Our time since the last post pre-Christmas has mainly been spent on campsites due to the fact that we have had visitors over the Christmas and New Year period, firstly my mother arrived on the 22nd of December and was whisked straight to Silves from the airport and taken to the Ponte Romana for lunch. I am beginning to believe that this is probably the best, most authentic, Portuguese restaurant in Silves, the food is excellent, prices very reasonable and the atmosphere is very local with many Portuguese eating their lunch there. The fish we had was excellent. We relaxed around Silves for the next few days undecided whether to go to the beach at Alvor for Christmas or not, in the end on Christmas Eve we went shopping and after some discussion we decided to just stop at Silves and have Christmas there, it made sense as we know a few people there and we were fairly settled there. Christmas Day was one of much drinking, socialising and outside cooking, me being responsible for the stuffed turkey escalopes wrapped in parma ham, Lorna and mother being responsible for the veg and starters. Of course I got distracted throughout the cooking process so Lorna ended up looking after my part of the cooking as well, still it turned out very nice from what I can remember……..a Christmas present of a bottle of Gran Marnier has dulled the memories somewhat.

On Boxing Day we headed off to the beach at Alvor for a couple of nights where we walked on the beach and around the town and on mothers penultimate day with us we had a very good lunch at a small harbour side restaurant that we had spied on our last visit there a few weeks back. As mother had a relatively early flight on the day of her return to the UK we decided that we should be stopping close to the airport the night before so we headed to the campsite at Olhao which we have not used before. It’s a huge affair, and after a fairly lengthy check in process where they even asked for the dogs passport we were given a map of the site and told to simply find a place to site ourselves. I wasn’t keen on the place at all, far too cramped for my liking with just eight paces between the centre of each marked pitch (some say the site where we work in Stratford is fairly tight but we generally work on 12-14 paces between the centre of each pitch, bit of a difference). It wasn’t overly expensive though with our stay there costing just under €12  for the night. Next day we were up and about and at the airport for 9am saying our goodbyes to mother and then moving back to the site at Tavira where we planned to have a good clean out and relax in the good weather before a couple of workmates joined us on New Years Day.

On a New Years Eve walk into town we realised that there was something going on in the town on the night so after a quiet day we headed into the town at about 10.45pm to find a few people about but nothing much else happening apart from some musicians tuning up going on on the temporary stage that had been erected in the main square. At about 11.30pm things started happening and the band started playing music (old British and American classics) and suddenly the place started to come to life a bit. We ended up sitting outside a small French Cafe just off the river and, having ordered a nice bottle of 2005 Bergerac we toasted in the New Year accompanied by possibly the best firework display I have ever seen. Of course, the festivities went on until the very early hours but as we had left Jack by himself we opted to head back to the motorhome. Nice way to spend the New Year though.

Our friends form work were arriving on New Years Day and they were stopping at a hotel in Cabanas, just down the road from Tavira so we had already had a look at where we might be able to stay to be close to them. There were a few options including staying on a parking area right next to the hotel but we decided in the end to stop on the campsite at Cabanas which was just a 15 minute walk to the town and the hotel. Ideal. We picked up a drunk pair of travellers at around 3pm on New Years Day and dropped them off at the hotel to settle in and recover slightly whilst we went and booked in at the site for a few days. It was quite an expensive site for us coming in at just under €15 a night excluding electric hook up which they charged an extra €3 a night for, we decided that we would be fine running with our solar panel and battery. An afternoon BBQ was the order of the day for our next day, John and Byron came up to the site and we had a good afternoon and early evening having a few drinks, eating chicken and sausages and planning out the following week. Both John and Byron wanted to make the most of their week and had plans of their own so we arranged a day out to El Rocio in Spain as it is a place that I recommend anyone sees if they are in the area, we were just under an hour and a half away so, with a hire car it seemed like a good idea. We had a good afternoon there, wandering around the town which hasn’t changed at all since last time I was there, eating lunch in a small cafe where we had no idea what we were ordering (much like my experience in Caceres earlier on in the trip but this time there was no English translation). I ended up with some kind of fish ‘won ton’ whilst John had fried eggs with a cold bean salad and Byron won the day with a great lump of meat, chips and gravy (though the description on the menu did seem to be mentioning ‘toro’ so it may well have been bulls testicles for all we know. Nice anyway).

