State of Emergency
Hi all. These are worrying times, for certain. Some among you are waiting for test results and most likely fighting this horrible virus and we send you our love! We hope the rest of you are staying safe and isolated as much as you can and that, in all the countries we’re in, the infection levels come down soon.
The situation where we are is still uncertain. The President of Portugal announced a State of Emergency yesterday, but we are not fully clear yet on the practical implications of this. Further debate was taking place today in the parliament and we expect to hear soon what exactly this means for motorhomes. In Spain, the campsites are being shut. We hope that won’t be the case here.
For now, we are restricting ourselves to our park and effectively self isolating. We have electricity, access to water and services, and we have food. We are hoping we can stay put and see this worrying time out here in Silves 🤞🏻
We are now only permitted to leave our site for a brief walk in the countryside once a day, and to the local supermarket once a week. Our site is now closed to newcomers and, if we were to leave the site in our van, for any reason, we would not be let back in again. We’re glad we filled up with LPG gas a few days ago as we don’t know when we will next be permitted to leave the site.
Here are some pics from today:
stork in the field behind us 
my work station 🙂 
The children and I planted seeds today, given that it looks as though we will be here for a while. Guess which pot belongs to whom 😍
Incidentally, I think it will be interesting to see the impact the coming months will have on some of our green spaces, hills, forests… with far less impact from humans than in an average year, I wonder what differences we will observe.
Caitríona: And, to finish, some Algarve chimney pots! I’m fascinated with them. Stylised chimney pots began to come into fashion in this region in the late 17th and early 18th century. At that time, the more elaborate the chimney, the more costly it was and so an intricate chimney became a symbol of wealth. They were handmade by craftsmen and no two chimneys were the same, so each house had its own unique identity. This is no longer the case, but there is still a huge range of variety and style to be seen.
