Evora

We have spent the last week on a site on the outskirts of Evora - a walled city about 130kms east of Lisbon.  It has a very good university apparently, so there are a lot of young people around.  The town itself is quite amazing.  It is built within a huge wall which is still very much standing and has several 'portals' in which to enter and exit it by. 

All the streets within, and some outside the walls, are cobbled.  You would be hard pushed to get a vehicle much wider than our 'Smart' down a lot of the streets.  It is wonderful to see how they have mixed the 'old' buildings with the 'new', nothing seems out of place, dating from the 1st Century to the present day.  Just outside the wall they even have a brand new Bull Ring!

Palm Sunday weekend saw the first 'Bull Fight' of the year in Evora.  We happened to be in the vicinity of the ring, not quite aware of what was going on.  During the afternoon they had a special 'Family event'.  Many, many families turned up to bring their young boys to compete with the matadors.  We don't exactly know how, but we saw the cows/bulls being dropped off at the ring and the children dressed as Matadors.  We heard the jubilation within the ring as presenters told who and what was going on, obviously everything was in Portuguese so we didn't understand!!!!! We left the area to have a wonderful ride in a horse and carriage. 

The evening event was for the 'grown ups'.  It was a full Portuguese 'Bull Fight' which we made sure we were not around to observe!

The site we were staying on is the only one near Evora.  Many people use the site as a stop over on their way to Lisbon or Spain or the Algarve and only stay one night which is a shame because there is so much to see and do - both in the walled city itself and in the surrounding countryside.

Here are a few of our highlights:

We took a trip out to see some of the megalith sites around the city - the area is known as the "Iberian Mesopotamia" and this particular stone circle is one of the oldest and largest in Europe.  It was good because you could walk around and among the stones, rather than just gaze at them from behind a fence as you have to with Stonehenge.

Next, on to the aqueduct - an amazing construction originally built in the 16th century to transport much needed water from a spring 19kms away straight into the heart of the city.  Although a large section of it had to be replaced in the 19th century the most ornate part nearest to Evora is still intact and the aqueduct is still in use and is the major source of drinking water for the city.

And then we saw one of these offering tours of the city

So we went for it and what a good decision it was - a 45 minute tour of all the major sites of the city - absolutely brilliant despite a few hair-raising moments battling with car drivers for right of way - there is no concept of "slow down for horses" in Portugal - if anything they speed up and zoom past as fast as possible!

And here's Julie enjoying a refreshing drink after our tour with the Roman

 temple in the background

One thing we had to do while we were in the city was to visit the Capela dos Ossos (chapel of bones) in the church of St Francis.  The chapel was built in the 15th century by a macabre monk and is decorated with designs made from the bones of 5,000 human skeletons.  And, just to add to the atmosphere, in addition to the hundreds of grinning skulls, there are the shrivelled corpses of a man and child hanging from the wall at one end of the chapel.  There seem to be many stories about the purpose of the chapel but most of them agree that it is to do with reminding us all of our mortalilty - an inscription in Portuguese above the entrance to the chapel translates as "we the bones lie in wait for yours"

It wasn't anything like as spooky as we expected it to be just very very odd!

Evora is definitely worth a visit should you find yourselves east of Lisbon.  We spent 6 nights there and still didn't do/see everything the town has to offer.  One thing which we found particularly wonderful on the site, was the amount of small tents which arrived at the beginning of the Portuguese Easter holidays -  families with very small children happy to camp in simple 'pop up tents' with very limited facilities.

29 years of married life and we’re still together ...........

..............  despite travelling in very close quarters for the last 7.5 months!!

We spent most of our anniversary at Almograve which has all the ingredients for the Ebsworth idea of paradise:

       1. a cliff top walk

       2. fine soft sand

       3. rock pools

       4. surf

       5. very few other people!

       6. our own picnic

       7. sunshine

       8. low tide at midday

We shared a wonderful day, the first anniversary we’ve had in temperatures of 25 degrees. Some of you who were at our wedding will remember the wind and the rain in March 1981.

While we were on the beach we watched a few men brave the surf and fish from the top of the rocks quite a way out from the safety of the beach. They were fishing for bass and bream.

We watched one in particular as he landed 4 bass in about an hour. You could tell he was keeping an eye on the tide as he leapt about the rock hoping for a bite. We wondered if he was thinking of staying out there until the next low tide, especially as a couple of the waves nearly knocked him and his catch back into the water.

