Portugal

We spent a long time in Portugal in the end - from Lisbon on the West Coast , all along the Algarve to Tavira and the town Vila Real de Santa Antonia which borders Spain, I think we spent time in every potential anchorage and marina in the country

Isla da Culhatra 

This place was our favourite little hideaway on the Algarve. No tourists, and a little sandy shanty town, outside of Faro with a great anchorage. 

Ferragudo

We ended up spending quite a long time here and had many an adventure- including getting married here in 2016!

What a fantastic day ( and week) this was ...

Praia Grande just outside Ferragudo has a lovely big, wide anchorage with a white sandy beach and a couple of nice beach restaurants/bars 

The small town of Ferragudo is around half a mile away- walk either along the beach or inland. Dotted with restaurants, bars and shops, this is clearly, now set up for tourists, but has maintained its original charm to have the feel of a fishing village - which essentially- it still is. 
The whole coastline of the Algarve is beautiful but there are, in my opinion a couple of areas which are a bit too "Brits abroad" for me. 
We were here over the winter and it was sunny, warm in the middle of the day, but cold in the mornings and evenings. We had to use the boat heating every day ( thank god we actually had heating!) 

Some of the long beautiful walks along the Algarve coastline were incredible- I am told you can walk all the way from the very western tip ( Cape Vincent) to Spain along the coastal path. That would be a good challenge (for someone else 😁) 

One of our favourite things when we are in a new (or old) place is to go off on long walks - either via 'All trails' or 'Wikiloc' walking apps or we just explore blindly. Quite often/ always - this will end in a trip to a local bar/ restaurant to undo all the healthy damage we have done ourselves! 
One time, we went for a mahoosive walk along the Algarve coast, got back to Ferragudo- it was winter and dark. We watched all the fishing boats coming in after a hard day at sea. 
After a few beers in Ferragudo, dinner,and then a few more beers - we thought we should probably stop drinking and get back to the boat - it was cold, and our boat was around a 20 minute tender (dinghy) ride away. 

Where is the tender??  Found it!  Where is the key for the tender??  Hmm - no key.  Who had the key ? Where is it? Who saw it last? ( luckily not me 🤣 for once) 

We lock the tender up with a big padlock - probably sounds a bit over dramatic in these lovely places we visit - but, having had a tender stolen, it is such a pain. We now do everything we can to avoid this.

So first of all, the Portuguese beer fuelled Crawford/ Action man - tried to break the padlock, by balancing a big stick on the lock and standing, then jumping on it with all his  body weight - of course, that ended in tears with him fallling A**e over T*T !

If I wasnt really worried he had broken something (he landed straight onto his hip) I would have found this hilarious (of course I did later when I realised he was fine)  Thank God - he was fine. 

We thought of every option we could - basically we had no way of getting back to Nauplios, anchored off the big bay without our tender. Should we get a hotel, go to the police, try to find someone else to break the lock? 

Luckily, in the restaurant we had just eaten in, we had left a big tip (lots of beer, plus we had no small change) - the waitress was absolutely lovely.

We went back to the restaurant - it was winter, and really wasnt busy. We asked her if she knew where the local police station was and told her our predicament. Luckily for us, her English was really good, and the Portugese people are always so lovely, friendly and helpful. 

She just said "come with me" and took us round the corner where a group of Portugese fishermen were standing, in the square of Ferragudo, drinking beer, smoking fags and "chewing the fat" after a hard day catching fish (hopefully for them) 

She rattled away in Portugese to this group, and one guy stepped forward gesturing for us to follow him. 

What a lovely guy - he rowed out to his fishing boat, picked us up from the dock, took us out to Nauplios where we collected the spare key for the tender, then took us back to the  dock. 

All the way, he had a fag in his mouth and a bottle of beer in his hand - it was hilarious. (Sort of) 

So that was one of our experiences of the lovely, kind, friendliness of the Portugese people. We were so grateful - we gave him some money and a bottle of whisky from Nauplios. He looked happy!