Leaving Portugal

Up early this morning to finish packing and set off for the airport at Faro and the flight home. We managed to catch the sunrise before we left our apartment in Luz and it was a cracker.

What should have been an uninteresting drive from Luz to Faro instead had the kind of excitement you definitely don't need on the motorway.

Heading east on the motorway at around 110km per hour was going fine until we were suddenly confronted with a car travelling straight towards us at well over 110km per hour. Sudden braking on my part, getting out of the way and major amounts of flashing my lights at the other driver seemed to have no impact whatsoever. He just carried on straight past me, hurtling down the motorway seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

The driver about 500 yards behind me did the same as me, but that didn't stop the other car continuing to hurtle down the wrong side of the motorway.

I have no idea what happened after that, but I hope he realised he should not be driving on the left and got off the road ASAP and more importantly didn't hit or hurt anybody.

I don't know how he ended up driving down the wrong side of the motorway, but my guess is that he arrived on an early flight from the UK or Ireland, having been up all night. Jumped in a hired car and being too tired to drive forgot that he should be driving on the right. I don't think my heart rate returned to normal for hours.