Yup, I’m becoming a master of geography, not to mention my Portuguese pronunciations! I have fallen head over heels in love with the Atlantic coast of Portugal and urge anyone reading this to plan any future holidays there. The people could not be lovelier and the old towns with winding paved streets, the ancient looking intimate little churches, the knockout architecture – and that’s before I get onto the indescribably lovely little pastry cakes – the perfect balance of sweet and savoury – oh my…
We’ve had a mixed bag of weather. Had lots of glorious sunshine and also an unexpected force 7 wind in the dark which rather knocked us over (literally, we’d been tripping along in a force 4/5). For the uninitiated, a force 7 is 31 knots of wind, quite a lot for little old us. Plus it happened in the middle of a bit of a bermuda triangle, the capes of atlantic Portugal are full of “areas of magnetic anomalies” which made all our instruments confused. The winds whipped us much closer to the capes than we wanted to be and then we lost them just as soon as they came on and had to motor. Bit of a sleepless night for both of us that one…
We’ve been staying at anchor a lot and loving it: it’s free and you get to stay in beautiful little bays rather than crowded touristy marinas. Having said that, I am writing this post from one such marina having been forced to stay at Lagos (ick) because there’s a force 9 blowing on the coast that we don’t want to touch with a barge pole. But, walk for long enough and you’ll find the old town even in Lagos…
However, all I can say in Portuguese is thank you. Mind you, the Spanish learning isn’t going too well at the mo’ – had far too many other jobs to do! Anyhow, better dash as James has just returned from the mini-market with chicken livers, prawns and port 🙂