El Rocio done we headed back into Portugal where we took in some more sights before heading back and sharing an evening drink in the Hotel. After a few days we needed to move off the Cabanas campsite as it was a bit expensive for us and the old Police site in Tavira is generally a much nicer site, and cheaper, so we headed off whilst John and Byron entertained themselves for a couple of days. They did come to us on their last night for a farewell barbecue and some games of ‘extreme boules’ (which involved very unlevel ground, trees, rainwater ditches and other such sillyness) that went on until we could no longer see in the dark.

After all of our visitors had been dealt with we decided that we would stop on the site at Tavira for a week which is where I am writing this blog update. Plan is to stop here until the weekend then to go and investigate the parking spot at Manta Rota as we have heard that the local council is putting in a proper water and waste point for motorhomes, as well as a barrier so they can levy a charge for people staying there, much like one recently installed at Lagos which is also somewhere we would like to visit. No doubt we will be back at Silves for a while too.

The next three days were spent walking on the beach, taking photos and generally relaxing. Jack, as always, had a great time running on the wide beach and even got his belly wet after getting caught out by a wave. The beach has a long set of board walks which take you all along the harbour, over the dunes and onto the beach at various points, very pleasant walking especially when the sun was setting. We even saw Santa flying by. Ok, it was a bloke from the local flying school, dressed up as Santa on a paramoto (if that is the right word) which was dressed up to look like a sleigh complete with reindeer!

The town of Alvor is quite cute, narrow streets lined with bars and restaurants and the occasional ‘beach’ shop selling all of the normal touristy ware. We found the small local supermarket and stocked up for our stay, deciding not to eat at one of the restaurants no matter how inviting they were, we were on a bit of a budget catch up.

Needing to refill our gas bottles and have some space to look at our alarm ( it is giving an audible warning that a certain area is not being covered properly when we arm it. Can’t seem to find the problem at the moment, all of the wires are connected and switches are in the right place so something is not quite right somewhere) we headed off to the camp site we used last time out in Tavira. The main A22 motorway which runs along the Algarve has now been turned into a toll road, but not your normal type, it’s an automatic toll road which had electronic readers that charge directly. I’m not entirely sure how it works for people without the right equipment but I understand that if you use the toll road you need to go to the Post Office straight away to pay the toll, if not there are hefty fines involved. To be honest, whenever we have been on the A22 it has been quiet so introducing a toll if maybe not the best idea as now even less will use it and this forces traffic onto the EN125 which is already in a pretty poor state of repair. Still, they must know what they are doing but the move to toll seems to be a pretty unpopular one, we have heard of gantries being set on fire and the automatic reading equipment being vandalised. Another issue is that the fact that the road is now a toll isn’t on many signposts, I’ve seen the word ‘Portagem’ on a few but not on the majority of signs so I’m not even sure if the system is fully operational as yet. Anyway, we stayed off the motorway and took our route through Loule, it took a while longer but the scenery was nice and it was a fairly relaxing drive. We arrived at the camp site late afternoon following a short stop at the local ALDI to stock up, and had a barbecued chicken for dinner.Next day we headed off into town to post a letter back to the UK and, typically for Portugal, waited nearly three quarters of an hour to get to the counter, there were irate Germans everywhere complaining about the wait but we have never really experienced anything any different in Portuguese post offices, great place to people watch! After being asked to look after a shellfish store outside the Ping Doce supermarket, whilst the ‘vendor’ went off for a spliff, we returned to the motorhome and had a really good tidy up and another chicken dinner on the BBQ.

Tomorrow we are off to the airport first thing to pick up my Mom who is stopping with us for Christmas, we will probably head back to Silves once we have collected her. We need to look at our alarm for definite as we heard yesterdaday that two motorhomes had been broken into that night in Silves, and although nothing of value seems to have been taken, and nobody hurt, we will feel much better about going back if the motorhome is fully protected. Surprised and slightly shocked that it happened there, it has always appeared to be so safe. A gentle reminder to always be on our guard and not become complacent.