After landing his fourth big fish he reluctantly packed his catch very carefully in a duffle bag, swapped his trainers for flippers and let the waves carry him back over the smaller rocks to the safety of the beach. Talking to him when he was back on the sand he admitted that it was getting too dangerous to stay where he was and he was disappointed that he’d only caught 4, but at least they would have fresh fish for Sunday dinner!

Enjoy the photos!

Zmar (the eco friendly site) update!

Well we did go to the restaurant on site on Saturday evening and what a wonderful meal we had.  Actually what we hadn't realised and what made it so good was, they carry the whole eco-friendly thing through to the reastaurant.  Nothing is cooked before you want it, which is why the food displays looked so empty when we visited it earlier in the week. 

They had a fresh meat and fish grill, a pizza grill and a stir fry grill ready to cook what ever you wanted.

We decided to have a pizza each which was a bit of a mistake because we found it hard to finish.  But we did!

We watched the whole process from start to finish which only took about five minutes.  They took a small round of dough from the fridge which grew to a stunning 15/20 cm round on which they proceeded to place whatever we wished....scrummy....yum!  It was then placed into a very hot revloving oven (350 degrees C +) which only took a couple of minutes to cook.   We took our pizzas to the checkout where they weighed each plate!  You pay for what you've decided to eat, which is a whole new way of thinking for the UK market.  It really works. We could have had 2 or 3 smaller plates of food for the same price - a bit like tapas really!!


The next day, our wedding anniversary, we had on our now favourite beach........more about that in our next blog.  Here are some photos taken on our pitch at Zmar.

Odemira

We’ve now started our journey northwards up from the Algarve and are staying in a site which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is Odemira, a pleasant but unremarkable town built around the river Mira.

Although we enjoyed our stay in the Algarve it was far too English for our liking – pubs and bars offering steak & kidney pies and carveries. Having said that there were a few genuine Portuguese restaurants and we had an excellent lunch in one of them on Mothers’ Day. But by the end of our stay we were looking forward to seeing more of the real Portugal.

We’ve not driven that far north, but the differences are marked. It’s very rural, the roads are quiet and the whole feel of the area is more peaceful. We have also noticed a big difference in the type of ‘eateries’ on offer. On my birthday (Thursday) we had lunch in a local bar/restaurant – a busy place with lots of locals in attendance (always a good sign). We had the usual olives and bread while we ordered followed by a very good homemade soup. (Soup is a speciality in Portugal, it is always on the menu as a choice of starter, and there are usually 3 different ones to choose from…fish, meat and veg.) The daily specials were in Portuguese but with the help of our handy Franklin translating machine we managed to decipher it – Julie ordered the ‘hen’ (a very well stewed redundant layer!) and I went for the mixed grill. The food was excellent, too much for us to finish, even though we tried very hard to wash it all down with a litre of white wine! We finished with coffees and all for less than 20 euros.

The site we are staying at is one we have been looking forward to since we started planning our trip. It’s a brand new (opened in 2009) Eco-friendly site. We particularly wanted to investigate the ‘eco’ bit as we have stayed on sites that need you to take all your own rubbish away to sites that provide containers for everything from glass to potato peelings. We’re enjoying our stay but have to say that the site is a bit of an enigma – some things are done very well but others are not so good.

Due to the unusually wet winter the pitches are too muddy to use so we are parked on one of the gravel link roads. No problem with that and we are next to a grassy area with a picnic table which in high season would be a shared communal area but at this time of year it’s all ours. Lovely!

They’ve also opened all the toilet/shower blocks which means that have our own personal block to go with our personal picnic area, but….unless we’ve missed something important to press/turn on/do… the showers are cold. Actually that’s a bit of an exaggeration – they’re not cold – if you run them long enough they get to lukewarm but then just when you are steeling yourself to step underneath they run cold again! Which is really odd seeing that they have 3 massive solar panels on the roof and the weather’s been quite sunny!

But having so much space around us is brilliant – we’ve not had to keep Benji on the lead as we are a good 100 metres from the next caravan, and he has also enjoyed the thick grass to roll and play on.

Five minutes walk from our pitch is the piece de resistance for Zmar. An area which includes a massive lounge and a large indoor pool with a wave machine (we’ve also discovered that the showers in the pool changing rooms have hot water so use those now). There’s also a gym and free wifi and a spa. We’ve been a bit reluctant to use the bar and restaurant as there never seems to be anyone else in there but as it’s the weekend and there are more people on site we are going to give it a try this evening.

While out sightseeing we’ve visited a few of the local beaches. One in particular we have fallen in love with…….

……and we will be spending tomorrow, our wedding anniversary, there with a picnic.



It’s been good to see this area, so close to the Algarve, but very different. Tuesday sees us moving inland away from the coast to prepare for the lead up to Easter.

