Loule: The Holiday within the Holiday.

We wish our Egyptian friends safe travels and book an Uber to head to the regional train station of Santa Apolónia, just on the outskirts of the city. We give ourselves an hour, but getting out of the heart of the city with its narrow, one-way cobblestone streets takes considerable time. Although we make it to the train station with 15 minutes to spare, it takes ages to figure out where the platforms are and which of the ten is ours. It’s one of those rare occasions when you’re glad the train has been delayed. After lugging suitcases up and down various staircases to find the train and platform, we get on and find our seats with ten minutes to spare.

Today’s journey will take us to Espargal, a small village about 25 minutes outside Loule. We have ten days in a rustic cottage owned by one of our Broome friends, Sarah. We arrive in Loule early in the afternoon and order an Uber. Our driver, Adrian, seems a bit surprised we are staying up in Espargal. “It’s mainly old people living up there,” he tells us. I wondered if he

realized we were old?

We arrive at the cottage mid-afternoon and are met by Sarah’s builder, who shows us around and hands over the keys. Robyn has been watching the progress of the renovations online for the past year, so it’s great to be here and see it firsthand. It’s a mix of rustic charm—original stonework, doors, and tiles—with very modern fittings and beautiful art (much of it from the Kimberley). We’re about 350 meters above sea level, and it’s much cooler than we have experienced so far. This suits us, as before we know it, we’ll be back in the sweltering heat of the Kimberley wet season.

Once we unpack, we drive into Loule to do some shopping. Sarah is letting us use her car while we’re here. The drive into town is a little nerve-racking; driving a left-hand drive manual is a bit weird, but it’s not long before it becomes second nature. It reminds us of our week on Sant’Antioco, Sardinia, driving the Fiat Panda. We shop at Aldi and get enough food to last a few days. On returning to the cottage, we spend some time up on the rooftop terrace with snacks and Mateus rosé, enjoying a commanding view of the glowing, whitewashed villages on the opposite side of the valley.

On our second day in Espargal, we do very little. It’s our first day in a month to simply relax, although we did manage to do a load of washing and play some dominoes. We had to YouTube “how to play dominoes” first and found a very funny video. In the afternoon, we took a stroll down to the nearest main road about 2.5 km away. Just at the crossroad, we found a little bar and had some beer. Nobody could quite figure out where we had come from.
Loule reputedly has the best fresh food markets in southern Portugal, so on Saturday, we get up at 7 and head into town. While we’ve seen fresh food markets before on this trip, this is the first time we’ve been able to buy produce to take back to our home away from home to cook with. It’s a huge market spreading over several streets, and just like Cahors in France, it’s an assault on all the senses. Food that looks and smells like food used to. We chat with one seller who has a couple of different varieties of mushrooms. We buy some of each. While chatting about mushrooms, she tells us that all varieties of mushrooms can be eaten; however, some

varieties can only be eaten once! We spend the next few days enjoying home-cooked meals, broken up with the odd lunch out as we explore neighboring villages.

Sunday is another early start as we drive down to the coast to do the Seven Hanging Valleys Trail in the Algarve. It’s a walking trail along the high limestone cliffs, spanning several whitewashed villages. We’re in autumn, so it’s not the high tourist season, but there are still lots of people on the walk, which reminds us of the Cinque Terre in Italy. The cliffs jut in and out of the coast, and there are lots of boats taking tourists along the coast and in and out of the caves. We walk for two hours in one direction, then head back, though I think we only conquered about half of the route. Some parts of the trail are particularly challenging, requiring you to scramble over steep rock faces. Interestingly, there are seashell fossils at the top of the cliffs.

On the walk back, we stop at one of the villages that sprawls down the side of two opposing cliff faces and enjoy a couple of pints of beer and the local specialty of octopus and rice. It’s a big day out and our first experience on the freeway.