1 year, 306 since the start of the 1st lock down in March 2020
Back in the car again today after our lovely day in Fuseta yesterday. We’d both read about a town called Loulé only half an hour or so away so we drove inland after setting the car SatNav.
It took a little while to find a parking space but I finally spotted one and managed to reverse in one go! The town was really nice, low key and non touristy. I had read about the ‘Mercado’ which unusually was not just food but also crafts and it was very good. So good in fact that Colin bought a new leather belt from a really nice lady and I spotted jars of homemade marmalade and treated Colin to a jar. I’m worried that it’ll be so nice he’ll have wanted more jars!
After the market we enjoyed a coffee and cake and also found the town castle - pretty impressive and much the same style as the one in the Spanish town of Avila we had seen a few years ago. We also continued on a quest to find an apparently amazing waterfall hidden within the town. I followed Google maps down rather tatty side streets until we found a steep cobbled road with a rough staircase leading down to a stream. I’ll be honest it was pretty unimpressive and I’d describe it as more of the flow of our gutter overflowing during a rain storm!
Back to the car with ten minutes to spare on the parking and it was onwards to Fonte Benemola - a spring within a National park. It was a bit of a walk through a lovely valley full of the first spring flowers and a lot of birds flitting around. The river itself was (rather like the waterfall earlier) not as full as I’d of expected as being in winter but it was nice enough and we walked up to where I presume it disappeared underground and than back down again and then back through the valley to the car. We then started to drive back via a sleepy town called Estoi and managed to find the Roman ruins we had been looking for but as they were about to close we decided to come back another day. After a swift very large sandwich and coke in Estoi we headed home for a eat before a delicious meal out in a new restaurant we had spotted a few days ago - my pepper steak was the biggest I’ve ever had - we waddled home with a total of over 18,300 footsteps for the day!
