The villa here is surrounded by trees and birdsong is really noticeable – perhaps because it is spring.  There are lots of sparrows, blackbirds hopping around and swifts/swallows swooping about and some very lively azure winged magpies.  We’ve also heard but not actually seen woodpeckers.  Down at Gale beach on the dunes at low tide yesterday afternoon, there were lots of gulls, ducks and coots and to our amazement, flamingos.

I did some googling and have discovered that the Algarve is a popular area for bird watching – sadly we have only feeble binoculars and no proper camera so our only photo is a very fuzzy, distant one of the flamingos.  Quite a few areas of this southern coastline are nature reserves with the really nice feature of extensive wooden boardwalks criss-crossing the dunes so that the area is really accessible but nobody tramples over the habitats of birds and plants.

On the way home, we called in at the supermarket and spotted the car wash nearby.  Derek was having so much fun, I took a photo.

Two newspaper articles of interest!

Our friend Gay sent us the English language newspaper published on The Costa Blanca which had made headline news of the fire near us in Benidoleig and the fact that some of our neighbours had to be evacuated.

Danny sent us his write up on behalf of AlwaysRiding for The Daily Telegraph’s business section about hi-tech gadgets.  We are so proud!

Saturday morning – we can see why Northern Europeans flock to the Algarve for the winter.  It’s sunny and warm again and all very relaxing. There are no pressing jobs to be done, work wise we are pretty much up to date and a stroll into Guia is called for.  In the short week we have been here it’s clear that there are hundreds of couples like us from Holland, Germany, Scandinavia as well as the UK. In the town we sit and have coffee – order in English – and listen to the range of voices from all over.

On the way into town Barb spotted a hairdressers.  Unlike me she needs a trim! Carla, the owner, speaks English and an appointment is made for 12.00 so after coffee and a long sit we head back to the villa.  Barb diverts in to see Carla and I head home via Sir Cliff’s. On the way in we took a few touristy type photos – well, you have to sometimes.

I do a few bits of website management and chat to Danny via text. Barb arrives back with perfectly trimmed hair.

After lunch we do an hour’s work on a new website we are building and then it’s off on the bikes for a potter about Galé. The bikes are loaded into and onto the Volvo and we drive for just 15 minutes to the coast.

Deceased slippery customer on the road near our villa.

We explore the Salgamundo resort – a huge hotel, suite andapartment complex with its own golf course.  It’s beautifully maintained and, at the moment has been taken over by Mercedes Benz for a corporate event. Everywhere we go we see new shiny expensive German cars in fast moving convoys. We are talking 20-30 cars at a time here. At the resort the whole place had been decked out with posters and flags displaying the the Mercedes brand. There seems to be no lack of money here and the resort itself looks very stylish and expensive. There are however a number of half finished building projects around and the roads are in poor condition. A sign of the economic downturn I think.

We stumble upon a nature reserve beyond the resort and ride along a network of wooden boardwalks that have been built over the dunes. Lots of bird watching and photography going on and a number of hides are evident.  The boardwalks end at a site that us still being developed so after a quick look at the sea – quite rough today – we cycle through a building site taking care not to fall off!

After a short ride we are back at the pastelaria for more tea and cake – well, we’ve earned it.

Back at the villa we clean the pool, read, catch up with the day’s sport – Spurs are thrashed again – and eat supper – the curry Barb made yesterday.

The end of another long day slips away with us both glued to our iPads.

Yesterday was a fabulous day here – calm, not a cloud in the sky and about 25 degrees.  We packed some sandwiches in the rucksack and walked along the beach for hours – just lovely.  We strolled along the water’s edge all the way from Gale to Armacao de Pera and back which left us pretty tired.  It needed a visit to the pastelaria and sitting in the shade with a pot of tea and custard tarts to revive us.

