Too many happy returns?

This is the fifth autumn in succession that we have wandered south for months on end. In my mind they are trips of two halves, with a focal point in the middle - Gill's birthday, on 4th November. Finding somewhere memorable for a birthday lunch partly shapes the trip, it weighs on my mind being the incorrigible planner between the pair of us. However, this year I cheated a bit, arranging to return to the same Ibiza style beach restaurant in the far west of the Algarve - Cabanas - will it live up to our memories?

Consequently much of this year's trip retraces last year's route, but in the opposite direction, anti-clockwise around Iberia last year, clockwise this. The southern Alentejo coast has few places to stay, so it was almost inevitable that after Zambujeira we ended up parking the next day at the free beach aire at Carrapatiera. It's a pretty spot, next to a lagoon and a huge sandy beach, overlooked by low cliffs.

Like much of the the southwest it has an attractive back of beyond ambiance. There is nothing to do but wander along the coastal paths, admire the wild foreshore, grub about in the undergrowth spotting unusual plants (Gill rubbing a sprig between her fingers...'is that some kind of samphire?').

Yesterday was grey and silvery, today sunny and blue, but still shivery in the brisk northerly breeze - doing not sitting weather. We drove towards Vila do Bispo. Just before you reach the town you top a rise and the blue sparkling ocean faces you. After hundreds of kilometres of the Atlantic being to the west, suddenly it stretches away to the south, in sight of the Capo St Vincent lighthouse, just visible in the mist, you can safely claim to have reached reached Portugal's bottom left hand corner. Now we turn east, back towards the Mediterranean - a turning point.

We celebrate the moment in typical understated style by visiting Vila do Bispol's Lidl, wandering around the town's unprepossessing modern outskirts, then heading along the road to Lagos and the small beach parking at Boca do Rio, but not before we called into the Cabana beach restaurant in the next cove to book Gill's birthday lunch for tomorrow.

The naff bits of Portugal bear a distinct resemblance to the cruddy parts of France

Ghastly early 70s town hall..

Le Corbusier style bank...

cruddy concrete 'modern' sculpture.

Yet just down the road - Cabana manages to out-ibiza Ibiza...complete with chill-out soundtrack.

The Boca do Rio parking is little changed from last year, a scrap of beach backed by a little estuary, full of birds - egrets, wagtails and cormorants - and the call of hardy cicadas braving the chilly wind. The swanky villa development over the hill has crept a little closer, the top of a tower crane peeps over the tree line of the low coastal hills. The place's remote feel won't last much longer.

Other than that, little had changed, not even the graffiti on the ruined 'atuna' factory by the beach, well, apart from the slightly racy pin-up style nude who graced the facade now sported a goatee beard - a nod towards a more flexible notions of gender perhaps.

Having arrived in the Algarve, we felt we had to experiment with piri piri chicken, using a splash or two of the sauce in the marinade for some kebabs. The spicy heat was welcome, by the time I had finished cooking them outside on the Cadac I was freezing. 

Photos don't capture the wind chill....

The thermometer may have read 15°, but the wind chill reduced how cold it felt by at least by at least five degrees. By the time the chicken had cooked I had donned my cosiest fleecy and was wearing a woolly bobble hat. This is not why we drove 2000 miles south. 

After a relaxed morning we headed to Cabana to celebrate Gill's birthday. The meal was good, the food excellent and the staff relaxed and friendly. The only problem was the occasion seemed like a scene from 'Groundhog Day'. The restaurant, the menu, our choices - even the weather was identical to our celebration last year. OK, we sat at a different table, but that hardly counts. It proves that it is all too easy  to take 'many happy returns' just a little too literally.

For people who vowed when they took to the road to endeavour to visit new places - today has to count as a fail. I promised faithfully that we definitely would not be back here next year. Somewhat gallantly under the circumstances Gill mused 'We could arrange to be somewhere amazing for your birthday.'  'Where counts as amazing? I queried. Never one to think small scale she replied. 'Somewhere in the southern hemisphere...how about a birthday breakfast in Castro's on Cuba Street. An alluring suggestion, however in all likelihood early May in Wellington  would be even colder and windier than the Algarve in November. Anyway, we agreed, we have been to New Zealand and cannot afford long-haul every year. In the Spring we should be project managing a kitchen extension project. Travel is not really on the agenda..

If you travel for half the year for half a decade, it's not the case that you run out of new places to go, what happens is that you begin to accumulate an increasing number of spots that warrant a second visit and this compromises your initial ambition to always to boldly go where you have not been before. As dilemmas go, it's a good one to have.