Next day we set off to Biarritz where we met up with Marion and Dave again. We decided that we would have a couple of nights here as the weather was wonderful when we arrived, bright sunshine, lovely blue skies and an outside temperature of 22.5 degrees. Jack had a lovely run on the open beaches and we had a load of fresh air before a good dinner in the evening. The next day I decided that the motorhome needed a good clean so I gave it a good going over, getting the bikes off the rack and making sure that every inch outside was washed off, how it managed to get quite so dirty I have no idea but it was a good job done. Typically, it rained heavily overnight and, as it was still raining the next day we decided to move on to our next stop of Hendaye Plage. This stop is only about 45 minutes away but it does knock that time off the journey to Palencia which we had planned for the next day. This drive is normally one of the longest and most stressful as we invariably get lost once we enter Spain from France, toll roads not signed properly, roads all with similar numbers etc, you’d think we would know our way by now!

So, on Saturday 3rd December we made our way from France into Spain, taking the usual detour along a toll road that we shouldn’t have been on and having to pay both on our exit and entrance back on to it. Nothing changes. We stopped off after about an couple of hours and had a quick bite to eat before setting off again and eventually arriving at Palencia late afternoon. As always seems to be the case when we come to this city, it all appeared closed so our initial scout around the town was just looking at closed shops and empty streets. Looking at some of the opening times on the shops showed the siesta in full operation, 8.30am to 1pm and 5.30pm to 8.30pm, that’s some break! At the right time we wandered back into town and got some basic provisions and settled in for the night, discussing our route down south. Either we could drive from Palencia into Portugal and stay on a paid aire for one night or, head further south in Spain and use an aire in Caceres which we had been to before. The latter won so, the next day we headed off to the town of Caceres where we had stayed before. We remembered that it was a very nice town and recalled that last time we were there there was lots of work going on in the central area so we were interested to have another look around. Our journey took around three and three quarter hours but it was a nice steady drive along good Spanish roads. When we arrived at Caceres the aire was packed, it’s a popular place as it does have free electricity albeit with limited points available, generally there are leads everywhere and much evidence of splitters being used. We were not bothered about getting electricity so found a spot and parked up. Because we wanted to have a good look around the town we decided that we would have two nights here and spent the next day walking Jack around the town, taking some photographs and looking for somewhere that we thought we might like to eat lunch. The central square, where the work was being carried out on our last visit, was now very pretty with plenty of folk around and restaurants taking advantage of all the space to have their tables and chairs out in the beautiful sunshine. We dropped Jack back off at the motorhome and went for lunch.

When we got back into the square we saw that it had become extremely busy so we had to wait for a table at the restaurant that we had decided to eat at, being typically British we started a queue and once a table became free we were seated. This was not before our waited had to throw someone off a table as they just marched up and sat down without queueing, he probably thought this was most strange but he did it and then proceeded to keep shouting ‘Loverly Jubberly’ to us every time he passed by, quite a character. The menu was in both Spanish and English but the English translations left a lot to the imagination, I started with an Iberian Mixed Platter which ended up being a good portion of salamis, hams and cheese, Lorna had the paella. My main was described as ‘Serloin of the cake of to Mary’ and obviously I had no idea what was going to come when I ordered it but I was very pleasantly surprised to get chunks of steak served in a quite strong cheese sauce with a peeled pepper salad and chips. Lorna had suckling pig. Our sweet was a creme brulee each and for just €12 for three courses, in that location, it was a complete bargain.

From Caceres we moved in into Portugal and made our way to an Orbitur campsite in Evora. We had wild camped in Evora before but we needed to get some washing done as well as making sure that everything was charged up and we were full and empty with water. We booked in for two nights at a cost of just under €30. Our afternoon was spent clearing out and washing so the next day we headed into town to have another look around, maybe to see things that we missed on our last visit and then we treated ourselves to a late afternoon BBQ.

