Day Forty-three 26.4.05 Wills is not keen on the site we are at and wanted to move on today but James persuaded him to stay another day as we had passed some nice places yesterday and it was worth going back to have a closer look. The reason Will is not keen is because the pitch is too narrow and hard to put up the awning which means that the van gets a bit claustrophobic with all the gear in it and us. We drove back Cacela Velha which is a small ham...

Day Forty-two 25.4.05 We packed up today, but before leaving Alvor we went to the beach as the weather had vastly improved. It was really hot and we had a good sunbathing session before heading along the coast to Parque Natural da Ria Formosa. The plan was to stay here and take in the wildlife. We couldn't find the campsite so we thought we would head onto Ilha de Tavira, an island with good swimming apparently, we didn't realise that the camping availabl...

Day Forty-one 24.4.05 Today we took a trip to Silves, about 10 kms north of Portimao. There was a Roman castle here and a cork museum. The castle wasn't as interesting as Obidos and it was also at the beginning of a huge restoration. It looks as though it will be fabulous from the artist impression. From the castle walls it was possible to see valleys of orange groves which were full of ripe oranges. A short walk down the hill took us to the cork mu...

Day Forty 23.4.05 We drove to Lagos today, it was market day and we finally managed to park on the outskirts of the town. We had a walk around the bustling market, the highlight of which was seeing a woman man-handling a poor chicken. It looked as though she was trying to determine its weight. A bit like in Little Britain when Marjorie had forgotten the scales. The chicken was protesting loudly and we felt like buying it just to set it free. We la...

Day Thirty-nine 22.4.05 We had planned to take the bus into Portimao today but missed the hourly service by five minutes. We got a taxi instead which cost about the same as the bus anyway. We were dropped off in a back street and made our way to the quayside. It seems that Portimao is very different than in 1987 when James was last here. The quayside then was busy with fishing boats and fishermen going about there business and a few restaurants and quays...