Weather: Sunny and warm right from the start.
As we drove into Praia do Amado yesterday, on a road that dipped down, climbed back up then dipped down again, I said to Mick that I was glad I'd been for a decent length of run yesterday morning, as it meant I could have a rest day today and not have to tackle that road.
Last night I had a shufty at Wikiloc.com and discovered this route:
That route includes the access road on which we'd driven in...
We could, of course, have walked it, but being entirely on road (only about half of it surfaced, as it turned out) it seemed to lend itself better to a running route (which is exactly what it had been recorded as). So, that's what we did first thing this morning.
A bit of a hazy start, looking back towards Bertie.
The only little bit of the route that was through civilisation. I was glad of this quick photo stop; that road was not as flat as the snap makes it look!
All along that coastal dirt road were beach access points and parking areas, none of which bore any motorhome parking restrictions (in fact, the car park where Bertie spent last night was the only place we saw that did display a restriction), and I'm sure that we could easily have spent at least another night in the area.
The only reason we didn't stay (and we were teetering on a knife edge of so doing) was because last night I wrote out the remaining days of this trip on a piece of paper and filled in the dates on which we want to be in specific places on our return journey. That left us with only just over a week left in Portugal, and there are other places I'd like to see before we leave.
Thus at 1.30pm, at a time when we would almost certainly under any other circumstances declare 'We may as well stay another night.', we rolled out of the car park.
Unlike the last five weeks, this was not to be a short hop, although I suppose 140km isn't a particularly long way when undertaken in a motor vehicle on good roads. There is not, however, a convenient main road that leads NNE from the southern bit of the west coast up to Lousal, so Bertie endured some incredibly badly surfaced roads with many a bend and not a massive amount of width (although plenty for two large vehicles to pass, as long as everyone sticks to their own side of the road - particularly around the bends), until he finally hit the wide, and mainly well surfaced, IC1 about twenty minutes before our destination.
Lousal got our attention due to reports of interesting ex-mine workings. Between 1900 and 1988 a pyrite mine operated here. In the early 1990s, in the face of mass unemployment and a dying village, a focus was put on cultural tourism, with the old mine offices being turned into shops, a museum and science centre being opened, and mine tours being offered. I'm guessing that the motorhome Aire was also part of the attempts to get people to come here.
We took a first look at the nearest bit of the ex-mine just before the sun went down today. We'll explore more tomorrow.
I'm not sure how successful the change of use has been. The shops now seem to be abandoned and the Aire is full of weeds that suggest that it is not well frequented (there's only us and a German van here tonight).
It was only after we arrived that I realised the error in our timing. Whilst we knew we wouldn't be able to do the guided tour due to the minimum group size, we came with every intention of visiting the museum and learning about the history of the place. What we'd forgotten is that tomorrow is Monday. In common with much of Europe, municipal visitor attractions don't open on a Monday. Oh well, at least we can walk around the outside bits.
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