Expeditions along the coast have been the order of the afternoons and the first trip was to Carvoeiro, five miles east from Ferragudo. This is an old established small resort popular with the British, Germans, French etc judging by the languages you hear as you perambulate along it’s narrow streets (and the range of sports being shown on the bar TV’s.) It also has a wealth of restaurants with photographs of the food they serve. Who doesn’t know what a burger in a bun looks like? If there was ever a signal not eat at a restaurant then photos of its dishes is it.

I can imagine at the height of the season it’s prettiest hellish although I note above the town just to the west the villas and settlement in general are a lot more luxurious and well healed.

A longer drive to the west brought us to Salema which we last visited some time in the last century. Anna reckons it was the in mid 1990s. It’s proverbially off the beaten track with a wonderful beach and the restaurant we fondly remembered is still there. We revisited and the lunch was as good as my memory recollects.

You could tell everyone had been up early judging by the grumpiness of the passenger behind me as we taxied for seemingly miles along the runway before we took off – “What’s he doing? Warming the tyres up?” Otherwise our Jet2holidays flight to Faro, Portugal was thankfully uneventful. However less happily the car rental centre at Faro Airport was some way from the terminal and whilst there were trolleys, for a reason I can’t remember, we dropped ours at the terminal building and I lugged my heavy bike case over my shoulder several hundred yards.

Despite a prior internet booking I spent about 15 minutes in the rental cabin poking buttons on a screen to enable me to wrestle the car off them. As I’m providing lots of meaningless information such as ‘What’s you favourite food?’ ‘What colour underpants are you wearing?’ and ‘Who will win next year’s Eurovision Song Contest?’ a bloke from the rental company ambled across to ask how I was getting on? Error.