Faro
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
216
219
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
Faro,
Algarve,
Portugal
Friday, December 12, 2008
We were looking to get back on the northerly main road but because of the road works in town, we ended up heading west on a minor road through the fields, with a water canal and many irrigation channels running off it. The day was dull and cold with the sun slowly emerging to burn off the mist that hung in the fields.
We reached the AP4 - E5 that we had travelled up on yesterday and turned north, into heavy mist. As we approached 'Seville' it started to rain heavily and we decided to bypass Seville. It had been quite a chore in the dry and I certainly didn't fancy repeating yesterday's madness in the pouring rain. I had wanted to see Seville's architecture but had no intention of getting wet through doing it. Maybe another time. One thing this trip was taught us is that you can't expect to see everything and Spain was revisitable.
Now going east we left Seville in driving rain on a busy autopista, through an industrialized area and then back into the drenched countryside. Now we were really seeing "the rain in Spain!"
By midday we reached 'Huelva', the last big city in the west of Spain. It was now heavy drizzle and in town we searched for a much signposted 'Centro d'Information Turistica', which we never found and then decided to stop for lunch. In the centre of town was a narrow entry to a car park. They certainly don't give cars a lot of room and I turned in and down the narrow, twisting route to each floor, eventually parking four floors below street level. This is one thing the Spanish are very good at, fitting in car parking below their town centres.
On street level we had lunch at a café, found another tourist info centre (that was closed - well, it is Friday afternoon in December) and then we drove south out of the city. More poor signposting lost us time in finding the road to 'Punta Umbria', which turned out to be a practically deserted holiday town on the south coast, so we then followed the back roads eastwards, looking for a place to stay.
The hibernating tourist areas were all closed and the last small town before the Portugese border was 'Ayamonte', which at least had people around who seemed to live there. It was mid afternoon when we arrived and although we found a hotel, it did not look appealing, so we decided to drive on. The weather now, although dull, was at least dry.
Just up the road was a magnificent road bridge over the 'Rio Gaudiana', we crossed it and were in Portugal. The search for a hotel amongst the south coast, holiday ghost towns continued with no luck and we eventually reached Faro, where the brightly decorated town was busy with shoppers. We found a hotel just off the centre and stopped, a lot later (and in another country) than we planned. I think I would have liked to stay in Spain a little longer but if you gotta go...............
Supper was at a small, local café near the hotel.
Distance driven 327 kms 203 miles