Next stop was Silves on the Algarve, a place where we will probably spend most of our time over the next few weeks and where I am writing this from now. The weather isn’t brilliant at the moment but we are here with friends and it’s not raining. We celebrated out 6th wedding anniversary yesterday and it’s Lorna’s birthday tomorrow and a big BBQ is being planned, hopefully the showers that have been forecast will hold off and we can have a good day of it.

Next stop for us all was the aire at the troglodyte village of Villaines de Rochers where, I had been told, there is free wi-fi at the Marie but, being a Sunday, it was not available as the offices were closed. Unfortunate but no real set back for us all. After an early dinner we watched a couple of films before having an early night. Next morning Marion and Dave left before us, heading south. We walked Jack and then set off to our next stop at Vivonne, a nice aire set just outside a pleasant town, again with the bonus of having plenty of open spaces around for Jack to get his exercise. We arrived quite early as our planned stop at Richelieu didn’t happen so our afternoon was spent pottering around the town and relaxing.

At our current pace it looks as thought we will be hitting Biarritz before the weekend meaning we should be in Portugal easily by early next week. The weather already seems to be a bit warmer than it has been in the north of France so things are looking very positive indeed!

We managed to get some way through the massive menu and then ordered our drinks which were soon delivered and then the tasting began. I’m liking the choice of Belgian beers available, they are strong though, one I had was 10% and it tasted wonderful. Unfortunately we only had time for a couple of beers there but it is definitely somewhere that I would like to go to again, maybe we will be stopping off at a supermarket on our way back and getting a selection in especially as I’m now out of Purity Gold! Tuesday afternoon was spent relaxing over a few cups of tea and then, when our hosts left we had a chilled out night watching TV.

We were up earlier on Wednesday morning as we were all off to the market in the centre. Jeff and I walked in with Jack whilst Lorna and Marie-Jeanne took their bikes in again. The market was fairly typical, plenty of vegetables, plenty of cheese, plenty of meat. We bought some cooked chicken and spare ribs for our lunch as well as a few blocks of cheese and some saucison for me and then, back at our hosts house we ate well and had a few beers. Marie-Jeanne works on Wednesday afternoons supporting carers for people who suffer from dementia so we spent a while longer with Jeff before a steady walk back and another late afternoon and evening just relaxing in the motorhome.

I decided to take my ‘proper’ camera into Brugge and capture a few shots of places that I had previously photographed with my cameraphone. Loads more detail in these shots obviously but I still enjoy the ease of the cameraphone, I think that if I manage an even split between proper camera shots and cameraphone shots I will have done well. Again, more photos on my Flickr stream.

As I write this we are just getting ready to head off down back into France where we are meeting our travelling partners Marion and Dave at an aire called Hondschoote. From there it is all South and toward Portugal. We have decided to treat these five days as a holiday as with campsite fees and meals out we are way over our normal day to day budget, it’s been well worth it though as we have had a brilliant time in Brugge. We’ll be sad to leave.

Jack loves the beach, he can run for ages and as the sand is quite deep he gets a good workout, he also loves to dig! Our day in Calais consisted of a really good walk along the beach and then back into the suburbs and back to the aire, we must have been gone for about three hours in all and predictably on the way back we stopped off at the butchers and bought our dinner, pork mince wrapped in veal, a very easy and relaxing day.

Saturday morning came and we packed up and made our way to Brugge which was around an hour and a quarter away. We had already investigated a camp site there which was just out of the city centre so we phoned, booked in and set off. The drive there was very easy, very flat and also very misty so we had virtually no view of the countryside at all unfortunately but when we started to approach the city we could immediately see that it was a very pretty place with a wide canal running in between the road we were on and the city walls. We found the camp site very easily and were soon parked up and settled in next to two other British motorhomes.