Derek’s out cycling this morning and I’ve been doing some cooking which I love but foreign supermarkets and other people’s kitchens do present some challenges and I’ve had a few culinary disasters.  The latest was pork meatballs on Tuesday night.  The meat was awful – hard and gristly and the tinned tomatoes I had used to make a sauce seemed really sugary.  Derek soldiered on with them but mine went in the bin and I had scrambled eggs instead.  Not speaking Spanish or Portuguese means it’s quite difficult to read ingredients lists or to ask advice – the unknown fish we bought when Danny and Britt were with us in Spain went in the bin too – it was tasteless and jelly-like and we ended up munching lots of bread and cheese instead while we played cards.  Poor Julia and Martyn were treated to what should have been chicken and mushrooms in cream and wine sauce – only the chicken thighs just disintegrated into string – we ended up with chicken mush.  Sometimes, you think you are leaving a dish to simmer and return to find it boiling away like billyo.

On the whole, visits to supermarkets have been enjoyable – lots of fresh fruit and veg and nothing too expensive but it is easy to get caught out with unfamiliar meat and fish.  It’s funny too how you suddenly value store cupboard things like stock cubes, mayonnaise, curry sauces, decent muesli and teabags and start hunting them down!

Anyway, this week’s finds are florentines from the bakery – giant sugary almond biscuits for 50 centimes each and wine from Sir Cliff’s vineyards (€7.99 a bottle but one of them award winning).  We’re only ten minutes from the sea here but fish seems to be sold whole  – no nice neat fillets for a squeamish gal like me so we’ve only had good old salmon so far.  The most consistent food has probably been the citrus – winter oranges and clementines – we’ve eaten them by thekilo and they’re always delicious.  We bought a bag of oranges at the beach car park yesterday – 80 centimes a kilo.

Today’s menu:  porridge for breakfast, hot dogs (German bratwurst) for lunch and chicken salad with pear, walnuts, blue cheese and sundried tomatoes for supper.  What could possibly go wrong?

Today was our first gloriously sunny day so we set off with the bikes and a flask of coffee to explore the area.  We had a lovely time wheeling around finding the local beaches and exploring the cycle routes.  Lunchtime found us at Avaristo with its restaurant overlooking the bay.  They didn’t have a menu but offered us fish soup and garlic bread – perfect.  After lunch we cycled a bit more and ended up at the pastelaria/cafe for a pot of tea and pastel nata (little custard tarts – my favourite).

I can really see why people from northern Europe love the Algarve.  The colours are glorious – the blue sea and sky of course, the lovely golden sandy beaches but also the white and cream houses with their pale terra cotta tiled roofs – it’s a winning combination.  The plants and trees are lovely too – lots of varied greenery and flowers.  Its sub-tropical climate means there are some old Bermuda favourites – today I saw hibiscus, bougainvillaea, loquats and birds of paradise everywhere.

Restaurants, cafes and shops are happy to explain things in English (and probably Dutch and German too) so it makes life easy and cafes in particular make stopping for a drink and a snack so affordable (Starbucks et al take note).  We sat on a cool balcony and were served a pot of tea and two cakes by a friendly waitress and the bill came to €3.80.

We also found a much better supermarket Apolonia – smaller and more manageable and stocking all sorts of European products as well as Portuguese goods – not unlike Waitrose in style.  You could of course buy The Daily Mail or The Telegraph if you cared to.

Back at the villa this afternoon we took some more photos, had a lovely hot shower (plenty of hot water and proper power showers – unlike in Spain) and relaxed with our iPads (better wifi signal here too).  Every villa has its issues though – we can’t get BBC here on the telly as the beeb have changed the satellite they are using so the whole of Spain and Portugal are denied Freeview.

Every day has its oddities – today’s was a huge gathering of Mercedes cars and vans having some kind of conference at the big resort in Gale.

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The town of Guia has two claims to fame:  it is the place where chicken piri piri originated and Sir Cliff Richard has a villa here.  All the restaurants in town advertise the chicken and Sir Cliff’s face is on posters all over the place, advertising the local wine.

His villa is actually just down the lane from us and is surrounded by his vineyards.  Derek has been making ‘Sir Cliff’ jokes and remarks for weeks now and we check every passing car in the hope of spotting him.  I found a copy of his autobiography on the bookshelf at the villa and started reading, only to discover that he lived and went to school in Cheshunt and had his first gig at a pub in Hoddesdon – the town where Mum, John and Chris live!  I’ll mention all this if we bump into him.

