THE B-TEAM DOES THE ALGARVE

Saturday 5th March

The Pates duly arrived looking pale and pasty from the long English winter and revelling in the sunny climes of Portugal. We entered them to dinner and after the requisit beers and wines I introduced them to the delights of Tawny port which must have been a success as I soon had none left.
Saturday morning was spent locating a bar showing the 6 Nations Rugby as I could not guarantee getting a satellite picture on Stream ..we were pitched near some trees and as the breeze swayed the top branches the picture could break up...despite dire predictions that our dish was too small for this part of the Algarve I solved the problem on Sunday by moving lower down in front of the trees and had a perfect picture for the rest of the week. Anyway I digress. We found a bar, then had a snack lunch at another before returning to watch Wales-Scotland and England-France which was a cracker. Unfortunately we had chosen an horrendous ex-pat bar run by Denise (50 - looked 60-drinking vodka by the 1/2 pint) with about the saddest collection of alcoholics you could meet outside of an AA meeting. But we had fun. Dinner at the Valverde Restaurant opp. the campsite was very good indeed - the Gf & I shared a Cataplana, the local variant of a Bouillabasse. Sunday saw us watch the Italy-Ireland game chez nous as the reception was now ok and D&B entertained us to dinner in their roundhouse chalet with garden furniture...apart from not being able to light the oven so we had to cook the chicken in our oven (Dave announced that their oven was unconnected to anything, thus demonstrating his grasp of gas installations as the manager showed him how to light it the next day....and the Gf showed him again later in the week when he failed to hold the gas nob in until the burners had ignited fully). The evening was further enlivened by Dave's patio plastic chair disintergrating under him, smashing one of OUR wine glasses and covering me with red wine. ( not funny really as he banged his head on the glass door panel and if it had broken.......).
The rest of the week maintained a highly enjoyable level of alcohol, sun, sightseeing and eating. WE showed them Lagos, MOnchique, Cape St.Vincent, the beaches of Saleema, Figueras, Luz, Port du Mos and Carapaterra and the grottoes of Lagos and enjoyed convivial evenings.....and even won the Quiz night at the Dukes where we had been recommended to sample the wednesday evening €8.50 buffet .. how the bill got to €110 was still a mystery on Thursday. We even had time for an afternoon barbecue of fish bought from the Lagos fish market......7 sardines the size of mackerel cost €0.66 and a lot of other unidentified fish only cost a few €s.
The fine weather finally broke on Friday night and instead of going into Luz for a classy meal at Mrs. Miggins we opted to just cross the road again to save messing around with taxis in the rain.
So my liver needs time to recuperate so we are going up the coast for a couple of days of wild camping........