel track, the dog’s water goes flying and things fly out of the fridge!

We crossed the Sado estuary by ferry at Setubal and headed south along a very windswept coastline. We stopped at Lagoa de Santo Andre, a huge lagoon separated from the sea by a large sandbank. At the campsite here we had our first wash day in about 3 weeks – big mistake! As the weather wasn’t great we ended up with damp socks and pants hanging around for days. Lesson learnt – don’t try to dry 3 loads of washing on the line in the back of the van.


At lunchtime on Sunday a huge crowd of people descended on the village. We headed to the beach and saw that a bulldozer was digging a channel between the lagoon and the sea. As we watched, a digger breached the sandbank and water quickly began emptying from the lagoon. We thought we might paddle across it later in the day. Have a look at the photos and you'll see why we couldn't!! The gap got wider throughout the afternoon and evening and that night the tide came in and started to refill the lagoon. We looked this up online and found that it’s an annual thing carried out for centuries to keep the waters of the lagoon fresh. This year was particularly exciting as the lagoon was the highest it had been for several years.








After another couple of nights we headed inland to escape the wild Atlantic wind for the last part of our journey to Sagres, on the western end of the Algarve. After a night high up in the hills near Monchique, where a begger/street artist swore at the dog in perfect English for reasons unknown, we drove up to Foia. This is the highest peak in the area so you get amazing views out across the Algarve and back up the west coast.

The Portuguese used to consider Sagres and Cabo de Sao Vicente to be the far end of the earth. It was here in the fifteenth century that Prince Henry the Navigator set up his school of navigation and great explorers such as Magellan, Pedro Alvares Cabral, and Vasco da Gama all studied here. Ships were launched each year to explore further, open up trade routes and build the Portuguese empire.

We’ve spent the last few days exploring the beautiful coastline from Sagres to Luz, with its stunning sandy beaches and calmer seas. The weather has been the best yet, with temperatures of up to 20 degrees, and we've also found the rest of the Brits – hundreds of them! The supermarkets are filled with very expensive British goodies and full English breakfasts are served at some of the cafes – a sign of things to come in the bigger resorts further east on the Algarve and in Spain!