Still trundling around Portugal

During our Algarve stay, we fought our way through the Portuguese road toll system to try and pay what we owed. The ability to get a pre-paid card thingy at the first toll booth was not working and the nice lady on the help button said we could pay on-line. Well, yes, it is possible but the website isn't great and the Halifax credit card we use for spend abroad was refused many times. A most frustrating evening. Maybe we need to get one of the automatic gadgets that works in Spain and Portugal to make things easier in future. One other strange observation - there were loads of scorch marked areas on the "hard shoulder" of the motorways. It seems that despite having huge government controlled MOT style testing stations, Portugal has way more vehicle fires than the UK. Or maybe it has some suicidal folks who BBQ there?

During our week in Tavira, we felt obliged to visit Albufeira as one of the "known spots" on the coast. After finding some freebie bombsite car parking we wandered into the town and along the seafront. Someone had designed and installed a lovely tiled tribute to the hippy / love era, most beautifully detailed too as you can see from this small section:

Walking towards the marina (somehow we have to go and look at them), this rather gorgeous set of apartments overlooking the sea tempted us:

Although the cost of one was less appealing. It seemed that at least one resident had a sense of fun, this was floating in their private pool on the terrace:

Not the greatest photo but we felt that climbing over the fences to get closer might attract some unwanted attention. The marina area itself was quite a let-down. Here it is:. 

Plenty of undeveloped land around it, flanked by a long row of relatively down-market restaurants with poor customer ratings and odd shops (most of which were closed for the winter of course). We did wander around but were suitably unimpressed so headed back into the town. Finding a lunchtime stop was tricky - we'd left it too late and most of the better rated places were already full. So, we did the traditional "Brits abroad" thing and had a curry. 

The town centre had a few attractions:

and this rather nice tribute to the fishing families who lived and worked here: 

All in all it was an OK place with a nice old town but not more. Will not be rushing back there.

In contrast, we did enjoy a lovely sunny walk along the seafront at Olhao which had a great promenade and a newly developed marna area towards the end of town, overseen by these two stoic characters:

The town had the usual mix of old and new, with some of the old showing very pretty signs of distress:

and revealing just how many colours they have been painted in the past. More beautiful tiled walls were in evidence:

again with amazing detailing. We discovered a great local coffee place too with one of the best flat white equivalents we'd had. We needed two just to check that our first opinion was correct of course.

For our last full day in Portugal, we headed east to the border with Spain and the town of Villa Real de Santo Antonio. Another place with enchanting squares:

. and interesting buildings:

unfortunately there was some cloud around too. We had a real blast from the past moment walking alongside the marina when we saw a Broom 37 Crown moored there. Most of those have retired to rivers now so to see one on the salty stuff was rare, bearing in mind that the last one built was in 1986 and many date from the late 1970s. When we had our little river cruiser on the Thames we used to look up at the Crowns, think how impressive they were and we had that "one day" feeling: 

Only one day never came - we skipped the Crown and had the model that replaced it in the Broom range instead. The picture is a borrowed one by the way, not the boat in Portugal.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our week in the Algarve, which we'd planned as a taster of the area, it was time to move on again. Onward to Spain (or should that be back to Spain?) 

Off on a big ship instead by car

The January / February period in the UK has been seriously miserable in the last few years. So, we finally decided to escape from the grey, soggy gloom known as our winter weather and try for a nicer climate. They question where and how long for was an easy one. We didn't want a long stay in a hotel - the two weeks pre Xmas in Lanzagrotty are fine but for an extended period?? So, we booked a bit of a Portugal / Spain tour by car instead with a mix of hotels and apartments to stay in.

The wet and miserable drive to Portsmouth ferry port reminded us of why we were heading off. We happily settled into the nice club lounge  on board the ship and admired Portsmouth at night. Well, not that we could see much of it thanks to the Mont St Michel which is, to be honest, far better looking than Portsmouth:

We forced ourselves to a small celebration:

and then much enjoyed the two night crossing to Bilbao in excellent weather. Here is sunrise through the cabin porthole / window and you can see how calm it was:

A perfect crossing, the crew didn't need to dig out the Kwells. The arrival in Bilbao was a slowish affair, the passport checks and stamping that Brexit has kindly introduced have really slowed things down. We also seemed to get directed into the queue with the slowest border control guy of the three that were available. Still, once we escaped the port, we happily headed inland with ever improving weather until we made it to our first overnight stop, in Leon. Lovely place, lovely hotel (converted monastery) - this was the view from the hotel room:

Yes, it was sunny. We'd been very pleased to break out the sunglasses and to read about the rain falling on the poor neglected boat back in the UK. Leon itself was well worth a wander around with the requisite huge old church:

and an excellent coffee shop where your flat white came with a little square of cake and the expected designer pattern too:

We were getting used to nice Spanish prices again, especially diesel - on purpose we left the UK with a  relatively empty tank. Driving into Portugal was a first for the crew - she'd never been to the country before.  A motorway services stop for two coffees and a chocolate muffin thingy (yes, we were good and shared) reminded us just what a rip-off UK motorway services are:

Two coffees and a bun for less than one flat white at Costa on the M4. We are so looking forward to getting back....

