WAGS 2026 04 22: Hazel´s Casinhas Challenge or Flower Power

 Hazel volunteered to lead this week´s walk, starting from Casinhas. Here´s her report  but, be warned, I received about 66 photographs to select from so there are more pictures in this blog than is normally the case.

Leader´s report.

The Starters: Lesley, Yves, Hazel, Tanya, Maria, and JohnH

Six of us showed up at Casinhas for quite a challenging WAGS walk. There was a warm welcome back to Tanya who surprised us with her charming presence. She had joined us just because the walk was in her neighbourhood! It was a straightforward walk to start with and at the first pause we were all excited to see huge opened roses in a house garden -such a pretty sight.

Some of the roses were scented but not all. And all along the way to our first hill there were lots of beautiful blue and purple wild irises and other flowers. 

The hill was gentle but rather a long ascent. For our benefit, at the top of the hill we had another pause to catch our breath.  (Pause! I must have missed that one! It seemed non-stop. Ed.)

Then we turned right to walk past the avocado plantations. The avocado trees were covered with flowers and we noticed that there were no snails !

We passed Clara´s house and her large cisterna and greeted her mother who was sitting outside, and I noticed some cacti flowers that were unfamiliar to me.

Onwards we went towards Tufos, where John suggested that we might take a shortcut through the large alfarroba plantation because, a long time ago, he had seen a cyclist pushing his bike through the undergrowth coming down from the distant ridge which we were aiming for to the bit of the road where we now were and he thought that there could be a way through.Who could resist such a challenge to explore off piste? So Yves took up the challenge to try to find the once-upon-a-time path and led the way into the unknown.

So on we went once more, going over boulders and through rough terrain, along the stone wall on the east side of the of the Walton property where we encountered a horse and a donkey which were roaming free in their fenced-up property.

Close Encounters of an Equine Kind

Yves was at last able to find a faint path to lead us all up to the top of the ridge and so to the track which John had had in mind. Luckily, access from the plantation to that track was not fenced nor barred but open, otherwise.......

We then made our way down the track to the first crossroads where we parted company with John, swapping mobiles with him because his phone has the GPS tracker on it.

Off he went, making a beeline for Casinhas.....

Time For A Beer, I Think

....while we we went uphill again, past Casa Estrella (now renamed Casa Chapim)

and then on further to the tarmac road where we admired roses in the garden of another house 

From then on, it was just a matter of walking along the tarmac road and then the track to Rod´s junction where we crossed the road and past where Alison Hale´s house is, and then down hill, up hill, and down hill again through the oranges groves.

 By this time it was getting hot, so we all upped the pace and then at last came a welcome sight – John enjoying a cool beer outside Casinhas - back to base at exactly 12.30 pm.

Then indoors for lunch where we were joined by Antje, Chris and Rod and by Vera, a friend and neighbour of Tanya´s and ours."

Hazel.

From Our Northern Correspondent

And here is Yves´ take on proceedings - unedited..

"And so, more or less on time, our Intrepid Six ventured forth to fresh challenges. The first was to find a track that some cyclist had mentioned to the Deputy Leader of the party some time ago and in very vague terms: 'Track? Yeah, over there, I ffink, like...' We did find it after some old-fashioned 'off-piste' searching: AWW-trained minds never forget! Determination does the rest.
It seemed that we spent a lot time admiring, sniffing and observing flowers; why not? Some blooms were spectacular!

Now, a small question: in this  picture , the Deputy Leader is issuing a challenge of sorts to some gentle Aminals: an ass and a horse? a pony? a mule? Answers, on a post-card, to the usual address, please?
A canny bit later, after more 'extra-lops' thrown in for good measure, our lead-us Emeritus(a?) brought us safe and thirsty to the watering hole and we were joined by a few waifs and strays; a good 'comfort-lunch' restored spirits and in the solid tradition of 'Auld AWWers', our banter nearly matched in volume that of a smaller but decidedly vocal party nearby... Aye, a good trip, like!"

The Track and the Statistics

The Lunch

Service was a wee bit slow so there was a lot of time to spend on mobiles.

but when the food did come, it was not at all bad.

The javali was popular

Sobremesas were then ordered but, once again, table service seemed to grind to a halt, so Antje stepped in to speed things up.

Service with a smile

Thanks to Hazel for a very good walk, and thanks to Hazel, Maria, Tanya and Yves for their photographic contributions.

Closing Music

Well, as Yves noted  in his Blog piece, we had spent a lot time during the walk admiring, sniffing and observing flowers, so it seemed appropriate to me that the music should have something to do with flowers. Last week, I put in a bit of opera to great acclaim (I joke, of course), an aria from Madama Butterfly. The same opera has a Flower Song and there is an old version of it on YouTube with Mirella Freni (one of my favourites) which is worth looking up, but that particular aria has a bit more recitative and less tune than I think it should, so I will not give you that one. 

Then there is , of course, the Flower Duet from Delibes´ "Lakmé"  (an opera which nobody today has ever seen) a number which is probably played so often on Classic FM and the like as to become so completely hackneyed that I will not inflict it upon you  -although there is an Opera For Dummies parody which I will  give you now:-

 But to carry on -and I  do apologise for all this stuff about opera to those amongst us who were brought up on Deep Purple and such - I could have chosen Fats Waller ( another favourite of mine) and his filmed version of Honeysuckle Rose, but that may not be to everybody´s taste these days.

So, in the end, I have nowhere to go but to "Carmen" and to Jonas Kaufmann´s version of  Bizet´s Flower Song. I am fairly sure that the ladies will like him and it.

s