WAGS 2026 03 18. Return to Pescadores, or A Sudden OutBreak Of Ombrophobia

 Yes, ombrophobia - a fear of rain or a fear of getting wet from rain - early on Wednesday morning there were signs that this malignant phobia was taking hold. JohnH, the Leader for the day,  did his best to assure the doubters that there would be no rain by Starting Time, and he had some success, in that finally a well-balanced quorum of 6 (3 men, 3 women) did turn up. But there were others (they shall remain nameless for now) who preferred to remain a-bed, snug in the warmth of their downies, futons, whatever. Ah well, they missed a good day for walking.

The Starters

Mail boxes, all in a row

There was a lot of water around  but most of it was under foot and it mostly confined itself to the trackside streams.

As usual we found little things to divert ourselves with - any excuse to have a pause during the walk  is welcome apparently. For example, this object, which at first sight looked like a small russet potato, got a lot of attention.

but not a potato: it was in fact a slug. Worth an eight minute stop.

After a bit we came across an extensive and quite deep puddle which threatened our intended progress. But Hazel and Yves, with a bit of ingenuity and some judicious rock placement, found a way for us to get past it.

On we went and then Hazel triumphed at the top of our only hill. Well done !

Then it was time to return the way we had come without taking a longer route, mainly because Myriam was keen to have lunch. It was then that we saw more evidence of the existence of an Algarve Sasquatch or Bigfoot.

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Yves gallantly helped the ladies negotiate the big puddle again.

One cannot be too careful. 

The Track and the Statistics

For some reason, the road back to base seemed much longer than before but No: the GPS showed that our route was its usual 6.6 kms, just as it was before. We are probably running out of puff.

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Low average speed.

And so, back to Pescadores for refreshments as planned, Hazel with a well-deserved camomile tea and the rest of us with assorted beers and iced teas.

Senhor Domingos and Dona Fernanda, our hosts at Retiro dos Pecadores

But suddenly, just as we were unwinding and relaxing, in came a somewhat peremptory message on the WAGSAL chatline:

"Are we at the correct place for lunch.  Norinha? Where are you ? I`m starving."

slightly softened by three smiling emoticons. So, of course, we downed our drinks pronto and headed off post haste to Norinha  where we were met by a clearly well-rested but hungry Chris and Rachel.

The Lunch

Favoured dishes were Cabidela

and various omelettes.

I believe that there were other choices such as lulas etc. although they escaped the camera.

The stand-out sobre-mesa was the Mousse de Oreo.

The lunchtime banter was exceptional, reaching either a new high of witticism or falling to hitherto unplumbed depths of ridiculousness, depending on your view of life. 

They call it ambidexterity

We learned all about Myriam´s escapades as a licenced Heavy Goods Vehicle driver and about Chris´s South African driving licence which, whether or not he has ever passed a test on them. allows him to drive every vehicle under the sun.

Talking of sunshine, Yves alerted us to the growing problem of Muslim influence on weather forecasting Oop North where, particularly in the Newcussle area, weather  conditions are always either sunni or shi´íte.

You can´t be serious

and JohnH gave a dissertation on the indisputable evidence of the Roman influence on Chinese cuisine.

As you can see, the audience hung on his every word - for at least twenty seconds.

As far as your scribe can recollect, John´s argument goes as follows:

The Romans wrote a lot about food. And, in the good old days when Latin was still taught in British schools, the first thing the new pupil was given in his Latin class was a book called Kennedy´s Latin Primer as an introduction to Latin grammar. Once the new book was in the pupil´s hands, by long-standing tradition the first thing he had to do to it was, with careful use of  penknib and ink, to scratch out the capital letter L on the book´s cardboard cover and change it into a capital E ,so that the book was now Kennedy´s Eatin´ Primer. 

(Do you remember penknibs and inkwells, at the top right hand corner of one´s desk?)

Then, in due course going through the book, in which there was quite a lot about food, one would come to the section in the Primer dealing with Latin adverbs where one would find the quotation "Caesar adsum iam forte." This comes from Julius Caesar´s own work, his  Commentaries on the Gallic Wars where he is talking about himself as he usually did.

Pedants translate this phrase as "Caesar, I am here by chance" but they are wrong. Caesar was actually jotting down his recollections of a day trip he and his pal Brutus (the one who eventually stabbed him in the back) took to Paris when they sat down in some dodgy café on the Champs-Élysées and he "had some jam for tea." It would be tedious to translate the whole section into English but for you scholars, the complete sentence is "Caesar adsum iam forte. Brutus aderat. Caesar sic in omnibus. Brutus sic in at."

Read it aloud. The jam was off.

But I am digressing. What has this all this dog Latin got to do with Chinese cuisine? Well, bear with me. You see,in those good old days when Hong Kong was still a British, as opposed to a Chinese, colony, a new cadet to the service first arriving out there would be taken out for a Chinese lunch by a colleague, an old hand. Some unfamiliar bits of food would be served, small mouthfuls, usually five in number, in a sort of bamboo basket, ever so slightly damp. The new arrival would ask "´And what s this ?" 

To which the old timer would reply "Dim sum." 

 Both, having been classical educated via the afore-mentioned Eatin Primer, would then laugh companionably and tuck in.

JohnH rests his case. Dim sum is Italian.

(You probably deserve an explanation at this stage. "Dim Sum"  = "A bit thick I am" = "I haven´t a clue " which is also a very quick way of saying " I know nothing. I´m from Barcelona.")

 So that´s about it. Thanks to Myriam and Yves for photographic contributions.

We started with phobias and some of you may have been a bit nervous about speaking the  Latin bits of this blog out loud - that is called xenoglossophobia. Don´t worry. Phobias is a field where people play around with and make up words a lot. How many of these so-called phobias are real, I could not say. Take "metrophobia" for example. I would have thought that it meant a fear of being lost or trapped in long underground railway tunnels. But no - it is a fear of poetry.  I kid you not.

 One of the best examples is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - the fear of long words.

Its not new. The Roman poet Horace used it in the first century BC to criticise writers who liked to use long words.

 

So, on that note, I will take the hint and shut up.