Our original plan of staying in Porto got changed around as the hotel we had booked turned out not to have any parking as advertised. So, we'd swapped it to a rather nice spa / casino hotel just south of the city. We took advantage of neither of those but liked the seaside location for walks. We opted to take the local train into Porto and getting the tickets was fun. The machine was only in Portuguese (no problem, quite understand why) but the description of the tickets when translated bore no relation to what we wanted. Eventually we got a couple and hoped they would be accepted on the basis that "we tried hard" to buy the right ones. At it turned out, nobody checked them on either journey.  We can't comment on how cheap or expensive the trip was as we have no idea if we paid the right amount!

When you arrive in Porto, the station is a bit different to the scruffy, dirty tips known as Southampton or Cardiff Central which we are used to:

The detailing on the tiles is pretty impressive too:

We simply fell in love with Porto. Grand buildings, perched on the hill. Not everything was upscale though, there are still a few renovation opportunities there:

but the cathedral made up for those:

as did the impressive squares

and some excellent Pastel de Nata:

We are gently addicted to the ones from Lidl in the UK which are surprisingly good. These were, as you would hope, even nicer. Just.

Our next stop was in Tavira, via an overnight stay in a very different B and B place. Have a look at this weblink - Trendy and Luxe . It is run by a lovely Dutch couple, great personal service, lovely breakfast and a very friendly, cuddly Great Dane dog to amuse you if you wish. The only drawback was the access road. It was not a metalled surface, had more potholes than even the worst UK offering and we were very glad to be going slowly up it in a Land Rover with plenty of ground clearance, not a Porsche 911. There again, a Porsche 911 would never carry all the stuff we were taking with us so...

The only shame was that it started raining as we arrived and didn't stop for nearly 24 hours, our first bit of bad weather abroad. It made the drive down to Tavira the following day gloomy, which was a shame as the Dutch couple had shown us a lovely cross country route that would have been even more spectacular in some sun. No matter, the apartment we rented in Tavira was good and we made the most of the nice dry days that followed. You can see from the water heading through the old bridge in this video, just how much it rained in that 24 hour spell:

and how much rubbish was being carried downstream from this nice little raft accumulating in the town:

The town itself was lovely, although some of the stonework was a little strange:

We took advantage of our Algarve location to head over to Lagos and meet up with Captain Rae (yes, the famous ex Lightning fighter pilot, ex BA captain chap who has never knowingly cross-dressed). He has his Nordhavn 47 berthed there for the winter and it was great to catch up over a leisurely lunch. This sign outside the restaurant tempted us in:

but the captain had to stay uncorrupted - he was driving. In the marina we saw this sad sight:

and this not at all sad sight:

Yes, the boat was burned out, Captain Rae is far from that - in remarkably good form actually for a man who had plenty of boat maintenance to complete before his wife was due to arrive. We may have delayed things a bit.

So far, so good. We were very much enjoying our road trip.

Then it was Xmas and New Year sneaked up too

We were so happy to get back to Penarth. Oh yes. As we crossed the Severn bridge, so the rain started. Then it got heavier:

and as you can see from the image above, wildly windy too. 68 mph wind gusts and plenty of rain meant a day huddled up on board just getting reacquainted with the boat and watching some mindless TV. 

We then enjoyed a few days of endless grey gloom and very high humidity. Despite the double glazing in the boat we were busy battling condensation. We had a few bike rides and although it wasn't actually raining, we came back wet. All most depressing. The gloom lifted when Simon and Nikki invited us to a Xmas concert by the Cantemus chamber choir. They were seriously good. Sitting in the local church listening to them with a glass of red seemed like the ideal way to prepare for Xmas. 

In the lead up to the big day, the crew has a birthday to celebrate. The only problem is that celebrating a couple of days before Xmas day is tricky. Everywhere wants to provide a Xmas lunch menu and as most people are already off work, the places tend to be very busy and noisy. Far from fun for old people like us who like a gentile time, bone china cups, deferential staff and a starched tablecloth. 