The Wild West

We are staying on a site which is about 30 Kms from Cabo de Sao Vicente which is the Southwestern point of mainland Europe.  It's an amazing place and we've been there a couple of times.  Last time we went late in the afternoon to see the sunset and watch the Lighthouse come on.  It was too cloudy for a dramatic sunset but it's one of those places which is mainly about being there - pictures don't really show that so I haven't included any!

Yesterday we took a trip up the West coast which is renowned for it's long uncrowded beaches and for surfing.  It was actually a poor day for the surfers as the sun was shining and the wind was light so the Atlantic breakers weren't as powerful as they usually are but it meant we could explore the area without the need to wrap up warm to protect ourselves from the wind.

The beaches are amazing - this first picture is of one of the main surfing beaches

This is the beach bar situated on a stretch of sand between the river estuary and the sea

another view of the beach

a picture of the next bay

Another beach nearby which we had to ourselves and a seal (who unfortunately was dead and beyond resuscitation!)

And this is one very happy dog after a day on the beach!

Portimao

Our last trip to the Algarve was over twenty years ago - a two week holiday in June, and one of the things we did on that holiday that we were looking forward to repeating was to eat Sardines in one of the restaurants on the quayside in Portamao.

We had fond memories of watching the sardines being hauled up from the fishing boats straight on to the waiting charcoal barbecues that each restaurant had set up to cook the fish, the sight of row after row of tables and chairs set out for lunch and the unmistakeable smell of woodsmoke and oily fish.

The modern map we were using had "Sardine Restaurants" marked on it so we headed for that area but it didn't look the same as we had remembered it.  Gone were the restaurants next to the fishing quay and instead a new block of restaurants had been built upstream, away from the harbour.  Gone too were the outside barbecues - all the cooking was now done indoors in conventional commerical kitchens.

We decided to stop for lunch anyway and went for the traditional dish of grilled sardines, boiled potatoes, bread and salad while our waiter explained how and why everything had changed.  He looked to be in his 70's and spoke with fondness about how things used to be.  Apparently, seven years ago it was decided that the combination of wet fishing nets, tables and chairs next to a steep quay, hot unguarded barbecues and hundreds of people milling about was too dangerous to continue. 

So now the fish are landed on the quay 300 metres away from the restaurants, delivered by roadway to the backs of the restaurants, cooked in convential kitchens and then served.to the customers.

It's still a nice place to sit and have lunch but the magic has gone.  I know some people say "you should never go back".  I'm not sure if that's always true but perhaps if you do go back you have to expect that it won't be the same.

Quiz Night

Tonight we're off to a local bar/restaurant to take part in their Quiz Night which they hold every two weeks.   We went to the last one while Diane and Dave were with us and thanks almost entirely to them our team of four won amid muffled cries of "ringers" from some of the locals.  Our winnings paid for almost half of the meal we had together. The team name we chose last time was "The Undone" - tonight we think we'll name ourselves "No chance now".  We'll let you know at a later date how we get on.

We had a lot of laughs with Diane and David, and as with a lot of 'care-free and happy youngsters' a few catch phrases seemed to permeate the week that would cause us all to explode in fits of giggles.  Our last Friday together we had a BBQ in the awning and were asked/ordered in no uncertain terms, to be 'silent' at 11pm, due to Peter and Diane practicing their pronunciation of Portuguese words.

We thought it would be good to post a few photos that Dave took, sent to us via email, from the week he and Diane spent with us (plus a couple of our pics)

Yes, that is me and Benji walking along the side of the waterfall

 and no that is not Peter surfing! (or Dave)!

However we do have some wonderful footage of David dancing with a Brazilian beauty at Carnival on Shrove Tuesday, but we did say we wouldn't post it on our blog (but Dave we've not received the money yet so watch this space!)

Lost and Found (2)

As it has been so wet, we still haven’t found a suitable dog walking area which isn’t waterlogged. There is also the added complication of many, many stray dogs wandering constantly from place to place. Bearing this in mind we woke up Sunday morning to wonderful sunshine and decided to pop in the car off down to our nearest beach to give Benji a really good run with his ball. (He loves the beach, but you can only really take him there first thing in the morning or late afternoon as most beaches in the Algarve don’t allow dogs.)

It was already 17c at 8.30 in the morning, so I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. As the wind blows in off the Atlantic I put a gillet jacket on over my t-shirt and off we went.

It was glorious. The tide was right out and it was the first time we’d seen so much of the beach. Benji had a fantastic time. On the way back we though we’d buy a couple of Danish pastries to have for breakfast before going back to church in Luz.

