sleepy beach town burgau

We boarded the bus for a quick jaunt across the border from Seville into southern Portugal. It'll only be a bit over an hour, I said, So don't bother going to sleep or anything. An hour later when we were still amongst Spanish olive trees nowhere in sight of the border Beth kindly said nothing. Another few hours we arrived in dreary Friday afternoon Faro and picked up a hire car and drove to Burgau, our seaside home for the week. The apartment was cheap, and stunning, and this was our balcony view.

On a steep hill, the heart of Burgau remains a quaint fishing village and has missed much of the clear-out-the-old-and-erect-low-rise development that scars much of the Algarve. The development here is very obvious but it's off to either side of the village so not as intrusive. That's us, the first two-story building on the right.

Little happened for the next 7 days; we washed our combined bodyweight in clothes, swam at the beach, cooked meals, ate slowly, walked along the cliffs that lined the sea, laughed at the strange British holiday villa developments, and sampled as much of the local vinho verde as we could get our hands on.

On the beach was the famous 'Burgau Beach Bar' which was, as it's name implies, a bar (and restaurant) right on the beach. Nowhere else would you get planning permission for this one. They served Sagres on tap and Spanish olives and that suited us just fine. Some days we'd laze about on the sand, have a swim, then retreat to the bar before afternoon nap time.

We'll go to Sagres, it's just down the road and we can watch the sun sink into the ocean, I'll take photos and it'll be romantic, I said. Getting to the edge of the pre-16th century earth wasn't as close as the tiny Google map had advertised. And then I forgot some almost essential photo taking equipment, and it was cloudy and cold and windy and barren. And beautiful. There's a castle perched on top of the cliffs and it what one would call 'dramatic.'

We had a fantastic week in our Burgau Beachhouse doing sweet FA. Now we're in the death throes of trip we are trying to lengthen each day. It's off to Lisbon, Porto and then we'll be saying farewell to Europe. Until Lisbon, James and Beth. xx.