Well, the solution was simple - have brunch in the Galley cafe within the marina area. The two guys who run it are great, it wasn't too busy and as you can see, the crew was half impressed with the extravagant birthday lunch menu:

Actually, it is a great place and ideal if you want a cheeky tasty breakfast or lunch "out". We tend not to as being 5 minutes slow walk from the boat, it seems silly. Except on a birthday of course.

Xmas eve was great - becoming almost a tradition now. We had the Czech republic style of Xmas dinner on Xmas eve, after seeing the first star (streetlight had to do) and finding the golden pig. It was a little bit marred when Moxie their fox red labrador who was so excited to see visitors, hit the end of her tail yet again and sprayed blood over the walls once more. It had to be taped up three times that evening. Poor Moxie. She is massively cute though:

Xmas day was amusing. Anne (better known as Izzy the dog's owner) had bought us a rather special gin during our visit to the Morgan cars factory as a present from Izzy:

The rather blurred picture is not because we had been sampling it and were "piston gin". Honestly. Continuing the dog Xmas theme, Izzy had some presents from her friend Moxie:

Those hounds do rather well.

We had a wonderfully quiet bike trip to build up an appetite, thoroughly enjoyed a bottle of Nyetimber fizzy English wine (V good!!) and then, like most of the rest of the nation, enjoyed the final episode of Gavin and Stacey.  What more could you want?

Well, a whirlwind trip to Hythe to take Mrs Toddler to the hospital for a lovely eyeball injection. The traffic was horrid. The service stations were overflowing with humanity and their cars. The shops and cafes in them looked like they had been ram-raided. It was grim. The good bit was collecting Izzy the doglet and bringing her back with us.

Naturally she wanted some barrage and ball fun:

That evening we went back to the Galley for New Year's eve with Simon and Nikki and what seemed like half the boat owners in the marina. They do evening cocktails, tapas etc and we had a rather excellent and social time.

Our New Year's resolution was to get Izzy some culture - we took her to the National Trust gardens at Dyffryn. Lovely area, not too busy considering it was holiday time and a warm tea room. As you can see, being wrapped up was necessary:

unless you have your own brown fur coat. The sad bit was that the trust doesn't give the gardens' team a spell checker:

but they were good at apostrophes. 

The house isn't open to the public but is impressive:

Yet another place built on the wealth from coal mining. 

Our social lives picked up again with the arrival of Martin and Inge, the prior owners of the Nordhavn 47 Malaspina who have starred in here before. They came to stay on board with us for a couple of nights as part of a round the world trip from their home in Canada that involved Xmas in Thailand and getting stuck in Iceland en route to Heathrow. Don't ask why, it is too complicated for mere mortals to understand but it involves staff tickets on airlines. It was wonderful to see them again.

Martin, known by Izzy as "Lamb man" after she cadged plenty of it from him in Guernsey a while ago, seemed happy delivering doggy massages:

By pure coincidence, Neil the new owner of Malaspina was also down in the marina and on his new / Martin and Inge's old boat. So, we had a pretty busy time and the doglet enjoyed persuading 5 people to cuddle or treat her. Izzy had been in doggy boot camp having put on some ballast around Xmas (she is not alone) and luckily was already back to her fighting weight.

Our exclusive little club, the SNOC (small Nordhavn owners club) had a quorum with the Captain, Neil and Martin around. Captain Rae the ex helicopter, Lighting fighter, BA pilot and Wetherspoons devotee  was sorely missed, However, we raised a glass (bottle?) to him:

You could ask why Martin has a nearly empty bottle in his hand but that would be inappropriate. 

On the basis that all good things have to end, we sadly loaded up the car, added the doglet and headed to Hythe. Sad to hand back Izzy but vaguely excited about our next adventure. 

Maintenance News:

One particularly wet and misty morning the heating system fired up happily but we saw what looked like smoke pouring out of the vent in the area where the exhaust hose goes from the diesel boiler to the skin fitting. A leaky exhaust hose is very bad news. So, the captain went out into the rain to investigate. It certainly didn't smell like smoke, steam perhaps but with a strange smell. To be safe, the heating was turned off and we burned some shore power using electric heating until the rain finally stopped (the following morning!)  

Access to the area involved means taking out the gas cylinders, cutting free and unscrewing the sealed panel at the side of the gas locker and then doing all sorts of painful things to your body to look at the exhaust hose itself. The way it was fitted during commissioning for the original owner by Osmotech leaves a lot to be desired. After firing up the heater again, we figured that it was steam with a nice strong smell of exhaust insulation wrap added in. It looked like the heavy rain had driven water into that area through a fitting on the top of the transom so a re-seal job was needed. Way way simpler than replacing the hose itself though. Sometimes you can dodge a bullet it seems.