And... more of the Algarve...

We decided to go Portimao for gas and return to Silves for another night, eventually leaving Silves on Sunday morning after stocking up with food. We decided to follow a route shown in a leaflet we picked up in Monchique, the first point being the Barragem do Arade, a dam surrounded by lovely countryside. We stopped for lunch, had a walk round then partially drove round the bendy narrow road alongside the dam and then onto the scenic country road to Sao Bartolomeu de Messines. Although we’ve seen orange and lemon trees throughout Portugal, this part of the Algarve seems to have more than ever, with fields taken over with hundreds and hundreds of trees. We’ve also recently started noticing almond trees as they’re in blossom at the moment. We have a bit of a walk around Sao Bartolomeu de Messines but there isn’t anything of interest to us so we move on to the next place on the route, Paderne. We park up, go for a walk and fill up with water.

The next day we drive on towards the castle which is a couple of miles out of Paderne, deciding to stop at a local washing facility when we see 4 or 5 other motorhomers there. It’s a lovely sunny but windy day, so we decide to do some washing, hang it out, have lunch then go on a walk. The pedestrian route to the castle is signposted, we walk through farmland that seems to have been abandoned. At the foot of the castle is a board giving a couple of walking options, we take the route that takes us along the river, across a ford, past a waterwheel, over a medieval bridge and then up the hill to the castle. The views around us were lovely, the only thing that spoilt it slightly was the sound of the motorway in the distance. We return to the motorhome just over 2 hours later.

On Tuesday we travelled a few miles on to Alte, a small, pretty village on a hillside. Unfortunately major road works were going on in the village centre with diggers and lorries everywhere while the roads were being re-cobbled. We have a good walk around, taking in the “small fountain” and the “large fountain” return to the motorhome for lunch and then go for another walk stopping along the way for a coffee and a traditional Portuguese custard tart. We found some lemons to pick so cooked some nice lemon and garlic chicken with potato wedges and salad for tea :-)

The next day we drove to the Rocha de Pena area and parked in the little village of Penima. The Rocha de Pena is a protected cliff area with a walk up and around it. We did the walk which took about 2.5 hours, longer than we expected as it was only 5km, but a lot of it was uphill and quite rocky. We didn’t start the walk until nearly midday, so we were starting to get a bit hungry! Luckily towards the end of the walk was a café so we stopped for a toastie and then continued. We then drove on towards Loule, attempted to get through a very narrow village road in Pena and changed our mind. Mark reversed into a narrow side road, but then when he tried to go forward the road was just too steep and wonky, the front passenger wheel just wouldn’t grip and just spun round and round. We decided to dump the water that we’d got onboard in the hope that getting rid of some weight at the back would allow the front wheels to grip, but no such luck. In the end we decided to look for help! Found a couple of Portuguese men who didn’t speak any English. Luckily one of them had a 4WD vehicle with a winch and was able to tow us up and out of our predicament. It was a quite stressful!! We gave them some money for their trouble, without their help we’d still be there…

We drove on towards Loule stopping off at Querenca, which seemed to be very quiet and deserted. There didn’t seem to be much to it apart from a church and a couple of cafes/restaurants, so we took a couple of photos and carried on our way. We eventually arrived in Loule early evening, parked up and will wait until tomorrow until we take a proper look around. Luckily we’ve got some drinking water to keep us going until we can find some water tomorrow!