Barragems Day

Mon 13^th – Barragem day!

We decided to head inland and visit one of the barragems (reservoir). Highly recommended by many people was Chicken Maria’s at Barragem Monte Da Rocha. As we headed inland the villages and houses became a bit scruffier and more run down. The Alentjejo region is said to be Portugal’s poorest area, and as we ventured further in it certainly looked so. The roads were absolutely appalling, even worse than Italy! We bumped, rattled and rolled our way to the barragem to find ourselves underwhelmed. The scenery was ok but nothing special and we found out that you have order your chicken 24 hours in advance.

bread thief!

go away!

tree stop 

We sat and had lunch and immediately 2 cockerels wandered over for a look. Tina was eating her roll when one of them leapt up and stole a piece of it right from her hand – look at the photo and you can see the piece in its beak. Thief! Boy did we laugh.

We decided to move to another barragem further south – Santa Clara, so off we bumped down the terrible roads. When we arrived there the parking slots had been taken over by a new age / traveller / alternative lifestyle bunch. There was no decent spot left so we decided to move. One young guy, Cody had been there for a whole year! Talk about opting out. Nice enough folks and very friendly but again not for us. “Bad vibes man”.

So plan C – back to Foia. More bumpy, horrible roads and we had to stop for 20mins whilst a felled tree was cleared from the road. Never a dull moment with us. We approached Monchique and entered back into the Algarve region, the road quality immediately improved 200 %. What a lovely twisty, smooth road. J We parked up at the top of Foia in the same slot as the last time we had visited. The views were great as we were at 904m. We watched the sun go down over a very welcome cup of tea. What a day.

Foia sunrise next day