Ab fab Algarve

THE last time I went to Portugal, I stayed in a hotel that had the reputation of being 'the Fawlty Towers of the Algarve'. I know this because the proprietress told me so herself; proudly, and with no sense of shame or irony. I have to say that I was not disappointed.

It has taken me a decade to dare to return to the Algarve, but last summer I finally did.

This time I was in the far safer hands of a villa specialist which has only properties with their own swimming pool and offers a special standard of accommodation. But, of course, even though all villas are special, some are more special than others. The villa Fonte Das Flores

that I took with my two children (Molly, two-and-a-half, and Dylan, four-and-a-half), my partner Nick and my mum and dad, had the official operator's stamp of being 'Extra Special'!

It is in the area described as 'the Eastern Algarve', spreading northeast-from the town - and airport - of Faro.

As our promised people carrier hadn't been returned by the previous users, we were given a minibus in its place.

Dutifully, my dad lurched it on to the main road and we headed towards the small market town of Sao Bras - our first landmark on the hand-drawn map we'd been given.

We reached Sao Bras without problem and here found our first real landmark en route to our 'secluded' villa - the restaurant Luis Frango.

It was closed when we passed that afternoon, but we returned there one weekday lunchtime to find it heaving with locals eating spicy chicken 'piri piri' and chips at about £2 a go - highly recommended for excellent cheap food and a bit of real local colour.

After Luis Frango, however, we got well lost. Tour operators' directions to 'secluded villas' can often let you down - you forget that 'secluded' really means 'impossible to find'.

We tried several avenues that looked like the given directions ('not a made-up road') before we finally reversed ourselves back to our last landmark, the well in the tiny hamlet of Mesquita, opposite the local bar-restaurant.

Here, we discovered that the name of the villa had been painted, many, many years before, on a wall practically invisible from the road. But we saw it, and followed it.

AFTER getting further directions from a couple of other amused but friendly locals, we eventually passed the neighbourly canine guard that lurks beneath the villa and Fonte Das Flores itself. We were not disappointed.

The blurb said 'key under the mat' - but which mat? Which door? Fonte Das Flores really is a special villa and it's big.

It wouldn't be out of place in a posh Los Angeles suburb - security gated steps lead up to a terrace with a vast barbecue that overlooks a huge pool and another shady terrace.

Inside, there's a dining room, large kitchen, enormous living room (complete with satellite TV, sadly) and a junior 'Sunset Boulevard' staircase leading up to the master suite (complete with separate terrace).

Downstairs, there are three further bedrooms, two bathrooms and a very posh loo - plenty of room for the two small people to run around to their hearts' content. It really is the kind of place you could happily not set foot out of for a whole fortnight. Nick and my dad were constantly glued to Channel 4 watching 'back to back Tests', whatever they may be, but we did manage a few childfriendly excursions.

It was a great relief to my mum to discover that the roads in the Algarve are in really good shape - she still has nightmares about the treacherous mountain tracks and sheer drops that we experienced in Corsica last year - so we coaxed her into the minibus and first carted her off to Tavira.

Straddling the River Gilao, Tavira is a very pleasant town and fishing port with more churches than you could imagine possible. The riverbanks are lined with attractive rather Baroque houses and tempting little restaurants.

It was here that we first experienced a cataplana. As the kids wept, bellowed and hurled whatever they could at the other diners, we were served up with a fantastic copper wok bubbling full of prawns, lobster tails, crab, razor fish and clams.

The cataplana is the Algarve's signature dish - a fantastic stew of shellfish and more.

There are many variations on the theme and each restaurant has its own idea of what should go into the dish; another day we had a version that included bread and eggs bobbing around on top (not so highly recommended).

Nick, who does all our cooking at home, was so impressed by the whole cataplana thing that he immediately went off to a local store and bought a cataplana pan himself. Sadly it came pre-coated with a factory varnish that keeps it copper-brite for the tourists, and he hasn't yet managed to apply the elbow grease that will get rid of it and turn the pan into a proper cooking utensil. Anyway, it looks lovely on the floor of his study. Beyond Tavira, it's a short drive to the beach at Cabanas. This is a fairly well developed resort for the Eastern Algarve but it's still very low key. None of the buildings seems to be more than three or four stories high and there's no beach out front.

You need to take a ferry to get to the beach - a 12-person launch with an outboard that whizzes you along the estuary a couple of hundred yards and deposits you on the other side of the sand bank.

You pass beachcombers looking for shells and fishermen standing in the estuary mud searching for clams and razor shells. Nick said it reminded him of the North Norfolk coast in the mid-Seventies - all sea holly, samphire and maram grass. He is prone to nostalgia, so I ignored him.