Peter disappeared off to the shop leaving me to open up the caravan and clean off the dog!........problem………I had put my keys and mobile phone in the shallow pockets of my gillet……..they were no longer there! I hurried off to meet Peter to grab the car keys from him to search the car……..they weren’t there either!

I don’t think Peter believed that I’d taken them with me, as he wanted to search the caravan, but I was insistent we get straight back down to the beach to look for them. We left Benji behind this time and went as fast as we could. Why is it when you want to get somewhere in a hurry all the traffic lights are against you?

I began to pray with vigour as thoughts passed through my mind of the inconvenience of only having one set of caravan keys.

As we came down the hill into Luz bay we could see the sea had come in quite a bit since we left 15mins earlier.

My prayers became a lot more urgent!

Having parked the car in exactly the same place we ran the route we’d walked back to the car with Benji.

Now Luz bay is made up of some lovely fine golden sand, but at the end of the beach we had gone to there were also a lot of rocks and pebbles before the sand starts. I began to look near to the rocks/pebbles while Peter went straight out to where the tide was advancing at a rate of knots now!

Within seconds the most wonderful Portuguese lady approached me and asked if I was looking for the bunch of keys she had in her hand. Wow, what an answer to the prayers I had said.

I couldn’t believe it. She had found them soon after we had left the beach the first time and had spent the 15/20 minutes or so wondering up and down the bay looking for the owner of them. She was as pleased to reunite me with them as I was to receive them. She hadn’t found the mobile with them though.

To my mind losing a mobile was a lot less inconvenient than losing the keys. Peter and I continued to search for it, but the tide was nearly right up to the rocks by this time. Peter had his mobile and decided to go back to the car for another look. This time he tried to ring it. It didn’t ring in the car, but a lady and gentleman just a little way away from him answered it and said they had rescued it on the beach just before a wave had got to it.

My, did we feel looked after!

I must admit I did pray with much more fervour to find the keys and the mobile, than I did when I lost Peter in Lagos!!

We thought it might be fun to write up about these two incidents, but as I’ve read them through I can’t finish without saying just how close we have found God in all we’re experiencing. We have lost count of the times we feel He has seen us through what could have been ‘not such good experiences’.

Lost and Found (1)

One day last week we drove into Lagos to try and find a pet shop that could supply Royal Canin dog food. We were driving towards one that we had been told about on the outskirts of the town but on the way through we spotted one with a Royal Canin sign outside. It was on a busy narrow street with nowhere to park so I dropped Julie off and said I'd find somewhere to park and then walk back to meet her.

Now Lagos is a very pleasant town with a large historic centre made up of narrow cobbled streets, most of them one-way as they were designed for the days of (slim) donkeys and (narrow) carts. Parking is at a premium. Those who know me well know that I have absolutely no sense of direction so I did my best to keep driving in a straight line so that I would be able to find my way back - but after half a dozen no entry signs had forced me to turn left or right I realised I was hopelessly lost. I finally managed to park next to a church at the top of a hill and started to try and re-trace the route back to the pet shop. Well, one windy narrow cobbled street looks very much like another and after about 20 minutes I realised I was unlikely to find it. Also, I realised that Julie would be getting very cross by now - a little worried as well maybe but mainly just very cross!

Then I had a brainwave - I knew where the Tourist Information office was - it was in the centre and well signposted - I'll go in there, explain the situation and ask them to show me on a map where the pet shop is. I manged to find it OK but they had just closed for lunch! I was starting to panic now - I normally carry my mobile phone with me but on this occasion I'd left it back at the caravan, but I was fairly sure Julie had her's with her so I set out to find a public telephone. I eventually found one - it took a good five minutes to work out how to use it, mainly by trial and error because of course all the instructions were in Portugese (how inconsiderate!). Julie's first words to me were "where on earth are you?" to which I could answer with some confidence - "in a phone box".

We agreed to meet in a cafe we had used before and sure enough 5 minutes later we were re-united. Now all we had to do was find the car - I had taken the precaution of remembering the name of the church I had parked near to so we opened the detailed map of Lagos which Julie had been carrying only to find that it didn't give the names of the churches. But as we left the cafe a stroke of fortune - Julie was attracted to a shop at the end of a side street (it was a handbag shop - Julie loves bags and Portugal is a major leather producer so moving through shopping centres can be very very slow). While Julie went in to have a look around the shop I looked up the hill and thought I recognised the building at the top - as we reached the top I could confirm that it was Sao Sebastian church and there next to it was our car. Phew!