Pottering in Portugal

Greeting readers, we hope you didn't think the blog had ended as it hasn't - hopefully that's good news for you. We've simply been incredibly busy having fun, travelling (of course) and running the Bears Unlimited business, so we decided to have a bit of a sabbatical from the blog.

Keep checking the site though as we'll try and write often enough to keep you interested and make it worth your while checking for new posts.

We've clearly got a bit of catching up to do, so where do we start? Perhaps the New Year would be a good place. While Blighty was wet and windy, albeit not that cold, we jetted off to the Algarve, arriving on 2nd January (we couldn't arrive any sooner as there was a race meeting at Fakenham on New Years Day which we couldn't possibly miss!)

As you can see from our first photo, you don't have to travel far to find sunshine and blue skies in early January.

The rocky Algarve coast with its cliffs and sandy beaches was a real joy and we were out and about exploring and researching material for the Friendly Planet guide, almost as soon as we arrived. In the evenings we swam in the covered pool at our apartments, watched DVDs from the library, played pool in the Holiday Property Bond clubhouse and tried one or two of the local wines. It was heavenly and a great way to banish the January blues.  

We were out and about every day, and made good use of our Cicerone walking guide. We were particularly fascinated by the cork trees which we encountered on several walks, as we'd never seen them before.

As you can see, only a section of cork gets harvested at a time and the harvesting is a very organised process. The number on the tree indicated the year of the last harvest (in our picture 2008) and 10 years will be left between harvests, to allow the cork to grow back even better than before. We shall always look at cork in a different light now.

Towards the end of the week we went over to the west coast and here there were some simply huge seas. Sorry, we had to use humans to provide some scale, but us travelling bears, are just too small in relation to swells of this size.

We'd like to say that we were out there surfing, but it would be a lie. Perhaps if we'd had action bear Chelmer, with us, he'd have been tempted, and might have encouraged us, but we decided our duty was to keep our minders company ... honest!

Cape St Vincent was definitely worth a visit. It's the most southwesterly point in Portugal and it has a big lighthouse ...

... and it's a great place to sit and watch the sun go down. As it was getting cold outside we sat on the dashboard of our Corsa hire car. We like Corsas as we have one at home.

We hope you've enjoyed our Portuguese highlights and will join us again sson.

Lots of love, George, Yorkie, Rocco, Rosa and Douglas xxx