When we were in Monsaraz in Portugal in early 2010 we met a couple, Jeff and Marie-Jeanne, who we spent a couple of days with, they lived in Brugge and had invited us to come to see them. We had had contact with them once in the meantime and still had their number so we phoned them up hoping to maybe see them whilst we were in the city. They were very excited to hear from us and instead of arranging something for the next few days they offered to come and pick us up that evening and take us to theirs for drinks and a sandwich. At 7pm they arrived, drove us to theirs and we had a great evening catching up, eating seemingly endless supplies of food and drinking. They looked after us! They had offered to take us around the city of Brugge and show us the sights the next day so in the morning they came to pick all three of us up and took us into town.

Brugge has to be the prettiest city I have been to, canals run through the centre which carry tourists in big boats but there is also the option to see the sights in horse drawn carriages which trundle through the cobbled streets, we walked. The buildings are wonderful, the town hall, the Belfry, the main church which is the tallest stone built building in Belgium, the quiet area where the nuns used to live, the bustling main streets and the numerous bridges, just a really pretty place to be.

As usual, Jack got his usual attention whilst out on the streets but for slightly different reasons. We had already seen greyhounds being walked around so were a little taken aback when people were still pointing and smiling at him, this was until Jeff explained that his coat was the same colours as one of the football teams in Brugge who were playing the other Brugge based team later in the day, a big local derby. Luckily we were inadvertently showing support for the more popular team. Funny.

As we had Jack with us, Jeff and Marie-Jeanne had arranged for us to eat at their nephews equine centre which was just out the city centre, Jack was allowed in and it was really appreciated that they thought of him when planning the day. We ate pasta whilst watching horses trot about in a training area which was very pleasant. After this we went to the other side of Brugge where the streets are narrower and the houses are smaller and there are less tourists, we walked around for a while before stopping off for a coffee and then finally returning to the motorhome for a few hours before going back to our friends house for evening food and drinks.

They really looked after us again and being able to see all of the places that we did and hear about some of the history of the place was really a big bonus for us. All of my photos here were taken on my HTC Desire, more on my Flickr stream which is linked on the right hand side of this page.

On Monday we just had a quiet day on the site, walking Jack, writing blogs and, later in the day a bit of shopping in the local shops and supemarkets. Tuesday we have a lunch of moules frites planned somewhere in the city as a thank you to our hosts for looking after us so very very well.

As soon as we got off the ferry we were straight round to the aire at Calais where we had decided to hang around for the night. Shortly after parking up we were in the butchers buying our dinner, despite stocking up in the UK before we left. We just got excited and so a hearty meal of fillet steak with veg, and of course the obligatory bottle of wine, Beaujolais Noveau as it was the day of release, we are still not sure where we are off next but Brugge is looking like a distinct possibility.

No rush.

It’s really good to have the feeling that this vehicle will be our home for the next few months. Really looking forward to this trip, possibly more than any other, and, having bought a booster for my phone which allows me cheaper internet access whilst abroad I plan to keep the blog fairly up to date but I hope to be concentrating more on photographs than words.

So, some facts:

The following costs are all in Sterling. Our bank has converted the € to the £ at anything from €1.115 to €1.158 but I would guess at an average of €1.13 to the £

We spent a total of 113 days on our travels and in that time we travelled 7295Km (4533 miles), spent a total of £986.46 on fuel, this includes diesel for the engine and LPG for the tanks which run our fridge, heating and cooking facilities. All of this cost was paid on our debit card so we have a completely accurate record of costs in that department. Our ferry journeys using the Dover to Calais to Dover route on P&O Ferries cost a total of £116.25.

Our day to day living cash (on a budget of €20 a day) totalled £2306.75 withdrawn from ATM machines and money we took with us, so we were slightly over budget there but we did buy a fair amount of stuff that we bought back to the UK with us (saving us money long term) and we had a contingency fund of £500 for things like maintainence of the motorhome (windscreen wiper repairs and safe cracking), vets bills (bite treatment and passport innoculations) and things that fell into ‘anything else’.

We spent a total of £86.65 on automatic payment aires in France, Le Treport and Mimizan Plage. The charges for Biarritz and Vila Formosa came out of the day to day spending as did the charges for the time we spent on campsites in Tavira and Monchique.

