We arrived in Faro around 7pm on Saturday. After locating the tour rep, we got on board the coach for the 2 hour roundabout trip, dropping off other holidaymakers via Vilamoura and Albufeira. We were told our destination was Praia da Rocha, the first of the Algarve resorts to be "developed."

The trip was not unpleasant with the setting sun and twilight. I saw an owl perched on telephone wires and small bats like our pipestrelles weaving between the trees.

The hotel took some believing. "Clube Praia da Rocha" is built like a cross between a Moorish fortress and an English tower block. It more than met all our expectations. It's what you deserve for booking at the last minute and paying tuppence ha'penny.

The foyer was crowded with people of all ages, grimly enjoying themselves, listening to a live vocalist by the bar.

We were disappointed with the resort that night. It appeared little better than Catford on Sea, but we found a nice ice-cream parlour called Gelateria Colonni and had strawberries and ice-cream sitting outside.

Things looked a lot better by daylight, although it is still over the top development. The beach is broad and long, but appears sterile with neat rows of sunbeds. The view from the beach is better.

After walking along the promenade and visiting the tourist office, we took the advice of the lady there and had grilled sardines at Restaurant Atlantico, on the beach below the fortress.

We wanted to get away from the tourist scene for a while, so we walked into Portimao, the main town and wandered through some back streets in the afternoon sun. Many of the houses had old carved wooden doors and some had curious looking brass door knockers, shaped as hands. There were usually two for each house and each hand had a ring on the second finger.

As we walked up one lane, we saw a man walking down it with two dogs trotting behind him, attached to each other by a dog leash. Which was walking the other, I don't know.

By the waterfront, close to the causeway, there are a number of restaurants serving freshly grilled fish and meat. The quality is mostly very good. We ate at the second one, name unknown, and started with grilled king prawns. Later I had scabbard fish and Louise a silver bream. Both were wonderful. We had a white wine, against the advice of the waitress. She suggested a red from Alentejo. Nearly everyone suggested Alentejo reds during our stay and I have to admit, they aren't bad.

The only sour note was that we got horrible potatoes with the fish. They had been reheated several times and were inedible.

A taxi to Alvor costs around 900 escudos, about the same as the bus fare for two, so on Monday we chose convenience over waiting in the sun. We were dropped off at the beach, which seemed a great distance from anywhere else. Bar Rosada was nearby, so we headed there and had a delicious rabbit piri-piri.

Not wanting to bake on the beach, we strolled to some whitewashed houses and came to the estuary. It is a designated wildlife area and is very peaceful and attractive. We were surprised to find quite a sleepy town with many small streets and a fish landing area with fishermen preparing their longlines for the next day. The abundance of discarded cuttle-fish shells give some clue to part of the catch. Many of the houses were tiled on the outside, perhaps a legacy of the Moors or a practical way of reflecting away the heat.

Back in Praia we decided to eat in Safari restaurant, on the cliffs overlooking the beach. Louise had grilled Dover sole, or something like it and I had a lamb cataplana, a sort of casserole.

Both were fantastic. The manager recommended the house red, but we wanted to try a Bairrada. He brought out a 1990 Allianco. We looked at each other with sinking hearts, anything that old is a gamble, but we decided to risk it.

It was unbelievably good, one of the finest we have ever had.

Pigged out at Colonni's again with a wanton dark chocolate ice cream and strawberry sorbet.

It got quite windy on Tuesday. To get more out of the week, we hired a car and drove to Silves. It has a fine cathedral with a lovely wooden ceiling. The alcoves are as over ornate as you would expect from a Catholic church, detracting from the fine lines of the building.

We next wandered over the Roman bridge to look at the mullet below and then back to eat at U Monchiqueiro casa de pasta.

Good grilled sardines, but somewhat dry chicken piri-piri.

The archaeological museum is worth a visit, if only to see the great cistern built by the Moors and the rooftop views from the town wall above it. Close to U Monchiqueiro there is an Italian ice cream parlour called "La Dolce Vita" which does a great melon sorbet. Before leaving, we visited the covered market and bought some apricots, cherries and a large bunch of oregano.

