More visitors, and a new year

Our daughter, Jo and her husband, Andy arrived on 27th December. Andy had hired a soft roof mini, which he drove with the roof down for the whole of their stay, exhilarating, though cold for us back seat passengers. It was great to see them and they enjoyed the sunny weather, coming fresh from an English winter. We walked to Bergau and drove out along the coast to Salema to see some of the quieter beaches and take in the coastal scenery on the back roads.

We also enjoyed a visit from Matt and Rosie, who had crewed for Scruffbag on the crossing from Mindelo to Barbados. They were staying in Albufeira over Christmas in Rosie's parent's apartment. Scruffbag cooked a fabulous meal and we spent a great evening catching up.

We drove down to Sagres with Jo and Andy and visited Europe's south western point at Cape St Vincent.

After they left on New Year's eve. Scruffbag and I saw the new year in quietly, watching fireworks from the balcony and retiring to bed 15 minutes into 2020.

The it was back to exploring the western Algarve on foot, firstly to Vila de Bispo from whence we walked to the east coast.

We walked through some beautiful countryside and saw a variety of flowers coming into bloom. We also noticed the caterpillars of a very destructive moth, the pine processionary, which live in what look like huge spider's webs and which can wipe out large areas of pine forests.

A few days later we returned to Vila de Bispo to walk down the east coast to Sagres. The scenery was somewhat flat and boring but we wanted to complete the trail and the highlight was our lunch of Scruffbag's delicious pasties and homemade lemon shortbread.

Our final walk before Scruffbag had to pop over to the UK for a hospital appointment was along the west coast from the village of Figures with a 15 minute walk to its deserted beach then back to Luz along the cliffs. What a contrast to the last walk; beautiful coastline with endless deserted beaches with lots of ascents and descents to keep us fit.

Once Scruffbag returns our quiet life will be over for a while as we will be joined by family and friends in quick succession over the next six weeks.