After a fabulous night at Sagres in front of the fortress, we got up early and were pretty much the first ones in to view it. Wow for €3 each it took us 45 minutes to walk the inside boundary. Here we were right on the edge of Europe in an ancient fortress with cliff top views. Inside the fortress was a quaint little church , a lighthouse, an amazing blowhole and a deep cavern. The winds were blowing hard, we then we spot fishermen, perched on some of the scariest ledges hundreds of metres above the water’s edge. I wouldn’t be surprised if the piles of rocks and stones stacked on top of each other were a memorial to those who had died fishing like this.

We decided to move onto Lagos as it was evident that we were now on the Algarve, 100’s of motorhomes in every direction. Arriving in Lagos we parked in the overflow car park for the aire, a bargain at €3 for the night and our first cost for accommodation this week. Looking in my guidebook I noticed that there was a market on the first saturday of the month. Unfortunately and Murphy’s law it happened to be in that car park, so vans started arriving in droves at 6am and after a night of hard rain, we decided to move on. It was a bit of a gypsy market and we needed power so we drove to Silves this morning, leaving Lagos for another time. Boy did we know we had hit the Algarve, all the Aires and parks in Silves were full. I did a quick walk to town to get some photos of the castle and roman bridge before we moved onto Albufeira. As we drove into Silves you are welcomed by these huge nests on poles and on top of power lines. Nesting are what look like storks, huge birds to equal the huge nests.

As we drove the non toll road to Abufeira, a lovely drive with orchard after orchard of oranges and olives. We arrived to get the last park and finally some electric. I was reading somewhere yesterday that 180,000 motorhomes hit the Algarve in the winter….. believe me I believe that. We just bumped into our Swedish friends we met in Praia de Vaguira at Xmas, they also arrived today. As we both said, we cant wait to get out of the rat race of the Algarve…. I have seen more british vehicles here in one day than we have seen in the last 9 weeks combined. As pretty as it maybe…. there are equally beautiful places that we have seen before now. Hoping to visit Tavina in a couple of days then back into Spain and France heading to Italy for March