We headed west along the coast and then north and inland.
Our first stop was Caldas de Monchique, a small spa resort set in the foothills
of the Algarve’s highest mountain, famous for its curative waters, supposedly
good for rheumatism. It is only a small village but has a few spa hotels and a
massive bottling factory (well hidden in the valley) that supplies the whole of
Portugal. We had a pleasant stroll down the valley, past the bottling plant to
a small watermill and then took a look around the village. The old casino is
now used to house arts and crafts exhibitions and we were impressed with the
quality and originality of much of the work.
Leaving the village was a little difficult as the one-way
system took us past the bottling plant with lorries queued up on both sides of
the road. The gap was too small for us to fit through but I managed to find an
English-speaking lorry driver at the factory and it turned out that it was his
lorry that was blocking us. With many apologies, he moved his lorry as best he
could and we scraped by (not literally) with inches to spare.
On then, through Monchique to Foia and the aire set at the
summit of the mountain (902m), surrounded by television, radio and mobile
telephone masts plus an observatory. Despite that there was still room to see
the wonderful views and we walked a circuit to admire them. It was quite murky
in the distance but we were still able to see the whole southern coast of the
Algarve as well as the Atlantic coast far to the north. Inland, the views were
still extensive with the landscape was covered in low hills.
We settled down for a night on the bare mountain (except for
the aerials) and the clouds settled down with us, obscuring all of the views.
Photos: The gardens of the Caldas de Monchique spa; The bread
oven (actually two ovens) near the main square – it was still warm when we
visited in the afternoon and had obviously been used to bake bread that
morning; The main square of Caldas de Monchique with the old casino in the
centre of the picture; The view from Foia with the dark clouds descending – it
has become a fashion for visitors to build small cairns.
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