ONCE off the ferry, a walkway leads you to the beach itself which is immaculately clean and busy, but not overpopulated-The care that the Portugese government has taken to preserve the coast around here is fantastic; lifeguards on the beach, a cafe, toilets, sunbeds and shades (about £7 per day) showers and a first-aid centre.

And when you get down to the water's edge, the sea is clear blue and teeming with hermit crabs, sea anemones and guppies. It was lovely to buy the kids little fishing nets with the prospect that they might, for once, catch something more interesting than raw sewage.

A short drive further along the coast, you'll find another beach resort, Praia Del Rey. This time, the beach itself is reached via a miniature railway that runs you through the hordes of scuttling crabs on the estuary mud to another spotless stretch of sand.

There are a couple of restaurants in a very tasteful little development here and we took our opportunity to enjoy the compulsory grilled sardines and cold beers at lunch time - excellent.

Again, the beach is buzzy and well serviced but not overcrowded. If you walk just a couple of hundred yards in either direction, you're practically alone. Interestingly, the further you get away from the throng, the greater is the degree of nudity. If you're prudish, I'd stop after 250 yards or so because there's every chance you could encounter a bit of full frontal.

One thing you won't encounter is hordes of beer-swigging Brits. There's no throbbing club culture in the Eastern Algarve, it really is the perfect place to enjoy a quiet, old-style bucket-and-spade beach holiday.

If you travel westwards towards Albufeira things apparently get a bit livelier and you'll find endless water theme parks and such like to amuse the kiddies. But the odd beach excursion was all we managed before retreating to the luxurious quiet of Fonte Das Flores. Despite its genuinely secluded position, Fonte Das Flores has recently been blessed with a fantastic 'Intermarche' supermarket only a mile or so away, so the cupboards were never bare and the barbecue was constantly lit.

As usual, Nick tried to take a 14-day crash course in the local wines and discovered that the Lagoa Reserva was a very reasonable option at under £2 a bottle and the perfect accompaniment to the barbecued food he was churning out. We occasionally let him leave the hot coals and go off in search of the local barrestaurant.

At Fonte Das Flores, you are furnished with a real cracker of a local. Ten minutes' walk down the drive from the villa, Llagar De Mesquita is an eccentric, rustic affair that doesn't seem to open at lunchtime.

We trundled down to their pleasant terrace on our first visit to find a couple of dazed and charming waiters who appeared to have something to do with the place. After lots of smiling and hand signals, we ordered beers and gin and tonics, and were promised a dinner of 'lots of starters'.

While we waited for the dinner, Dylan and Molly played with the chef's son, David, and it was really idyllic. Eventually, despite our protests, David was ushered away - apparently he had been playing with some tourist kids the week before and one of them had broken their arm.

The food here was always plentiful and very tasty - a kind of Portugese tapas consisting of endless unfamiliar dishes that no one really had good enough English to explain to us.

Every trip to Llagar De Mesquita seemed eventful in some way. One night we arrived to be told that there was 'special party with wild boar and beans stew'. The stew was wonderful comfort food, but the 'party' never turned up which was a shame because the dazed and charming waiters had been forced to wear what looked like monks' habits for the do.

Following the monks theme, another night we ate inside the restaurant and were entertained by the most extraordinary musical feast on the overhead TV projector.

I have not often eaten to the sound of a Gregorian chant, but I can highly recommend it. Nick glazed over mid-mouthful and looked up at the screen where The Masters Of Gregorian Chant were performing modern hits in an ancient style while marching up and down Santiago De Compostella.

'Oh my God,' choked Nick. 'I think they're singing a Gregorian version of Vienna by Ultravox.' And they were. Truly outstanding.

THE food was always good here, though not bargainpriced by Algarve standards and the service erratic but heartfelt. They even let Nick use a phoneline at the back of the kitchen to access the Internet and send e-mails.

All in all, you couldn't ask for a better villa holiday than the one we enjoyed at Fonte Das Flores - really low key and genuinely relaxing.

Just one word of warning: if you are lucky enough to rent the villa yourself, make sure that you lock the gate to the property every night as instructed. This has nothing to do with unfriendly locals, but everything to do with the pesky local pooches that like to pop into the garden to bark, go through the bins and do all the other things that dogs do.

GETTING THERE

GO (0870 607 6543) offers return flights from London Stansted to Faro from £99 and from Bristol from £75 if booked online. Visit www.go-fly.com Something Special (01455 852229) offers one week at Fonte Das Flores in Sao Bras from £445pp. This includes return flights from London Gatwick and car hire. For flights from Manchester there is a supplement of £32 and from Glasgow £44.