"THE ALGARVE - NICE WHEN ITS FINISHED" Carvoeiro by JohnnySpangles

We stayed at the Colina Village Apartments, which are about a twenty minute walk from the beach town of Carvoeiro. However that can be a fairly desperate twenty minute walk on an unfinished pavement which meanders unpredictably between paving slabs and sand alongside a very busy road.

If you’ve managed to dodge Portugal’s notoriously bad drivers on your walk to the beach then make sure you also keep an eye out for the stray and bad-tempered dogs that patrol the waste ground on the other side of the pavement. So you have bad drivers on one side of you, and bad dogs the other side. You’ll probably do it once and then end up doing the sensible thing and ordering a taxi for future beach trips, especially if you’ve got the additional targets of small children to worry about.

The beach town of Carvoeiro is reasonably pleasant but, like anywhere in the Algarve, the beaches are very busy and the water isn’t that welcoming as it tends to consist of twenty-foot high waves and sharp stones that serve no other purpose than to rip your feet to bits.

With the Algarve in general, your spirits are dampened as early as the bus ride from the airport as your first impression is that of ‘its nought but a bloody big building site’. It’s also your second impression, and your third, and your lasting one when you board the flight home. The whole place looks like it is only half finished. There is little in the way of intrinsic natural beauty to The Algarve so you get the feeling they are trying desperately to create it out of concrete. Everything seems to be only half-built, which also makes it look half-demolished. The only things that have been finished are the golf courses. This is fine if you are a *** that plays golf. If you’re a *** that wants anything else then you’ll be sorely disappointed.

The Colina Village Apartments where we stayed were okay, although they too had the obligatory building site right next to them. There was a reasonable pool area and I did manage to find a couple of half-decent restaurants in the area. One of which was probably one of the best Indian restaurants I’ve ever been in and I was amazed to find that it was wasting its time flogging Chicken Tikka Massala and Chips to tourists in Carvoeiro. I suggested to the owner that he should move to South London where I live, so he may well have taken my advice. If that Indian restaurant is no longer there don’t even bother going to The Algarve.

Some of the half-arsed tourist attractions that The Algarve proffers are well worth steering clear of. One in particular billed itself as ‘An Adventure Crazy Golf’. Avoid it like the plague. They give you a stick and a golf ball then let you wander around a building site whilst being chased by a neurotic llama. They also give you a big bag of giant wasps that will take over the chasing, if the llama starts getting bored.

The picture probably make the place look quite quaint. Please bear in mind that it is heavily cropped and it misses out the cranes, cement mixers and Colin from Essex who has lots of tattoos and a three month, cash in hand, contract for plastering which suits him fine as he had to get out of Basildon quick after the stabbing.

There are nicer places on the planet.

• Pros:CRACKING INDIAN RESTAURANT
• Cons:PROBABLY NOT THERE ANY MORE
• In a nutshell:THERE ARE BETTER PLACES