Week 4 of lockdown

Hello everybody 💙  Greetings to you all, and hoping you are safe, healthy, and coping with this awfully scary situation. 

We do not have much news to report here; our situation remains similar to before. We are now limited to one adult walking to the supermarket once a week, and we can manage fine with that. Everyone on our site seems well so far, thankfully.  There are about 20 motorhomes/ campervans still remaining on the site, a large-ish French contingent, and English. Also some German, Dutch, Belgian and Finnish. We are the only Celts. We are also the only van with children.  Most other folks here are retired. Quite a number sold their homes and live and travel fulltime in their vans; others, like us, have rented out their homes and therefore have no house to return to in their home country. So, for a range of reasons, we all find ourselves staying put in this lovely spot, hoping to weather the storm.

We have something of a routine to our days now, beginning at 11am with a social distance compliant stretch and tapping session with one of our neighbours, John, who has a black belt in ju jitsu! It’s a lovely communal start to the day, good for keeping up with folks. 

In the afternoons, we are still permitted to take a walk in the countryside so we enjoy spotting the activity in the stork nests at that time (no chicks yet that we can spot), watching tadpoles develop nearby, saying hello to a donkey in a nearby field, and we have just discovered a local lady who keeps hives close to the orange groves and so we are planning on buying honey from her next time we are walking near her house. 

Plenty to keep us occupied! We had some rainy days earlier this week, and are due more rain from tomorrow ’til Monday, which isn’t brilliant in a van setting, but when it dries up its gorgeous, so we enjoy those days a lot ☀️

Portugal in general is relatively low in its incidences of Covid-19, certainly by comparison to Spain; the Government took early action here, thankfully.  246 people have lost their lives to date. Silves district has six cases so far, but no fatalities.  The young woman who manages this site, Siân (originally from the UK) was very upset to hear of the death of her maths teacher in recent days. This was in Portimão, a town nearby.  So it’s certainly around, and we are not taking any chances, but are just trying, like you all, to keep going with as normal an existence as possible.

So, that’s our update from Portugal.  Sending love ❤️ and hoping you stay safe and well.