Day 7 - Friday 22nd November There was a bit of rain this morning, so Glyn and I thought that now is a good time to go to the beach. We drove about 18 miles to Senhora da Rocha which is a beach named after a small chapel on its promontory. According to the guidebook, it is actually three small sheltered beaches. The first beach was indeed small and sheltered. It had a cafe, toilets and a few battered boats pulled in for the winter. Apart from cafe staff and a tabby cat, no one else was there. We walked along the small beach and found what we thought at first was a cave. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be a tunnel about 100metres long, not to Narnia, but another desolate beach. This one ... read more

Day 5 - Wednesday 20th November Today Glyn and I went back to Silves via Algoz (that wasn't so much as sleepy but dead). We went that way for a change of scenery and to avoid toll roads. When we'd hired the car we were asked if we were going to use the motorway. This is because on large main roads, there are tolls. There are no toll booths as in the UK, which is good because working in one must be one of the most boring and lonely jobs in the world, ever. Instead, there are devices over the road that look like racks of shower heads which, no matter how fast you drive, connect with a device in your car and make it go 'beep' every time you pass under them. This device sadly ... read more

Today looked colder than yesterday when we got up, but still, the three elderly ladies who are also staying at these apartments were bravely lying by the pool. It might have been warmish in sheltered areas but it was goosebumps in the wind. It seems that some tourists have come to get a tan by the pool, and not any amount of cool weather is going to stop them! We left Albufeira, which we haven't really explored yet. The area we are in is touristy, but still nice, the buildings not being more than three storeys high and built in the style of traditional Portuguese architecture. Most of the building are white with a few blue or yellow places standing out. We drove to Vilamoura which is not a town, but the land of golf. OK, ... read more

Day I - Saturday November 16th Glyn and I flew into Faro airport from Birmingham with Britain's Most Boring. Seriously, we'd had to sit on the plane for two hours before it even took off due to some technical faults listening to golf bores wittering on constantly to an elderly lady next to them, as she started to wish she'd booked a week in Digbeth Coach Station instead. They never stopped talking of golf during the entire 2.5 hour flight, pointing out golf courses as we got closer to our destination and talking excitedly of the most boring events in the history of man. Arriving at the car hire place, more British people bored the crap out of the staff with lifetime tales of every car they'd driven or actually asking for ALL the insurances available ... read more

Thessaloniki to Delphi - Day 13 Friday 20th September Thessaloniki is knee deep in cars. If ever you have been to Amsterdam and seen how the bikes are joined 10 deep from a fence and you wonder how the owner of bike number 1 can retrieve it... then imagine the same with cars. They are parked everywhere and never seem to move. People park at 90 degrees to the pavement with half the car on the pavement. Any bit of vacant road is parked upon. Areas with wide angles and spare bits of concrete are chocker full of cars. When you get to a junction, you don't know which lanes are waiting for traffic lights or just parked. People just give up on the rigid traffic and leave their cars at the point of just having ... read more