We have been in Portugal for three weeks now. The weather is significantly warmer than Scotland, but it has not always been sunny. We have had overcast humid days, rain, fog and thunder. In fact, the weather turned about 3 days after we arrived, just call us the "Rainmakers!"
The area is beautiful. We have not explored very much of it yet, but we have time, so are taking it slow. Currently, we have been a walk to the lighthouse, a meander around the old town, a in land trip to Villamoure, taken the boat to the beach for an afternoon and one over night trip with the boat to Alvor.
Phil has spent a large part of the time here in the very small space under the cockpit sole, fitting our watermaker. (He has written a purely technical blog on that if you're interesed.) However, I can tell you that it easily took him two full working weeks to finish. Each day the boat would be in uproar from morning till night as he moved through the different elements of the installation. It has been a massive job and I am immensely grateful to him for sticking with it and getting it done.
Whilst he has been busy with the watermaker, I have been trying to get fit again. We were not able to run very much in Scotland as the remote locations and poor weather often prevented us and we were down to running less than once a week, at times. Consequently, I have taken full opportunity of being tied to the dock. I have been running every other day since we arrived and have now joined a local gym for the month of November. This means that I am spinning three times a week. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I was not really able to spin in Cardif, my arm complained too much, but it is behaving itself now and I am loving it.
We were fortunate to have arrive in Portugal at the same time as other cruisers and friends, so we have had a very sociable start to our time here. Sarah and Trevor on Elice, who we met in Penarth, were here getting some work done before they moved on to the Canaries, two other Boréals are in the area and Keith, a friend from Spiceball gym, is staying in his villa about an hour away. It has been lovely to share lunch, dinner, tools, and shopping experiences with everyone.
We are here now until the beginning of December, when we will return to the UK for 4-6 weeks, returning to Portugal in January. After that, our general plans are for a season in the Mediterranean, doing the Schengen shuffle between Greece and Turkey. We are really looking forward to returning to some of our favourite places and being able to complain about the heat!
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