Firstly Seasons Greetings to you all! I hope that 2011 is good to you and lets hope we have none of the travel hiccups that we have experienced in 2010! We managed to sort out travel delays for our clients flying within Europe over this holiday period and now we have problems with those coming from New York and the east coast of the USA - well it keeps us all on our toes but for those that are delayed it really is not a joke.
The weather in Portugal is typical of the winter with plenty of rain - normal for this time of the year but not great if walking or cycling. The Boxing Day walk was a big sucess and even this morning with the rain some die hards turned up for the walk which we manged with only getting wet for the last 20 minutes (not bad considering the terrible forecast).
I wish you all a Happy Healthy New Year!

Apologies for not blogging as frequently as I should but I have been fighting some form of virus for the past two weeks. It could be something to do with going from the freezing cold of the UK to the mild and damp Algarve. Things are still not great and it is good that we are not doing any walks early December so that I can recharge the old batteries and get fighting fit for the new year.
The weather in Europe has been all over the place with excessively cold weather in northern Europe and in Portugal there has been rain, very, very heavy at times plus in central Portugal there was a tornado which passed through Tomar. This took the roof off a local school and brought down power lines but mercifully no one was killed. The office in Madeira tells me that strong winds closed the airport in Funchal for 2 days last week!
I had to visit a new hotel that we are using close to Faro airport last Sunday and there were many people milling around looking lost - the receptionist told me they were the victims of airport closures in the UK and air traffic controller strikes in Spain and they had been stuck since Wednesday!!
Fortunately for us none of our clients been delayed or stuck - we had enough of that in April with the volcanic ash - an experience I think no one wants to repeat.

Tempus fugit - yes time does indeed fly, I just cannot understand where the time goes. We have been very busy with bookings especially the group ones with some already full and so now I have to decide whether to run extra weeks. Plus I have to put together our weekly walking programme for 2011 as we are already getting calls and e-mails regarding when we are starting after Christmas and where we are walking. A brief calculation has shown me that I need to programme in 20 Wednesday walks and 11 Saturday walks - hmmm. The number is actually not a problem its more a case of making sure we cover all areas of the Algarve and some walks are better done at different times of the year than others. Well I will work on this over the Christmas period - so check on the web site before the New Year.