No Slacking, Work Tomorrow...

We arrived home safe and sound from our trip to Portugal, refreshed and with increased weight around the middle with the realisation that with just 15 hours to go from walking through the door, I would be back at work driving the desk - bad planning or what?

The house was in one piece and tidy and the three boys had not begun WWlll, so after a quick cut of the lawn, top up the fishponds with water and out for tea at a lovely local restaurant (my treat for still having a house and a family in one piece), I write this on my last evening of freedom for the time being.

The day began (with the picture at the top of the blog) at around 6.40 am this morning on the Algarve, sunrise over Alvor. All packed and ready to depart.

This has been one of the laziest holidays I (we) have ever had and this has been quite deliberate. The Hotel catered for all our needs without wandering off anywhere, but there's plenty that we could have done. Walking the length of the beach on a few occasions and one foray into he old part of Alvor was good enough for us. This was one of the typical streets, (left).

The beach was the main attraction for so many people simply for walking or sunbathing, but not swimming unless you're hardy because at this time of the year, it's still cold. There were a few kite surfing competitions going on and some of the heights surfers reached in the brisk breeze off the sea were mind blowing, probably thirty feet in the air I would guess. Brave people.
I mentioned this on one of my comments to a fellow blogger on an earlier post, this was one of the only places I've been to where no-one fought for sun recliners near the pool - reserving them with their towels. Although the hotel was packed, there were more recliners than people who wanted their use, so we had our pick, every morning.

The hours for meals were long, so there was never a rush to get out of bed and never a rush in the dining room when we got there. They can't make tea by the way, they give you a tea bag in it's paper envelope because their rules say they can't handle the tea bag and put it in the pot of boiling water, So you order 'tea with milk' and they bring a tea bag, cup and saucer, sugar - always sugar even when you don't use it, a jug of boiling water and a jug of milk - it's an art form.

There are a few more pics, some taken on a late evening before the light disappears totally for example and which I'll post over the next few days.

I read three books while sat by the pool, 'The Power of NOW' by Eckhart Tolle, interesting topic if you need to get out of the rat race and stop letting your mind run riot; the superb Chris Evans tells the first half of his life story in his excellent and brilliantly written autobiography, 'It's not What you Think.' This is a stunningly honest portrayal of this complex man who has made mega mistakes and engineered fabulous coups.

Finally, a little heavy but equally as enjoyable 'The Greatest Show on Earth' by Richard Dawkins, the case for evolution against creationism. Controversial, yes; thought provoking, yes; entertainingly written in a witty style and he makes it reasonably understandable for someone like me with one O'Level. You make your own mind up - mine's quite clear.

Unpacking is in progress and far be it for me to be in the way of emptying cases. 160 e-mails to scan, bills to peruse.

Chat soon

ta-ra
(click on any of the pictures to enlarge them, all taken on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ65)

Ola

Not a cloud in the sky since my last post and apart from a refreshing and much needed sea breeze in an afternoon, the weather is bloody hot. Mind you, that's what we paid for so no complaints. The village of Alvor on the Algarve, some ten minutes easy walk from the hotel along a road with no footpath is pleasant, hilly, narrow streeted place and not a great deal of it's own character left I suspect. Across the extensive harbour lake there is a backdrop of distant mountains, hazy and lacking in detail.

Houses are square, painted in bright pastel colours usually with a pan tiled orange roof. Streets are cobbled and footpaths badly maintained and uneven. Holiday homes outside of the immediate village centre are the order of the day and they too are non-descript and angular. What is a lovely touch however is the amount of greenery and flowering shrubs in every conceivable colour all over the place. Grape vines are a common sight on walls and bird life is plentiful and varied.

The whole place looks relatively modern and full of roadside cafes. On the day of our visit, Portugal were playing their World Cup opener and so the place was fairly quite with little traffic and loud television commentary coming from the cafes playing to nervous audiences of locals.

The place has a reputation for seafood and every restaurant and cafe advertises it. The hotel has had some pretty bland offerings, tuna and swordfish among the menu, but it's all much of a muchness being similar in texture and taste. We may try a cafe for a seafood lunch before we leave.

The village has an extensive lake-like harbour and fishing as well as leisure boats a-plenty. Although there are few boats on the high sea during the day save for the odd power boat and a two masted schooner that looks like a pirate ship on trips around the harbour, it seems most of the fishing is done after dark with lots of ships lights bobbing about throughout the night. I have taken my drawing materials and pastels, but haven't done much except practise my psychic face drawings, but I've done a pencil drawing of the coastline to the west. The sea, close to, is clean and has dozens of shades of greens and blues from the pale translucence of the shoreline to the deeper blue some ten yards from the shore where the beach drops away alarmingly from a shelf into what looks like much deeper water. I could never recreate the scene with any accuracy to capture the delight of nature.

Surprisingly, the beach is clean as a whistle. Unlike our own East Yorkshire coast with flotsam, jetsam, sea weed and shells, the beach at Alvor is just littered with shells of all kinds including large clam like shells, the kind my parents had as an ashtray fourty years ago, some five inches across. There are some rocks to the east of the beach and they are encrusted with shells from millenia ago, captured timelessly in the geological strata. Two hundred miles of Atlantic ocean before Morocco directly to the south appears to be a healthy bit of sea hence the volume of food available on the ocean floor.

South Africa are playing Uruguay and it's half time with the hosts 1 - 0 down, so as my other half is sewing her cross-stitch (is that one word or two?) I am going to settle down to watch the second half. I've missed the shock of the day with Spain going down 1 - 0 to Switzerland which has gone down well here - no surprises.

Chat soon

ta-ra