To round off the day we parked in Carvoeira. It has a tiny cove of a beach surrounded by cliffs and backed by the small town.

It is altogether a more intimate place with small apartments to rent on the cliffs. We wandered up the eastern cliffs and along a footpath by the sea. We came to another resort called Algar Seco. It is fronted by sandstone cliffs, honeycombed with caves hollowed out by wind and wave. It's a good spot for rock fishing with garfish taking well. We visited a grotto where we could watch the sea pouring through a gap in the cliff into a large rock pool.

Back to base, we dined at Safari's again. Once Louise has found a good nosh house, she is reluctant to risk further experiment. It was a wise choice. We had the meixus cataplanas, a kind of shellfish casserole cooked and served in a large beaten copper wok-like utensil. It was a huge meal and so tasty. The bottle of Allianca was too sour to drink, we had to send it back. The replacement was good, but not as wonderful as the original.

On Wednesday we headed for the hill town of Monchique.

The road is reasonable good and quiet. We stopped off at a couple of pottery and craft shops on the way. Good workmanship. There are a number of tile series, usually 9 tiles forming a scene, rural subjects or monks getting pissed, sitting on wine barrels.

The road into Monchique is lined with tiny workshops mending tractors, motorbikes and farm tools. The town centre, by contrast, is quite modern looking. The church left little impression on me, I remember it was attractive, but that's all.

The streets leading up to the monastery perched well above the town are mainly cobbled and narrow. Caged songbirds add to the sleepy tranquillity of the walk. It may be unfair to keep them like that, but it does not detract from the beauty of their song.

The streets soon give out to a shortish stretch of woodland dominated by cork oaks. The view from the monastery over the valley is impressive. Alas, the monastery is closed, unless you wish to risk a guided tour by a dubious looking yokel through his "private home" in a wing of the monastery.

"A Charrette", a local restaurant seemed a good place to stop for lunch. Inside it was gloomy and a little oppressive, rather like a 1950's English restaurant. The food was OK though. I had wild boar, although it looked and tasted suspiciously like roast beef.

If you want to know where to stay and eat, I can recommend the staff in the tourismo's for good local knowledge. The ladies in both Praia da Rocha and Monchique were spot on. We asked for a restaurant and a place to sleep overnight and were advised to try either Estalagem Abrigo da Montanha or for somewhere really special, Quinta de Sao Bento, a former holiday home of the Portuguese Royal family. A good night's sleep was a priority and Sao Bento had by far the quietest prospect.

On our return to the lodge, we had a drink in the bar downstairs with it's collection of old battered brass instruments and looked over the menu. The choice was good, especially if you like game. There was wild boar, venison, pheasant and partridge.

I was taken to the kitchen to be shown some of the day's produce and was particularly impressed with the joints of goat kid being dressed at the time. The meat was lean and dark.

We settled straight away for the kid, pot roasted with potatoes and carrots in a herb stock. That may sound bland, but in fact, it was succulent and full-flavoured. I'd have it again.

The portions were enormous and I had to help Louise out. Well, we didn't want to offend the cook did we?

The dining room overlooks the valleys and is fringed with trees including a peach and is furnished with antiques. A piano standing along one wall had candelabra attached to it and a portrait of a handsome looking woman hung nearby.

We dined alone that night. It had been very busy at lunchtime, but it is early in the season and we got a sense of what it was like to be the royal family dining there with the excellent service we received.

We had another bottle of Alentejo red with the meal and I gave in easily when the hostess mentioned they did a really special egg pudding. Apparently her mother makes it. When it came out I felt a bit disappointed, it looked like the topping of a treacle tart. Surprisingly, it tasted wonderful and was not sweet and cloying as I imagined. It was lavishly covered in chips of roasted almonds which were heavenly. As if that were not enough, a couple of bottles of liqueur were left for us to "help with the digestion." One was cherry flavoured and the

other, almonds with spices I think. I suppose I did disgrace myself by drinking two glasses of the cherry and seven of the other. I needed all the help I could get digesting that huge meal.

The bedroom was comfortable and the bed was good and reasonably firm. The whole area is completely silent at night, but we woke after a couple of hours being too hot. The thin mattress protector had a plastic incontinence layer underneath. We stripped that off and slept a lot better.

