WAGS 09.02.2022: A Sea-Blue Mercedes, or Carrapateira At Last

 

Sophisticated French overtones to this week´s blog, muscular debilitation having severely restricted my ability to walk and therefore to write about the walk. Makes a welcome change, doesn´t it?

Ingrid notes that she received apologies for not walking from Terry, Rod, Dina, Maria and Myriam; Paul was unusually reticent about his movements. Other than that, Ingrid is adamant that she doesn´t do reports and doesn´t do lunches, but we do know that she does do walks very well.

Over now to Yves for the bulk of the blog.

The Starters: Ingrid, Geraldine, Janet, Hazel, Antje, Sascha, Yves, an Old Man, and JohnH.

WAGS outing on February 9, 2022: A so-called Report

Where to start?

I suppose the car-park in Carrapateira.

Now, the more observant among the WAGS may have noticed that this Frog became even older last Tuesday and by a barely believable coincidence a well-known German car-maker DID deliver a shiny new carriage on that day; after an elephant-like gestation, it felt like.

And it then came to pass that at nearly the right time, Frog and Carriage came to a stop in front of the massed WAGS gathered for their weekly frolics away from morning TV…

The arrival caused a bit of a happy stir and paraphrasing Julius Caesar here:

Veni,

Admirentur,

Merci!

Or, in plain terms:

I rolled up,

They ‘Oo-ed and Haa-ed’,

I basked in smug contentment…

The Birthday Present

One WAG was curious enough to what the colour is called: blue! The car is blue! A deep and nuanced shade of blue reminiscent of the girlfriend’s eyes but we must not tell the wife… Life and ownership of the shiny thing would be seriously curtailed otherwise!

Further down the trail:

After hardly a few steps, the first Walking Wounded called it a day: his Achilles tendon was hamstrung and it would be better not to pursue an increasingly painful adventure. Having deposited his very elaborate distance, height, co-ordinates and price-of-fish collating device with younger and fitter WAGS, he withdrew to the nearest hostelry (?) to brood about the bits that the SAGA brochures tend to gloss over.

Off on trail trotted the troop but lo! Before long there was another Walking Wounded! A younger lady wearing odd socks, as was her wont that morning, suffered a severe malfunction of her height-sensing device: the difference in sock thickness upset the delicate equilibrium, you understand. The socks were duly matched by the trackside and mild analgesics were found in the Frog’s Mary Poppins bag; all this did the trick and action was resumed.

There was a little bit of excitement when Sasha was ‘warned off’ by a large dog defending his/her territory but it only lasted a few moments…

 Walking continued on well-worn tracks with the occasional stop to admire the white waves throwing great spumes of spray before crashing, exhausted, onto the odd rock or unsuspecting beach. 

As ever, the views from the top were magnificent: the Creator knew what He was doing when He came to the Algarve! [The use of the masculine pronoun here makes life simpler in this context and until proven otherwise, Man embraces Woman]

Barring a slight deviation off course from the Frog in search of a part-decent picture, the rest of the saunter was uneventful. The Frog was reunited with the group in the car-park where some young ladies were photographed in very skimpy outfits a few years ago (Victoria’s Secret, was it?) and where he was escorted from the location by some benevolent but not-to-argue-with GNR personnel. (There´s a story somewhere in here; I wonder what it is. Ed.) 

This time, some stern words and index-wagging from the Leader were much more forbidding.

The Track and Statistics

Back at the car-park:

Following a cyber-attack on some systems or other, the Multibanco device failed to spit out folding pictures of EU Bridges and windows: this meant that a late arrival at the Café in Bordeira met with an exhausted supply of Frango Feijado, as enjoyed by the group…

The Frog arrives late and gets nowt

 A suitable substitute was soon offered and all was well that ended well…

Served last, again !

All in all, a very enjoyable outing led unerringly, for which we all thank Ingrid.

Até proxima?

An Old Man of Carrapateira

An Old Man of Bordeira

No acceptable songs about Chicken and Beans, so we will have to fall back on Fats Waller once more for our closing music...

The WhatsApp sub-group WAGS Sports Extra enthusiasts will be getting ready for the weekends Rugby Games. Myriam counted 193 messages sent out during last week´s games. Will there be more this week ? How they can watch a game closely and WhatsApp at the same time beats me. Wonder what Lyndon Johnson would have said about it.

My results predictions: Wales to beat Scotland, Italy to beat England, and France-Ireland to draw.