Where's Bertie? He's back in the parking area in Tavira, just a few spaces along from where he spent last night.
Weather: Overcast but dry and calm until about 11am, then frequent showers accompanied by increasingly strong winds. Still warm.
I counted 59 vans this morning, across the two sections of this parking area.
Just off the coast to the south of Tavira is an island (Ilha de Tavira). From what we can see, it comprises mainly salt marsh, beach and sand dunes. It's not a wide island, but it's over 10km long. In summer beach-goers can get there by ferry direct from Tavira town. In winter you have to head further out of town, down to the narrow strait that separates the island from the mainland. We had no interest in catching the ferry, even if it had been running at 0830, but we did choose the road leading down to the coast as our running route this morning. Happily, it was a far nicer and more interesting route than it looked on the map, particularly as a bike/foot path has been installed for much of its length.
View from the morning run
Our destination for today, Santa Luzia, lies less than 4km west of Tavira and we might have walked there if we had known that there was a pavement alongside the road the whole way. Not knowing that, we drove with the intention of parking up there for the night. Initial impressions of the place were favourable, but alas there wasn't room for a single motorhome more on the patch of motorhome wasteland. In other circumstances we might just have moved straight on elsewhere, but I particularly wanted to go for lunch there, so a small backtrack into town was made and Bertie was plonked in some roadside parking. It turned out, by accident not design, that we'd parked within twenty paces of my chosen restaurant.
Being too early for lunch, shoes were donned for a preprandial bimble around the town. Only Mick made it out of the door before the walk was deferred in favour of brewing coffee, as the rain started to come down. Our delaying tactic wasn't successful: the initial shower was light and brief, but the one that struck as we headed out for attempt two was very wet (that special sort of rain that's not heavy, but gets you wet very quickly) and lasted for our entire stroll - which admittedly wasn't overly long considering how wet we were getting.
We dried out over lunch, which lasted two and a half hours. First came the unsolicited bread, olives, sardine pate and a round of local cheese. Some time later came our main courses. Then came a lengthy chat with the couple at the neighbouring table - Swedes who have been living in France for the last decade. It's currently impossible to have a conversation with anyone of any other European nationality without Brexit being the initial talking point, but this coversation diverged to many topics.
The servings were generous!
My intention for the afternoon was to walk over the footbridge from Pedras d'el Rei (a few km W along the coast) to Ilha de Tavira to take a look at the 'cemetery of anchors' (where I would probably arrive and say 'yep, they're anchors!'). However, by the time we stepped back out onto the street after lunch the trees were doing this...
...and to the west the Ilha was hidden behind a veil of rain.
We could have gone and checked out the motorhome parking again, to see if a space had become available, but it seemed so unlikely as to not be worth the time and fuel. Tavira was only a 4km backtrack, and so here we are again. It seems to be even busier here today than it was yesterday, but we were early enough to get a good spot on the perimeter.
Weather: Overcast but dry and calm until about 11am, then frequent showers accompanied by increasingly strong winds. Still warm.
Just off the coast to the south of Tavira is an island (Ilha de Tavira). From what we can see, it comprises mainly salt marsh, beach and sand dunes. It's not a wide island, but it's over 10km long. In summer beach-goers can get there by ferry direct from Tavira town. In winter you have to head further out of town, down to the narrow strait that separates the island from the mainland. We had no interest in catching the ferry, even if it had been running at 0830, but we did choose the road leading down to the coast as our running route this morning. Happily, it was a far nicer and more interesting route than it looked on the map, particularly as a bike/foot path has been installed for much of its length.
Our destination for today, Santa Luzia, lies less than 4km west of Tavira and we might have walked there if we had known that there was a pavement alongside the road the whole way. Not knowing that, we drove with the intention of parking up there for the night. Initial impressions of the place were favourable, but alas there wasn't room for a single motorhome more on the patch of motorhome wasteland. In other circumstances we might just have moved straight on elsewhere, but I particularly wanted to go for lunch there, so a small backtrack into town was made and Bertie was plonked in some roadside parking. It turned out, by accident not design, that we'd parked within twenty paces of my chosen restaurant.
Being too early for lunch, shoes were donned for a preprandial bimble around the town. Only Mick made it out of the door before the walk was deferred in favour of brewing coffee, as the rain started to come down. Our delaying tactic wasn't successful: the initial shower was light and brief, but the one that struck as we headed out for attempt two was very wet (that special sort of rain that's not heavy, but gets you wet very quickly) and lasted for our entire stroll - which admittedly wasn't overly long considering how wet we were getting.
We dried out over lunch, which lasted two and a half hours. First came the unsolicited bread, olives, sardine pate and a round of local cheese. Some time later came our main courses. Then came a lengthy chat with the couple at the neighbouring table - Swedes who have been living in France for the last decade. It's currently impossible to have a conversation with anyone of any other European nationality without Brexit being the initial talking point, but this coversation diverged to many topics.
My intention for the afternoon was to walk over the footbridge from Pedras d'el Rei (a few km W along the coast) to Ilha de Tavira to take a look at the 'cemetery of anchors' (where I would probably arrive and say 'yep, they're anchors!'). However, by the time we stepped back out onto the street after lunch the trees were doing this...
We could have gone and checked out the motorhome parking again, to see if a space had become available, but it seemed so unlikely as to not be worth the time and fuel. Tavira was only a 4km backtrack, and so here we are again. It seems to be even busier here today than it was yesterday, but we were early enough to get a good spot on the perimeter.
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