Dale & Nicky OE: Portugal, Algarve part 2 and South Western Coast

After the football in Parchal we went to Alvor for the night to a paid Aire (4 euro). An aire is an official motorhome stop often with a waste point, sometimes for free, sometimes not. We had seen a youtube video made by a disgruntled man who owned a villa overlooking this area where many motorhomes would park up for free in the past. Which is one of the reasons it is now a pay, official stop, but still pretty popular. There must be a good 60 or 70 motorhomes here. The main attraction here is a Alvor boardwalk, which connects Portimao and Alvor.

We next went to Lagos. The aire there is located at the stadium, and for 3 euros includes waste disposal and wifi. It is also walking distance from the town and with so many motorhomes around felt pretty secure. The town is lovely. We had in mind a couple of attractions we might visit but ended up spending our time walking around and admiring the place.

We walked to Chinicata just outside Lagos where there was a flea market being held on the Sunday. It held our attention for about 45 minutes but we didn't buy anything. We also went out to Sagres and walked to the fort, and to Cape St Vincent. Cape St Vincent was thought to be the end of the world in the 16th century and is the most SW point of Europe. Our guidebook claims there was a navigation school set up in Sagres by Henry the navigator, but the assistant in the tourist office assured us that there is no proof that this was the case and only a couple of buildings remaining in the fort are from Henry's time.

Sagres

We went to an Algarve cup match, Iceland vs China, which was on at the stadium (very convenient). It was a reasonably tight match with Iceland scoring the only goal in injury time. In the morning we headed north toward Lisbon, finding a beautiful spot for lunch and also stopping for views at Villa Nova de Milfonte and Porto Covo. We were wishing that we had more time as we made quick stops in these fantastic places.

We wanted to get closer to Lisbon for the night so we headed to a point on the sat nav (Dale has downloaded campsites, wild camping spots and aires from many different internet sources onto the sat nav). This wasn't a spot we had researched but hoped it would be suitable. As we rounded the corner we saw a lovely reservoir and some motorhomes, success, and then we saw more motorhomes. There must be about 40 of them here. We are two hours from Lisbon which we will drive tomorrow morning and I will let the pictures do the talking- what a beautiful spot.

Beach where we had Lunch