A Quick Trip to Portugal

Such a busy week! We flew to Faro and hired a car for the week. There followed a week of 12-13 hour days. Jobs, jobs, jobs... Lists, lists, lists...

One of our main tasks was to get the US Propane gas bottles filled. Until recently this has been reasonably straightforward but over the past few years regulations have been tightened and most of the handy backstreet suppliers have gone out of business. We had spend days trolling around Portimao in 2008 trying to get these non European bottles filled. Eventually someone had told us we needed an LPG adapter and then to use a car filling station. Back in the UK we had finally found a small engineering company in Barrow that made one for use - US bottle to Portuguese LPG fitting - so we were more optimistic. Failing that we'd have to resort to the famous 'fill it direct from a European bottle' trick. Hmmm. Various visits to different gas depots eventually led us the Repsol garage near the hospital where a very helpful assistant eventually helped us fill our two bottles much to the surprise of the boatyard staff who then told us it is not exactly a lawful practice. Nevertheless we have two full gas bottles which should last us most of the year - and we know the technique for refilling them when the time comes. Success #1

Next up, a new 'car' radio. The old one conked out last year so I took out a nice Sony car stereo with CD and MP3 player adaptor. Of course the space available was not quite big enough and the shared negative to both speakers resulted in temporary setbacks but in the end it looks a really good job - though I say it myself. Success #2.