Wednesday 20 February - Silves

**Where's Bertie?** He's still at the commercial Aire at Silves. I didn't mention yesterday that there's also showers here (50c for 5 mins) and a laundry.

**Weather:** Some cloud about, but plenty of sunshine too. 

I'm going to tell today's story in a bit of a random order. With this many photos, and with Google having broken the photo-posting interface with third party apps, I thought it would reduce the pain of using the Blogger dashboard if I added all of the photos in one go. Unfortunately, it's not put them in chronological order and with only my phone as an editing tool, I can't move them about. 

We'll start, therefore, with the biggest excitement of the day, which was the Volto ao Algave international multi-stage bicycle race coming straight past the Aire. I'd thought something was afoot when I saw a chap set up a folding stool on the pavement across the road. About half an hour later a flashing police car came past, followed at intervals by lots of police motorcycles. Sometime amongst all this there was a general exodus from the Aire as people went to see what was going on. Mick joined them (Bertie's the nearest van to the entrance to the Aire, facing the street, so I watched from the comfort of the sofa): 

It was quite a while before any bicycles came along, and then it was only five. I felt sure that wasn't going to be the end of it, given how many cars, festooned with brandnames and with roofracks full of very expensive looking bikes, had been past. Sure enough, a while later the peloton made an appearance ... and about 10 seconds later it was all over.

Skip forward a while, and we took another walk around the town. Portugal's towns and villages seem to be full of abandoned houses, many with only their exterior walls still standing. It's a strange thing: there will be two well presented houses, and in between them a shell. This magnificent house, with which Mick was rather taken (for a while I feared we were in line for a permanent move to Portugal for one heck of a renovation project), is on its way to joining them, but for the moment it still retains its roof:

On the opposite corner is another unusual building, in that it is the typical walls-but-no-roof-or-windows shell, but, perhaps because of its position making the adjacent square look untidy, it has been given quite a paint job:

Skipping back in time a tiny bit, we took a stroll over the old (of Roman origins?) bridge, from where this snap was taken, looking up at the castle and cathedral. The river, incidentally is tidal, even though it feels like we are a good way inland - there was much less water in it when we ran around the riverside park first thing this morning:

Back again in time - after the bikes and before the walk - we were sitting minding our own business, when there came a knock at the door. Two students were selling cakes and savouries made by their mother. Well, it would have been rude not to, wouldn't it? My goodness, they don't skimp on their cake portions:

I'll finish with a quick mention of the storks. There are a huge number around here. Looking up into the sky in front of Bertie early this afternoon, there were 12 to be seen circling around. Many more are sitting on nests. The sound of clacking beaks is often to be heard. This couple seemed to be checking out the potential for this sawn-off tree as a nest sight:

The only other news of the day is that we have already extended our stay here to four nights, so we'll be here until at least Saturday.