PORTUGAL 2010: TAVIRA. Mad dogs and Englishmen

Since I arrived here, about three days ago, its been a welcome rest from the noise and manic activity of Lisbon. When I came here to the Algarve part of Portugal, I had the pre-conception of a land of English beer, fish and chips, and semi wealthy bored red faced Brits reading yesterday`s news from English news papers. So far not quite as bad as my premonitions, but the weather makes up for everything. Staying with some very old friends, Nigel and Christine whom I see about every ten years, and have made their home here.

The Stevensons´

Their house lies about 7km from Tavira which is just along the south coast of Portugal from the more well known Faro. They have a couple of crazy dogs, so hence the title. Its been a restful few days punctuated with riding a scooter and a borrowed bike. Tavira has the feel of a lazy seaside town and fishing harbours.

Tavira river waterfront

Roman bridge. Tavira

The economy of these parts is probably mainly tourism and secondly salt production. The salt marshes are perfectly suited to making salt because of the lengthy hot season, so this part of the coast is dotted with hundreds of salt pans where the seawater evaporates leaving thick layers of salt.

salt pans

a tree house

The Spanish border lies about 10km along the coast from here which is useful for a trip to Seville which is about 3 hours by bus. I will hopefully make that trip in the next few days.
But finally, I saw something in Tavira that brought back some memories of my summer in Spain, on the Camino de Santiago. The yellow arrows painted on the kerbs in Tavira were exactly the same as the ones I followed for 5 weeks on the trail to Santiago. ´Very odd´I thought until a visit to Castro Marim today. There´s a castle which stands overlooking the river between Spain and Portugal, and there I saw the scallop shell Camino symbol and more yellow arrows. It is the beginning of a Portuguese Camino route, all the way up the eastern side to Santiago.