We used some toll roads on our journey through France in December and again on our way back into France from Spain in March this came in at around €41, the main cost being the first journey through France when we decided to make a run south, that cost €33.30 for one trip.

Our bank charges us every time we use the debit card abroad, either in a shop or to withdraw cash and the total cost of this came to £63 (at £1.50 per transaction). Phoning home was a fair cost but this was reduced dramatically by me losing my phone on our way to Dover. We did pick up a Portuguese SIM card which gave us cheaper rates at the weekend for international calls but even with this we still managed to spend £260 on mobile phone top ups with Orange. We used Skype a little and spent £11.50 on credit for that. Top ups for the Portuguese phone came out of the day to day living cash.

In total, our costs for the trip came out at £3950.24 and that includes everything from the day we left to the day we arrived back in the UK. Now we know how much we need to save whilst we are back working in the UK to enable us to do it all again!

With diesel being much cheaper in France than in the UK I planned to fill up as late as possible and, as we neared Calais we stopped off at a supermarket and put as much fuel in as possible, in this instance just over €80 worth. We couldn’t resist one final shop either so we went into the supermarket and bought more sausages, more wine (two cases, one white, one red, buy one get one free making each bottle less than €1.30!), a couple of tins of confit de canard (duck legs preserved in their own fat) and some other stuff of little significance. The wine bottle count is now up to 48 so I think that we have enough supplies in to last us a fair while when we get back to the UK and, considering that on average we have paid around €2 per bottle we will be making a considerable saving over UK prices, not to mention the difference in quality.

We arrived at Calais at about 3.30pm and despite our plans to go to the wine warehouse to get some more bottles we didn’t get that far before the sat-nav told us to get off the motorway and took us toward the aire. I decided not to fight it as I thought we probably had enough wine on board anyway. The aire was busy and we eventually found a place to park that was reasonably level (N50°57.962′ E001°50.622′).

The positioning of the place is really quite nice, it looks right over the port and out to sea and you get to see the ferries really close up as they arrive and leave, which is very regular indeed. We had an wander around and got tempted by one of the food places on the sea front, ending up buying a big bag of chips and returning to the motorhome to eat them whilst watching Deal or No Deal and drinking tea.

As the sun set we were out again, running with Jack on the beach and savouring the lovely views.

That is it now, our last day abroad and the final day of our travels. Tomorrow we will be back in the UK and back on the site in Stratford Upon Avon ready for work the day after. It is going to be a busy season and we are both looking forward to it immensely. 7 and a bit months to go and, all things being equal, we will be back out again…….excellent!

Back at the motorhome I phoned up and booked our ferry crossing for Wednesday at 10.30am French time, next job was to get closer to Calais. We had decided to go to Le Treport because we knew that we would be able to get electricity there, there is a charge, but at €8.95 for the night it’s not excessive and it would leave us within easy reach of Calais where we planned to stay the night before we sailed. The journey there was nice and easy and took us just over and hour and a half, interrupted by a stop at the Lidl in Dieppe for some supplies (a bit more wine, some pate, sausages, cognac and razors). The stop there was a bit strange as as soon as we had parked we had a guy knocking on the door asking for money so he could eat. We had no change but, feeling a bit charitable we told him to come back to us once we had done our shopping and we would sort him out. I bought him some sandwiches in the shop but he wasn’t around when we returned so we ate them on our way to our destination.

At Le Treport we parked up and plugged in and then walked Jack along the path that runs alongside the aire, the same one where he was walked when we arrived here in December, in the snow. Things were looking much more colourful now though as the grass had grown and the trees were starting to get some colour back in them. Our afternoon was a very lazy one as we watched TV and then had pasta and sausages for our dinner, the sausages from Lidl were excellent, pork and red wine, and extremely tasty, comparable to ones I have had from butchers back in the UK. I’ll definitely be stocking up on those next time we are on our way through France into Spain.

Our night was much warmer as we had the luxury of having the electric heater on, unfortunately though Jack didn’t have a good night as he got us up early morning and was sick outside the motorhome, probably a reaction to the tablets he had had, maybe the injection was a better idea after all.