Definitely lots of miniscule red crawling things (red spider mites?)
As above but almost clear/cream coloured rather than red Red spider mite aren't red. They're yellowy brown colour with a couple of darker spots. There is a small apparently round red mite-like thing often seen on hot terraces which is a predator rather than a herbivore.
Red spider don't breed as well in damp conditions. If you have got red spider, then it will have been helped by the hot dry spell we're having.
A lot of herby types of plants don't want to be tended lovingly, if the soil is ok for them they just grow on with lots of sun and little interference. Most of them grow on Southern mountain sides. That's generally true, but with exceptions. For example, basil is a tropical plant and likes wetness and heat, several mint species are UK natives, and generally need moisture at their roots, chives is another that doesn't want it hot and dry.
Mint is used in Portuguese cooking most frequently poejo or penny royal, and I've also had a river mint, which the restaurant owner brought from the kitchen to show me what it was, and that it was different from poejo.
I'd like to see a study of traditional Portuguese and English cooking, as, particularly the northern stuff, there's so much in common. We have bread sauce, they have migas (like a bread sausage) and açorda (soups thickened with bread), we have black pudding, they have sarabulho (a much sloppier blood pudding), they eat tripe in many forms just as we used to, and so on. Is it a common diet of European Atlantic countries, or something else we can blame on Catherine de Bragança?