WAGS 22.02.2023: Signs of the Times and Ranarian Cousins

 

Odiaxere, the day after Carnival, and at the outset Yves thought he had struck it rich.....

but some joker had super-glued the money to the pavement. Better luck, next time; meanwhile here is Rod´s report.

Such was the initial paucity of participants that our leader was almost on the point of retreating to Silves; the only three to sign up being citizens thereof. However the welcome late reaction from Janet and eventually the unannounced appearance of Yves to join John & Hazel and Rod made the journey to remotest Odiaxere well worth while. 

The original choice of café, to wit Café Lopo, along with most of all the others, were all suffering from post-Carnival exhaustion and were closed. But the next door one was only too pleased to see us for coffee before we drove off towards Cotifo to start the walk. 

The aftermath of recent rains was immediately obvious in the way of ankle deep puddles covering to tracks. They were navigated, occasionally with some difficulty, with only muddied boots to show.

It was a  warm, really pleasant day, with spring-like flowers already much in evidence.

After a while we hit the Pincho road for a short stretch  before heading up the track with signs pointing in various directions and some warning us as being in forbidden territory  and others that we were entering a hunting reserve.

Ah ! there´s a sign

A Bishop down there ? Surely not !

The track  leads up to what was once known locally amongst the riding community as Palm Tree Farm....the Palm has long gone and since then it had  been rumoured to be a footballing project of the one time England coach Sven-Gorän Eriksson....but then he was the subject of many rumours.

Svenis...

... and one of his rumours.

Now, judging from the markings on a truck and a large number of earthmoving machines,  it seems to be a project of the ASSOCIAÇÀO de CAÇA DE LAGOS...so what now? 

we had been warned

  From there we continued north for a while but we needed to cross the river to reach the return track.  To avoid heading too far north we backtracked and found a brambly cattle crossing to the main track.

into the brambly cattle track

where Yves came across his ranarian Cousin George (his words, not mine)

and this must be his Cousin Georgette

(Linguistic note: "Ranarian " means "Froggy" from the Latin  for "frog" which is "rana.")

The return route thereafter  was uneventful.

There was some pine logging

Hazel raced ahead of the pack 

in order to get a seat

Janet said "If that´s the Low Road.....

"I´ll tak´  the High Road."

After a walk of only just short of 10k, we repaired back to our “Café de Origen”, a.k.a. Cantinho Da Rosa . Although not an establishment boasting an extensive menu the tostas were indeed surprisingly good.

The Cantinho observed time-honoured WAGS tradition by serving Yves first even although he was the last to order his bifana.

but Rod didn´t  have too long to wait until he could sink his teeth into his tosta mista com cebola e tomate

And now, to close,  a little French song about food and some other things.