The Wild Rover(The High Kings) - Following the Atlantic Ocean - Milfontes to Cape St Vincent to Albufeira,Portugal

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We could easily have stayed longer at the Milfontes apartment such was its size and the relaxation of the terrace where we could watch the other guests come and go from.

But Southern Portugal and the Algarve are calling and it was time to move on.

We still haven’t learnt not to use the ecological option in the GPS as with the main street closed off for some sort of repair we had to divert through the back streets which included making the countryside of this small town and driving along a dirt track for 1.5km to get to the petrol station on the edge of town.

Just how the GPS knows about these dirt roads and can call them part of the roading system to be used is anyone’s guess!

At the petrol station was a small group of vehicles that had Swiss number plates and markings. They were part of a road trip of young people who had heavy metal t-shirts on and they had a major problem with one of their vehicles if the number of mechanics and others all peering into the motor was anything to go by. There was insignia on the vehicles that indicated they were on a 9000km road trip which in itself is a pretty good effort but will still be dwarfed by what we run up by the time we get back from Norway in late June to Paris.

With a full tank of what will be the last of the more expensive Portuguese petrol we headed off down the N393 and then switching to the N120 before we took a diversion to the sea at Aljezur.

The countryside had been unspectacular until we got down to an area that was obviously more fertile as there were crops growing and animals grazing, something that has not been all that evident from the roads we have travelled.

There haven’t been a lot of rivers we have crossed on our journey south or east to Evora for that matter and here the locals have had an aqueduct built to carry water to the farmland which is irrigated by those long booms that roll slowly over the land.

Our diversion to the beach was an interesting one and we stopped at an isolated spot where most of the houses were only ever going to be occupied in the summer so there were few locals around. Actually we spotted more foreign number plates than Portuguese ones in our short stay in the area.

We carried on down the N268 to the town that is located almost as far as you can go in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and that was the town of Sagres.

The place seemed to be busy with tourists and this was highlighted even more as we took the road out to Cape St Vincent which is as far as you can go in Europe. After the Cape it is just the Atlantic Ocean.

At the Cape you are 37deg north which is almost the same as Tauranga (our home town) is 37deg south.

There were people hiking to and from the Cape which is about 5km from Sagres and although there was a steady breeze blowing it was actually quite mild and it was interesting to see people wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts.

At the Cape itself there was a bevy of stalls selling everything from Bratwurst rolls and drinks through to locally made Jerseys and other clothes as well as Portuguese tablecloths and tea towels which have come across in other places we have stopped at tourist spots.

The bratwurst roll caravan even had a diesel generator running and a couple of portaloo behind the caravan for those in desperate need as there were no trees or undergrowth if you got caught short.

The view from the lighthouse down the cliff to the sea was pretty spectacular with a 50 metre vertical drop to a rather calm Atlantic Ocean.

Interestingly there was a guy with a fishing rod on a ledge about 10 metres below us making him about 40 metres above the sea. How he would ever know what was on the end of his line is beyond us but he seemed quite active with the rod.

There must have been 50 or so cars parked at the Cape with their occupants strolling around or like a half dozen of them sitting having a bratwurst roll at the tip of Europe.

We had to go back to Vila Do Bispo to turn and head east towards the Algarve.

The N125 took us to Portimao, a major city on the Algarve coast and we stopped in for a walk along the cliff top above the beach and found a place to sit and watch the tourists and have a coffee as we had some time available or we would arrive too early at Albufeira.

Portimao has an attractive beach and even Gretchen had to admit that the sight of the beach with its white/silvery sand was an equal to the Mount beach in our home town. Now that is an admission for the books!!

Deck chairs were starting to be laid out and we could imagine what the beach will look like in a few weeks once the summer season really gets underway with thousands of British and other European tourists coming to enjoy the surf and sun.

We arrived at our destination in Albufeira and initially were a bit concerned that we had been allocated an apartment that was pool side instead of with a sea view. But we soon came to realise that we had probably got a better deal as the sea view apartments were above a busy street and actually it was hard to see that those apartments would really have sea views anyway.

We took a stroll down to an Intermarche supermarket a short distance away and discovered by chance that we were on ‘Rua Sir Cliff Richard’ named for him as it was on this street that he purchased his first home in Portugal in 1961.

We hadn’t eaten out for a few days and so decided to try our luck downtown in the many restaurants in the streets leading down to and along the beach.

Gretchen had picked our an Italian restaurant as she had been trying to stimulate her taste buds since the flu bug had struck and she fancied a Margarita pizza would do the trick.

We were guided in the failing light to Ricardo’s Pizza Restaurant and were welcomed in by the guy gathering punters off the street like ourselves.

Gretchen had her pizza while I had a pasta meal in what was a really authentic Italian restaurant which you say seems odd seeing as how we were in Portugal and Italy. However sometimes the taste buds take over and aside from some very nice fish options we haven’t had anything else that startling in Portugal to have for dinner.

We had some ‘entertainment’ from a group of 3 Brits (all males) who sat next to us and had similar meals to us except they had to have ketchup, mayonnaise and chips with their pasta!!Only in Portugal!!



We somehow found our way back to the apartment in the dark with the help of the mobile phone as this had been the latest we had been out at night.

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