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Definitely cooler up here in the mountains, at nearly 900m, but we have electric hook up for the heating and a lovely sunrise anyway.
We take our time over breakfast then service the van in situ as the pitches here have water and drains, so it is around 11:30 when we check out and trundle slowly down the track in first gear.
Our first stop is in nearby Monchique after climbing up through a hill of eucalyptus and mimosa. This little town is most famous for the medronho licqueur poduced from arbutus [or strawberry] trees. Ali goes into an artisan shop to buy a hand knitted sweater but the owner cannot take cards so they go next door to the butcher who debits the amount and passes cash to the shopkeeper.
Leaving Mochique we head higher into managed forest. Now to describe today's route as hilly, twisting and badly surfaced is like describing the desert as a bit sandy. Suffice to say the steering wheel is rarely still and second and third gears are working fine.
The forest is grown on terraces on the mountainsides and where they have been cut the valleys look like giant amphitheatres. We stop occasionally in laybys to look or take photos. Woodsmoke smells drift up from scattered homes mixing with the odd whiff of damp earth.
We run by pastureland on the valley floor at Nave Redonda, where the newly blossoming mimosa smells like washing up liquid, before climbing north into cork forests. As we approach Odemira the bouncy roads open out into a good surface, but in Odemira itself we end up in a street that gets too narrow for Mary*Lou. Any further and we be like a cork in a bottle, but with help from a local directing traffic we manage to do a five point turn and escape the wrong way up the one-way route.
A few more miles and we arrive at the Lighthouse at Cabo Sardao in Cavaliero where we stopped last year, but things have changed. Then it was barren a clifftop with just the sports pitch and lighthouse. Now wooden piles define the pathways and little log fences surround the gravelled parking spaces. Whether the works have scared away the storks we don't know but last year there were dozens, now very few. There are no signs prohibitting motorhomes and soon we are joined by a German motorhome and settle in to watch a hazy sunset over the clifftop while now and then there is the boom of waves crashing below.
As it gets dark the lighthouse comes alive and its beam sweeps across us.
Observation of the day: Wednesday is washday. Everywhere we've been today washing has hung from lines, fences and windowsills. Even beneath the lighthouse when we arrived two sets of football jerseys hung outside the little clubhouse.
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