It’s sometimes good to get away…

Do you know what? I’m actually beginning to enjoy going away. Yes, I’m beginning to enjoy leaving Fuzeta. And why? Because it reminds me of exactly why I’m here I Portugal.

OK, so Fuzeta isn’t perfect. July and August are a bit mad (you try parking), and occasionally you come across intransigent bureaucracy when trying to organise various bits of documentation. But on the whole, it’s simply bloody lovely: the weather, the people, the sea, the bars and restaurants, the cost of living…

I’ve just been back to the UK for a wedding. My Australian friend met me there, so as well as the wedding we did a small whistlestop tour of the south-east: Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury, Elham, Rye, Hastings, Brighton, Hurstpierpoint, Salisbury, Stone Henge, London.

It was good that I had the chance to show her a few things, namely friends, family and various historical monuments – exciting, I know.

But it brought home to me why I left.

Firstly, the cost of things: accommodation ranged from a reasonable £175 for two nights in Tunbridge Wells, to an exorbitant one night in London – £300. The small historical towns weren’t much better. We stayed in pubs in Rye and Salisbury, which cost £195 and £160 respectively. Bloody hell, I remember when you struggled to pay more than £50 to stay in a pub!

As for the price of going to a musical in London (since my Australian friend is a lover of Abba, we went to Mama Mia in case you’re interested), £300 for two tickets seemed reasonable compared with some of the prices I found. Don’t look at ‘Les Miserables’…

Then came food and drinks: blimey! Let’s ignore the spiralling costs of food in the UK shall we? Suffice to say, a steak in ‘Côte’ seems to have doubled in price since I left, and when compared to a whole Dorada or Robalo in Fuzeta for maybe €14? I’ll leave it there.

As for drinks, I did manage to find a pint for a fiver – at the ‘Waterworks’ brewery in Rye. But on the whole, a pint was over six quid, and when accompanying a meal, a small bottle of beer was more than that. By comparison, at Shack 1, I can get a bottle for €1.40. Five beers in Fuzeta or one at a restaurant in the UK? What would you rather?

The next issue, for my Australian friend at least, was the beaches. I think her mouth dropped open when I took her to Hastings and showed her the shingle beach there:

‘This is the beach? Where’s the sand?!’

Good question.

Then, as we drove back along the prom, we saw a group of maybe twenty people on their knees praying to Allah. That’s not a huge problem, but it was something that I had never seen before and rather surprised me in this supposedly Christian (or in today’s world, maybe simply secular) country.

I then took her to Brighton, probably the most popular resort on the English south coast, which reinforced the quality of our beaches – ie more shingle – and the fact that the country now seems to have been colonised.

Concerning the beaches, I assured her that the UK has some of the best in the world, in Wales, in Scotland, but to be honest, I’m not sure that she believed me. And having seen two of the most popular beaches on the south coast, I’m not surprised.

Then came the crowds. In London, we had a room in the old GLC building, across the river from the Houses of Parliament. To get there from Gatwick, where we dropped off the hire car, we caught the train to Victoria and then the tube to Westminster. I won’t go into the price, but suffice to say, here in Portugal, I could have travelled to Lisbon and back in first class for the same money.

Then as we emerged out of Westminster tube station, with that icon of British life, Big Ben, standing in front of us, it felt like we had emerged into a different world. The pavement was heaving, and as I tried to steer my friend’s suitcase towards Westminster Bridge, it was as though I was the only white, British person there. Or maybe I was the only one stupid enough to try and drag a suitcase through the crowds of tourists, the crowds that seemed to represent every nation on earth. My Australian friend is Vietnamese. I think that she fitted in better than I did.

But it wasn’t so much the demographics that I’m talking about here, more the mass of humanity. Yes, Fuzeta in mid-summer is busy, but nothing like this.

Today, I am sitting at the airport, ruminating on the past ten days, and realising that I will be so happy to come home.

Yes, Fuzeta is now definitely home and somewhere that I love to be.

As I said, it’s simply bloody lovely: the weather, the people, the sea, the bars and restaurants, the cost of living… it makes me happy.