Rain

It poured down all day yesterday, so we did a lot of sitting around reading and doing puzzles on the iPads.  Thank goodness we have decent wifi at the villa.  We made it no further than to the nearby supermarket.

We were consequently determined to get out and about today, since there was some blue sky to be seen first thing.  We picked up a map at the Silves motorway services: not in the filling station shop, but in the restaurant.  Someone’s missing a trick there, eh?  The map was helpful in some degree, but we still got lost on the way back to base.

We had a pleasant stroll round the old town of Lagos, where I spent a short holiday back in 1986.  36 years later, the centre is recognisable from the narrow streets, the castle and the coastal fortress.  I don’t remember the square with the jacaranda trees, though.  The development has continued, however, to a grotesque extent.  We continued to Praia da Luz, where we had a decent lunch.  The restaurant overlooked the beach, where the surfers were putting on quite a good show.  

Thence to Cape St Vincent, which has become rather more of a tourist trap than I remember from last time.  But that means that there were were more viewpoints towards the cliffs of the south-westernmost point of continental Europe.  No sign of the fish and chips van, but Die letzte Bratwurst vor Amerika was doing a respectable trade.  The rain began just before we left Cape St Vincent, and we were quite wet before we got back to the car.  On the way home, it rained pretty well all the way, including one episode when I had to lift off the throttle and put on the hazard flashers.  

The car worked well.  Given that the engine is 2 cc bigger than that of a 105E Anglia, and has one fewer cylinder, its progress to a quiet 120 km/h motorway cruise was impressive.  A seven-speed automatic box helps, as does a hefty turbo-charger.