Derek has picked another great villa, possibly the best yet – it’s in a lovely position, it’s big, light and airy and has good wifi.  We had a stroll about this morning and the paths nearby will make a good fitness walking route.  The walk down to the little town of Guia only takes about 10 minutes (though it’s uphill on the way back, of course) and it seems like a friendly place well used to British visitors.  We had a coffee in the local football cafe and then drove to the big shopping centre to do a supermarket shop.  When we saw the size of the place, we thought we’d have some lunch first in the food court – lots of choice for both food and general shops.  We’ve not really looked at any shops since we left the UK so it was quite a novelty.  The big ‘settling in’ supermarket shop done, we headed back to unpack properly, sort out the bikes, fill the fridge with food and catch up with phone calls and blogs.

The weather so far is mild but there’s a cool wind blowing at the moment.  The villa has a lovely conservatory which really gets the sun so we had tea in there and are now beginning to relax and look forward to our two weeks here.

We left the Spanish villa at about 9 am on Saturday morning with the Volvo fully loaded with roof box and bike rack to set off on the long journey into Portugal.  The car and bikes were dusty with yellow pollen from the pine trees – a feature of February in the area according to Julian the gardener.  Rain was forecast so we hoped it would wash everything clean.

The journey to Granada  went through some rugged landscape and climbing up in the sierras resulted in some dramatic temperature changes – we were down to 4 degrees at one stage!  After 4-5 hours travelling with a few rest stops for coffee and sandwiches, the satnav brought us to the Motel Sierra Nevada – which was exactly as its reviews said it would be – friendly, good room, great undercover parking, near the bus station – for our one night stay in Granada.

We caught the bus into the city to visit the famous Alhambra Palace with its spectacular views and lovely gardens which we really enjoyed despite the pouring rain.  We strolled around it for ages and also had a look at the Cathedral area – by the time we got back to the motel we were way too weary and wet to cope with a restaurant meal.  We nearly gave in to a very early night but decided to walk over to the motel bar for a drink and a snack – the little place was full of families watching La Liga football on the tv.  We had two beers and a mineral water and Derek ordered a hot chorizo sandwich – it came divided into two so we could share it with French fries and some sort of pork stew with bread as a side.  It hit the spot perfectly and the total bill for food and drinks came to €7.60!!

We were up and on the road again at 8 am on Sunday, arriving at the villa in The Algarve in southern Portugal at lunchtime (having gained an hour!)

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After taking Danny and Britt to Alicante airport and then dropping off the rental bikes, it’s back to the villa to pack up ready for departure.

We’re off to Portugal on Saturday morning.  We’ll be back here on April 5th for a week.

It’s been great!

View from the top

Thursday – the big ride. Having had a few rehearsals this week we had always planned to tackle the Coll de Rates today. It was warm, sunny and calm – ideal.

We delayed setting off so Danny & Britt could check in online for the flight tomorrow and eventually wobbled down our hill at 10.45. At least it gave me a chance to do some work!

This is a 35 mile ride, longer than anything Britt had ever done. It also included a 10 mile undulating route through the mountain valleys beyond the summit before a very rapid descent to Benigembla and home..

The climb to the top is not steep – just a steady 7k climb on a beautifully smooth road that winds its way up through the trees and then opens up to some fantastic views.

Danny climbed quite quickly while Britt and I took a more sedate pace chatting as we went. We were only overtaken by 2 other riders and after about 25 minutes we reached the top. A great sense of relief and the reward of a truly splendid vista.

We ate and drank and set off through the mountains – again this a beautiful route but really hard after the climb.  It finishes with a long 11% incline which just about takes everything from your legs. The reward however is that from this point it’s all downhill – a very fast coast down the mountain and then onto the plain and home.

Danny reckons it’s one of the best rides he’s ever done and Britt was happy to have accomplished so much in their short stay. The rental bikes were great and we saw some top riders out there today including Michal Kwiatkowski (look him up).Back at Benidoleig we had one last challenge – the big hill back to the villa. Needless to say we were all starving when we got back and delighted to see that Barb had put on a massive spread of food for us all.  After a few minutes of stretching and recovery we ate everything and slowly began to feel human again.