Route During Week Six

After another walk on the beach this morning we bid farewell to Praia de Faro.  We’ve liked it here but we think it will be rammed with holiday makers in the summer and quite a different place.

We’re heading inland and zig-zagging about a bit on our route for the next week - but that’s ok, we aren’t in a rush.

Our first stop is in the Serra de Monchique, which is the mountain range that runs diagonally across the Algarve.  The mountains are tiny in comparison to the giants we’ve seen in Spain but they have their own beauty and our stop at Vale de Carrasqueira near Monchique is an oasis of calm and tranquility.

We expect the temperature to be a bit lower as we have climbed higher but that isn’t the case, it’s really hot and we sit outside enjoying the warmth of the sun on our faces, the beautiful view across the mountains, and the utter peace.

We’ve read that you can walk to a nearby village, Caldas de Monchique, where there have been thermal springs renowned for their healing properties since Roman times.  It is a lovely walk, mainly off-road. 

We come across some beautiful flowers and some unusual berries on our walk and discover that these are the fruit of the Strawberry Tree and they are used to make a local brandy Aguardente de Medronho (which translates into Fire Water).  Interestingly, this drink is still mainly produced by small, local operations although some increasing commercialization means it is now available all over Portugal - we haven’t tried any yet but there’s still plenty of time! 

The village is a strange affair.  All the buildings in the village centre have been bought by the spa hotel and transformed into either hotel accommodations or hotel bars, restaurants, and a couple of shops; there don’t appear to be any locals left.  

As it is low season the place is pretty well deserted which adds to the surreal atmosphere.   There are a few guests in the hotel’s spa pool, we know this because Nick presses his nose up against the window and peers in only to discover several aghast faces staring back at him!

Monchique Natural Spring water is renowned in this area and bottled at the factory in Caldas.

You can follow the water course uphill to the spring where locals fill up their water and visiting dogs enjoy a cool drink - Millie!

We wander downhill from Caldas to an unassuming restaurant where Janette chooses the dish of the day, a local specialty of boiled cabbage and various bits of meat and sausage! Sounds ghastly, and tastes delicious... Nick has ribs and chips!

Albufeira is not on our list of places to visit but on its outskirts set in an unlikely position amongst the urban sprawl of the town’s suburbs is a vineyard that has been owned and worked by the same family for four generations. 

You can stay here for the night and do a tour of the Quinta and a wine tasting which of course we signed up to.  The Quinta is on slightly higher ground than the surrounding countryside and the views down to the sea in one direction and to the mountains in the other are beautiful, it’s easy to imagine what this must have been like in days gone by before Albufeira expanded.

The tour is interesting and the wines are good, we are given a couple of bottles as part of the fee we pay for staying the night.  We are the only ones staying over and we are parked in amongst the olive trees, it is peaceful and lovely to be alone.

The next morning we prepare to leave but there’s a hitch.  One of Lionel’s wheels gets stuck in the soft sand and is digging a deeper and deeper trench in the earth the more we try to move. 

A man on his tractor spots our plight and offers to give us a tow which we gladly accept.  Unexpectedly the tractor can’t shift us, its wheels start spinning and digging two more deep ruts in the ground.

After a few goes the man says he will fetch a bigger tractor, Nick persuades him to give it one more go and miraculously this time it works and all 4.8 tons of Lionel move onto solid ground - phew!  

It’s not until we are well on our way that Nick confesses that the reason the tractor couldn’t tow us initially was because he’d inadvertently left Lionel’s handbrake on!  

The beauty of travelling for a good length of time means we can afford to visit places without really knowing if they’ll be great or a bit duff, we have the luxury of time on our hands  We’ve read that the camper park in Sao Bras de Alportel is good but don’t know much about the little town except that it’s on the Estrada Nacional 2 (N2), a road that was devised and constructed in the 1940s  and runs the length of the country from Chaves in the north to Faro in the south, some 459 miles.

The N2 was a very important trade route in its time for the cork and wine industries; the road has long ago been superseded by motorways and the towns and villages along its route have suffered as a consequence.  Recently there has been an initiative to reinvent the route, which travels through spectacularly beautiful scenery, as a tourist trail - Portugal’s Route 66.

Janette has read that there is a museum in town that is devoted to the history of the road so off we set on our bikes to visit it.  We find the museum but it is shut even though the times on the door indicate that it should be open; we find the tourist information office but the only people there are two ladies doing the cleaning.  We manage via the time-honored method of ludicrous miming to explain the problem.  Instead of just shrugging their shoulders as you might expect, these ladies are straight on the case.  They make a phone call and rustle up the tourist information lady who arrives and she in turn makes a call. 

It transpires that the curator of the museum is off today but someone else has a key and will meet us there in five minutes! 

We return to the museum and meet a charming woman who is very apologetic about the inconvenience she feels we have been put to and also about her English which is actually excellent, it is a delight chatting with her. We left a Lionel sticker as a memento on the visitors' board.

Today it’s back to Tavira where we’ll be based until the new year.  Our girls are coming out in a couple of days to spend a week with us over Christmas and we can’t wait to see them.  We’ve rented a house for the week so we’ll leave Lionel for a short time and rejoin him after the girls leave.