Breakfast was one of the strangest I have ever had. We started with orange and kiwi fruit slices served with sponge cake.

Then came a kind of toast which appeared to have been steamed, and a Serrano type ham with cheese. Well stuffed, we were dismayed when a large plate of scrambled eggs followed. We made a pathetic attempt on it, but it was too much.

That was the highlight of the day. As we stepped out to the car, the rain started. It grew worse and became heavy. There was no way we fancied walking the hills in that lot, so we changed plans and drove down to Lagos, where the weather was a lot better.

Lagos was a really sleepy place in the seventies, or so I'm told.

Today it has the look of a town in the Côte d'Azur, with it's huge new marina and long waterfront promenade. The famous cliffs and grottoes the west are still there, but their effect is marred by the road and unimpressive buildings above.

There is a reasonably quiet and natural looking beach to the east which takes a bit of a trek to reach. Backed by small dunes, it is long enough to get away from all and sundry. A rocky breakwater goes out about 100 metres from the beach and is useful to fish from.

Back to the promenade in town, there are large shoals of mullet lining it's sides up to 6lbs (2.7k) and what I think were bass to 8lb (3.6k). Near the centre of town is the fish and vegetable market. Worth a visit to see the tuna, scabbard fish, moray eels and other piscatorial curiosities. The vege market upstairs is a bit downbeat and tired looking by comparison.

As we left Lagos a stork flew to a tall chimney in the town to join it's partner on their bulky nest.

We drove back to Praia da Rocha, spruced up and wandered down to Portimao for our evening meal. There are a number of restaurants in an open area beneath the road leading to the causeway. Some are on the waterfront and others are accessed by a tunnel to the other side of the road. One of these is Dona Barca. They have a decent selection of fresh fish in the ice box.

Having decided on the place to eat, we just had to think about what was going to go down our necks. A delicious bottle of "Alandra," the best Alentejo red we tried, was a good start.

The grilled prawns we had in the nearby waterfront restaurant on Sunday were so good, we asked for the same.

For some strange reason the prawns were split and then grilled. They were OK, but were a bit dry and shrivelled.

Our main course was a golden bream of about 1.5 kilos, also grilled. We were truly aghast to find they had split that too.

Worse still, it was heavily salted all over before grilling. It was practically impossible to taste the fish. The vegetable accompaniment was straight from the garden; the garden compost heap that is. The potatoes were old, yellowing and tasteless. The carrots were just old. The cabbage was grey, tinged with pink, and sagging into a pool of it's own English sauce (boiled water).

I don't know if we had upset someone or if that is standard fare, but it felt like an insult, especially as it was the most expensive and only bad meal we had in the Algarve. The bream alone came to 6,000 Escudos. All I can say is that if you like to pay top dollar for kippers, then this is the place for you.

On Friday the weather cleared substantially enough to tempt us back to Monchique. We would try to get to Picota, the second highest peak in the area from the town along a trail recommended by the tourist info lady.

You should remember one thing. Walking for pleasure is not understood in much of southern Europe. You may be indulged and given directions, or even sold a map like the newly published "Monchique Trails" dated 1998. Unless the person giving the directions has walked the trails, you can go horribly wrong. We discovered she had mixed up the start point with the trail for Foia, the highest peak. After wandering along a pretty lane we also realised that the path which came "after a lemon grove" could have described any of the paths we saw. We were astonished to hear what sounded like a Blackcock lekking noisily in the ridge above us. I don't know what else it could be.

We found a path which carried on past a couple of cottages and asked for directions. When we asked for Picota, the lady pointed to a hill opposite the valley we were in. Sure enough, the rickety watchtower was outlined on the skyline. Rather than restart the walk, wisdom dictated that we continue on to Foia as best we could. The trail wound up through a cork wood with pretty views over the fairly tranquil valley. We passed a decent showing of flowers, mainly white flax and two kinds of yellow dianthus, plus others new to me in various pinks and purples.

