20 September 2022
Tavira is located at the eastern end of the Algarve and only about 20km from the Spanish border. The coast line along here is extremely flat and is littered with salt flats and a cluster of low lying islands.
Octopus is a local delicacy and on pretty much most menus, fresh and cheap. Given this our first dinner is Tavira was at a restaurant that specialised in Octopus.
Most of the local sites are churches but in the center of the town in a disused water tower on the local high point some enterprising locals have installed a camera obscura - v cool as the only other time we've seen one was in Bristol a couple of decades ago.
Whilst Tavira is a coastal town it is still about 3kms from the beach and the easiest way to get to the beach is to simply catch a ferry that takes you a few km down river past the salt flats to Tavira Island.
Second day headed to Pedras del Rei, about 4 km down the coast) and chilled on the beach all (great weather). Along this part if the coast there are four settlements. Cabana, Tavira, Santa Lucia and Pedras del Rei.
The first is very much a twitcher destination, the second a nice village built around salt harvesting, the third an active fishing village where locals can still be seen mending their nets by hand and then there's Pedras del Rei. On arrival found that Pedras del Rei isn't so much a settlement as a v large timeshare complex - on the plus side when it was built they also put in a walkway and bridge to enable access to the beach.
The walkway takes you through tidal mudflats - which of course means crabs (Fiddler Crabs to be precise).
At the beach there is an interesting site known as the Cemetery of Anchors
The anchors were used to weigh down the nets for catching tuna. This technique for tuna fishing was unique to the area, and was probably invented by the ancient Romans who colonized the area and is called the almadraba fishing technique .
The technique involves laying a maze of wooden frames covered with netting in the path that the migrating tuna are likely to take. The fishermen secure the frames with hundreds of anchors, cables, and buoys. The enclosed paths guide the tuna into a central area. Once the tuna are gathered there, the boats close in and block the paths. The largest fish are then caught by their tails and hauled onto the boats.
Sadly local fisherman had to give up their occupation in the mid 60s when the numbers of fish declined. Their anchors were just left on the beach to rust, that was until someone came up with the artistic idea of making a memorial out of them.
Must admit was quite surprised how popular the beach was given that when we visited it was mid week.
From here we cross the border into Spain and then to Seville which sadly means no more Portuguese custard tarts or natas, f you are ever looking for a reason to visits Portugal then natas are as good as any.
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