WAGs 22.03.2023: Green Was The Valley or There´s A Hole In My Road

 

Officially, it was the third day of Spring following the Vernal Equinox on March 20th; the sun shone bright and the temperature kept climbing. The countryside was still fairly green but the water in the few streams was not flowing quite as fast as it had done two weeks ago. Perhaps it was because of the heat but our official Starter Photographer found himself struggling to set up the electronic camera connections, surpassing his usual levels of incompetence, when luckily a very polite Dutch cyclist came to his rescue and offered to take the group photo, which he did very well. If he had not, we might have still been sitting there.

Here is the Leader´s report, competently submitted by Rod.

Back to Bensafrim once again...partly. admittedly through curiosity to see what the reborn Barbero restaurant was all about, but more of that later.

It was probably the warmest day of the year so far when John & Hazel, Yves, Janet, Myriam Dina and Rod gathered at the usual market square café before setting out in a northerly direction along the much previously walked track.  previously walked yes, but what we had not come across before was a hole in the road. A sink hole, in fact; not the biggest of sink holes to be true, but a sink hole nonetheless.

It had safety barriers all around it but they did not stop Myriam from risking her life by climbing into it. As the slimmest of us all, she was the only one who could try it.

Rod tries, not very hard, to dissuade her

"Farewell, cruel world"

Luckily we were able to pull her out before she vanished into the hole for good.

Hazel directed us towards Monte Amarelo, then after another 1km or more we headed off up a little used track to the east. There is an electric cattle wire alongside much of the track around there but one would have thought that even the dimmest of cows would have realized the electricity has long ceased to work (our donkey would have found that out long ago!).

Rod´s own donkeys go over and under the wire.

The track rises sharply to the long easterly ridge and this follows a wide clockwise semicircle of switchbacks.  

The party, well strung out, seemed in no mood to hurry  with many stops to chatter interspersed with the odd moan about yet another hill. 

How Green Is My Valley

Time marched on a lot faster than we did as we were reminded by the inevitable phone call from Paul, who as usual was only interested in lunch, wanting to know how much longer we would be. 

We did a bit of off-piste. And Yves discovered a cache of grain and nuts

and wondered why.

Various artists with cameras spent some time taking shots.

(Hazel insisted that the following sequence of cistus be in the Blog. Ed.)

Yves´ caption "Guarding their future." 

(M. Le Président Macron is unlikely to do it. Ed)

Yves´ caption. "Ombres chinoises."

Through cutting the walk a bit short we actually arrived at the restaurant a mere 20 mins after the intended hour, where we found Paul, Chris and Antje waiting surprisingly patiently. The walk just about achieved 9k so honour was done, even if it did take a long time to do it! 

 As for the Restaurant which is now rather grandly called the Rota Algarviana....having been briefly known as the Via Algarviana to the evident displeasure of Almargem...it is clear that it is now in capable and professional hands who have had the resources to improve the facilities and décor.  As for the food I will leave that to the gourmets, or do I mean gourmands, of the group to further elaborate.

Thanks, Rod.

 Comments on the food, please, everyone. For myself, I thought that the menu had a lot of choice; the food was well cooked; the salads with the plates were fresh and excellent ; but the service and the organisation was a bit chaotic. Some of us had prato de dia but were not offered sobremesa or coffees with it, which is the norm.

Any way, that is how things are going in Bensafrim, not too bad, better than before, certainly. 

But meanwhile, out in the big bad world, financially things seem to be equally chaotic. So your Blogger sought the views of our two in-house bankers, Rod and JohnH, but I am sorry to say that they both rather ducked the issue, each of them saying "We couldn´t possibly comment."  

As a last resort, therefore, to find out what´s going on, there is nothing else to do but call upon  the insights of those satiristical commentators called The Long Johns.

Plus ça change, plus c´est la même chose.