Thursday 21 February - Silves

Where's Bertie? He's still at Silves.
Weather: Overcast start, gradually clearing to give wall-to-wall sunshine by this afternoon, but quite breezy.

The usual routine on a running day:
- get up (around 0730 on this trip);
- banana and cup of tea (I use the word 'tea' loosely - in my case this means a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon);
- don Lycra and get out the door;
- return somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours later;
- upload run stats to Fitbit/Strava;
- wash and change;
- have breakfast.

By the time all that has been done, it's usually time for elevenses (a moveable feast that normally falls somewhere between 10.30 and 12.30) and often by the time we've had elevenses, it's verging on lunchtime. It's thus very easy, with a bit of reading, knitting, researching and/or loosing chunks of time reading mindless stuff online, for the day to disappear away without any sights being seen.

Today was one of those days when even the smallest lapse of concentration could have seen 2pm come and go without us going out to do anything (except for that morning run). Happily, concentration was applied, so up to the castle we went.

We timed our arrival badly. I'm not sure if this is a cruise-ship-land-tour destination, but there was a sizeable queue for entry, and those in front of us seemed to be mainly American. Slowly but surely, the queue did shuffle along, and entry was gained.

Our guidebook had made it sound like maybe the visit wouldn't be worthwhile, and if we had only been here for a day or two we likely wouldn't have done more than look from the outside. Whilst there's not an awful lot inside, the walk around the walls was good and overall the modest entry fee was justified:

Inside the castle. The interior renovation was completed in 2009. The exterior renovation (including demolition and rebuilding of some wall sections plus one tower) was undertaken in the 1940s.

A couple of views from a couple of the towers

Also from the castle walls - looking down on four storks' nests, all at low level compared with the lofty perches they usually choose, suggesting that the prime real estate had all been taken by the time these four couples arrived in town.

We had opted to buy the €3.90 tickets, rather than the €2.80 option, which also gave us entry into the nearby archaeological museum. We've seen enough such museums (including the excellent one in Murcia, Spain) that we don't often feel the need to view speciments of pot shards and hammer stones, but for the small entrance fee given by the combined ticket, thought we'd give this one a go. The most interesting thing about it is that the museum building has been constructed around the centrepiece of a cistern-well (a national monument). The exhibits were comprehensive (as I observed at the time, if there was an Eye-Spy book of archaeological museums, we would have got a full house here), and wanted only for a bit of history telling (preferably written in layman's terms) to go alongside the exhibits.

These two visits didn't come consecutively, as in between the castle and the museum sits a cafe and as we walked through its terrace it struck us as sensible to stop there for some lunch, what with it being 1330.

Despite appearances, Mick wasn't about to run away from his lunch

The combined castle/museum ticket came with one further 'perk': a wine tasting at a place in the square just down the road from the museum. As much as we like a freebie, we skipped it; I don't drink and the obvious purpose of a free sample is to put the sell on you to buy a bottle of something. We're not in need of wine, so we walked on by.

^{(A bit of an aside: last night's disturbances: 1am - bin lorry; 2am - an in-Bertie game of 'hunt and kill the mosquito'; 6.30am - air raid siren. The latter was a bit of a mystery, until we were walking past the fire station at smack on noon, when it went off again, so close and loud that we couldn't hear each other speak. We still don't know the purpose of the siren, but from the exact times of its sounding, we guessed it wasn't to deter the stork which was sitting atop it. The stork didn't appear in the slightest bit perterbed by the racket beneath its feet. There were also, of course, barking dogs last night. There are always barking dogs. But, these weren't close enough to constitute a disturbance.)}