As we got higher we came on a building which we had to circumvent to reach a road. It was the Foia road and the building was the San Fernando restaurant. Another path showed opposite our entry to the road, so we followed it upwards. It was soon apparent it was just an access path to the orchards and vegetable plots there. We slipped back down to the road through a mass of pink vetchlings (lathyrus cicera) looking like small sweet peas.

Finding no other route upwards, we agreed that we should try to follow the tracks we found leading from the road at Quinta da Sao Bento. Although there is a route marked out from Monchique to Foia in the Trail map, there is none shown from Sao Bento, so we just followed the track and felt confident it would lead somewhere we would like.

We were not altogether wrong. The sky was dull and thin clouds drifted by, reducing glare and bringing out the colour of the thousands of flowers and herbs all around us. Their scents were sharply accentuated in the slightly damp air too. It was an experience only matched by the Picos de Europa last year. The cistus family were everywhere, from the large Gum Cistus (c ladaniferous), the rose coloured Sage-leaved Cistus (c albidus) and the white varieties, (c salvaefolius and c monspeliensis).

Also in great abundance in the early stages were French Lavender (lavendula stoechas), Purple Viper's Bugloss (echium lycopsis) and the brilliant blue Pimpernel (anagallis arvensis) and lithospermum prostratum.

There were also white and yellow crown daisies (chrysanthemum coronarium), more yellow dianthus, pink mallows (malvaceae ?) and a tall plant with delicate pink onion-like flowers. The walk was hardly strenuous and we strolled slowly upwards gazing wondrously all around us. Immediately before us we were discovering plants and insects we had never encountered before and looking further away were distant hills and green valleys and clouds drifting by below.

About 150 metres above the road the plants change a little. The ground seems scrubbier, but the smaller pink cistus really shows off here with the purple viper's bugloss. The centre of the track is carpeted with daisies and edged by the cistus.

Floating in the air were the calls of cuckoos everywhere.

As we turned to look at the views below, a large hawk wheeled over us and then hovered kestrel-like in the wind scanning the ground. We carried on, lead by a gradual incline, stopping to identify Borage (borago officinalis) and Field Gladioli (gladiolus segetum) and a few Clouded Yellow (colius croceus). butterflies.

Near to the top of this rise, we realised we were quite close to the peak at Foia. Just past a tiny stream we saw a warbler singing on the telephone wire. The track turned left and went straight up to Foia. Suddenly we were in civilisation again, rather sooner than we had expected, but we took it in our stride and after looking at the expensive craft shops, had a cappuccino and delightful roasted almond cake.

We took our time going back down and enjoyed being away from it all for another half hour. We discovered some orchids which had a long maroon tongue and some with a parchment coloured tongue, no idea what they were though.

The walk should only take about 40 minutes if you go at it head down like a rambler, but if you want to drink in your surroundings, it can take an extra 30 minutes.

We had to leave some time and we did so reluctantly, but we stopped further down the road to look in at the excellent Estalagem Abrigo da Montanha. It is a modern guesthouse with a restaurant and very well maintained. Service is very efficient and friendly. If we return, we will definitely stay there as well as in Quinta da Sao Bento. The menu is worth a special trip too.

That evening we returned to Praia, cleaned up and went back to Safari for another cataplana of clams. This time we tried an Alentejo which was corked. It's replacement was delicious.

We were unlucky this night. A couple turned up with three sets of grandparents, a six year old boy and another of about eighteen months who screamed his head off sitting in a push chair. Nothing clears a restaurant quicker in the UK and it wasn't much different here. For half an hour this family ignored the screams and the glares around them. Eventually, one of the granddads got up and approached the push chair. We all got ready to applaud, but we were too hasty, he was just getting a cardigan for his wife. The toddler did not even merit a glance. We think they were Belgians, definitely not English, they wouldn't have had the neck.

Saturday was our last day, so packing up our luggage and leaving it in the hotel foyer, we went to the beach, fished a little from the breakwater and had a tasty "Arroz Marisco" in Atlantico's. A bottle of Vinho Verde finished us off nicely.

Two days later, we were watching a TV program called "Holidays from Hell," when we were unsurprised to see "Clube Praia da Rocha" was the main attraction. Well deserved, we thought.