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.