Mikki's Place, near Pera

Tuesday 05/02/19

We went to bed early yesterday; something to do with jogging and walking miles in a day seems to wear us out!  As a result we were up quite early and went for our jog/walk before sunrise in quite nippy conditions.  We ended up on the beach for a few stretches and exercises and managed to time it perfectly.

We had read about a campsite called 'Mikki's place', Mikki being a Dutch artist who had set up a campsite and artists' retreat with her husband, and as it was close to us we decided to head out there to see the place.  We're travelling such short distances at the moment that Bokkie barely warms up before we have arrived.  Unfortunately I managed to pick the least accessible of the routes to Mikki's so Bokkie had a bit of a strain up a steep hill on a dirt road.  We scraped a few branches on the way in but she did us proud, still remarkably agile for and old girl.

The campsite is a delight with a large art studio, wonderful artwork in the elaborate gardens and all kinds of birds.

Even the real chickens are works of art

Bonus pic, I love the way this chap doesn't have enough space, even with the huge bus with slide-outs and felt he still needed a tent!  They wouldn't last an hour in Bokkie.

Whilst there is space for 125 motorhomes on this site, (and it is packed with long-timers), the quirky layout makes it seem nice and cosy, and we've found a reasonably good spot so we'll probably stay put for a couple of days and explore the surrounding area.

Santa Eulália outside Albufeira

Monday 04/02/19

It turned out to be such a quiet spot we decided to stay another day and explore the are a bit more.  After the morning run/walk (Toni/Andrew) we had breakfast, packed our rucksacks and headed off to Albufeira Old Town.  It was  about 4 km away and Google Maps said it was 'mostly flat'...it wasn't. It was a pleasant enough walk though and we were staggered at the number of hotels and other accomodation along this coast, it must really heave in season.

The town is so white the camera lens struggled to cope

Shell-Art, taken through a window unfortunately

Yes, there is an elevator if you don't want to walk down to the beach...

Albufeira Old Town has lost it's character to commercialisation, in our opinion, with most buildings dedicated to liberating tourists of their cash in some way or another (so many restaurants, and pubs, and coffee shops...).  We prefer the working towns but it's good to see the other side of the economy as well, I suppose Portugal would be much poorer without it.  They didn't get a sniff at our cash though, we had a flask of coffee and snacks in our rucksack.

When we got back we did some cooking and walked to the beach to read for a couple of hours.  

Get well soon Mom Micklem

There are worse ways to spend a Monday.

Santa Eulália outside Albufeira

Sunday 03/02/19

We dusted Bokkie off, disconnected her from the luxury of mains power and headed off again this morning.  The stay in Olhão has been lovely and ideal to wait out the bad weather but it was time to move on.

We made the short hop into Faro and parked up right outside the old town walls.  Being Sunday morning it was lovely and quiet and we felt like we had the place to ourselves for a while.  

It's a lovely city with a real sense of history.  Even the derelict buildings have a lot of charm and there seems to be a lot of renovation going on.

I am not usually a fan of graffiti but some of the pieces are real works of art.

There are White Stork nests on almost all the structures and the juveniles stand waiting for their parents to feed them, a noisy affair with much bill-clacking.  Apparently the stork population in Portugal has increased from around 1,000 in 1995 to around 14,000 in 2014.  They no longer fly south to Africa in the summer months, largely due to the milder climate in Europe, but also the increased supply of local food (read: rubbish and junk food), due to urbanisation.  

After admiring the storks, we had a lovely lunch in Faro and then moved on to our spot just outside Albufeira.  It's very much in the resort area of the Algarve but we are in a quiet spot five minutes from the sea, hopefully it stays nice and quiet.

Bokkie in her spot for the night

Praia de Santa Eulália

Praia da Oura

We even spotted some public art we liked here 

Olhão

Saturday 02/02/19

We've been battered by rain and gale-force winds, the rain seems to have stopped but the winds persist.

The good news is that we managed to get a replacement seat for Toni's bike.  The third cycle shop we visited could order a replacement and kindly lent us a bike to save us a long walk back to camp.  We picked it up yesterday, dodging between storms, and it's good to have our secondary mode of transport operational again.

This morning the sun was out for the first time in a while so we got on our bikes to head for the weekly market in Olhão.  We had forgotten how sheltered we are in the camp; as soon as we were on the road we realised how strong and icy the wind was - we were both under-dressed.  The market is clearly the highlight of the week in Olhao, lots of lovely fruit and veg for sale - and huge jars of local honey. Yum!

We also wandered through the old town for a last time, admiring the strange statues that seem to be an integral part of the town history, all with strange legends attached to them.

Later on it was so busy the walkways were packed

Legend of the Boy with Big Black Eyes

Arraúl - the son of Hercules

Time to warm up with hot chocolate
disappointed to find it came from a packet...

We bought a GF pizza on the way back and cooked it on the Cadac, excellent (especially with the addition of a lovely ripe avocado).

We've loved visiting Olhao again, but it is probably time to move on now....