WAGS 19 05 2021: Alferce Lateral, or Nearly All Downhill

 

We may be verging on the geriatric but the spirit of adventure and innovation is still with us, as can be seen from Rod´s report of last week´s walk – as he says, a new one. A new one, at our age! Whatever next? 

But before we go on to that report, I will digress for a moment. This is of course the time of year when many national and international sporting competitions reach their various climaxes with all manner of cup and league finals, with all the usual attendant hype and media publicity. But I have news of one recently concluded competition which will probably have escaped your notice but which will, I am sure,  delight those gastronomes among us who were such fans of those recent blogs of ours delving into the arcane mysteries of pie making, and that competition is The World Scotch Pie Championships.

This event has been held in Scotland for several years already but for 2021 the organisers, the Scottish Bakers trade association, arranged for all previous years´ winners to compete in a play-off so that the eventual winner could truly be called Champion of Champions.

 These pictures show how serious the judging was. We will reveal the identity of the winner at the end of this blog.

But now over to Rod for his report:-

This was going to be a new one for WAGS; new route and a linear one at that. Being linear it was always going to mean a bit of shuttling at beginning and end so we arranged to all meet up at what was intended to be a straightforward location. We'll it was mostly straightforward and  John & Hazel, Terry & Jill, Frank, Maria, Dina and Myriam all arrived in very good time at the Odelouca Bridge on the Silves-Monchique Road. Unfortunately Tony  managed to find another bridge  over the Odelouca - out of phone contact  - so sadly we were obliged to depart without him.

In any event Charles had offered to be around to help out so we squeezed into three cars to reach the start point near Alferce, where the essential Starter Photo was taken.

The start was indeed an area we had covered some years ago as we headed down the Monchique River valley.  The valley has some  magnificent views and is still quite wild despite encroaching agriculture. The track is in fairly good shape with a major part of the second half relatively new.  

The walk was relatively uneventful to start with...mostly just admiring the splendid wide views. The only real pause being when Frank, who hadn't walked with us for a while, suffered a blister....new boots perhaps? First aid was instantly on hand administered by three willing volunteers to Frank's obvious appreciation! Something called Second Skin was applied.

When we finally descended to river level and into some welcome shade, we were faced by multiple river crossings. This was no surprise to anyone...we had all been warned.....the stream was fresh, clean and not too deep so no complaints at inevitable wet feet.

Various methods of negotiating the river crossings  were attempted.

Some tried to rely on stepping stones, but there were not enough of these for this to be very effective.

Frank was persuaded to use shopping bags over his boots. Whether these were successful is not recorded.

 

Some exchanged their boots for flip-flops, which allowed them to splash around with great enjoyment.

Others resorted to good old-fashioned Lagos Camera heavy-duty lixo bags, sadly no longer in production.

But most of us simply walked straight through and got our feet and boots wet. That didn´t really matter very much because by now we were very near the end of the walk and we very soon reached the lovely shady waterside picnic spot, complete with a rustic table and even a table cloth set  up by Charles who had already arrived with everyone's assorted picnics.

After a quick snack, Charles took the two drivers back to pick up their cars while the rest of us had more leisure to enjoy the usual relaxed, deeply intellectual WAGS lunch. 

Map and Statistics

A distance of 9.29km, a speed of 3.61 kph, and a time of 2 hrs 34 mins look OK, but where ViewRanger get an altitude gain of442.8 metres and an altitude loss of 763.2 metres  from, I really do not know. It seemed pretty much all down hill to me on the day.

And the Winners !

My picnic was fine enough, but what wouldn´t  I have given for a pint of McEwans Export Ale together with a Scotch Pie from the Champion of Champions 2021, James Pirie and Son, Family Butchers, of Newtyle, Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland.

Next time you´re near Blairgowrie, make the detour.

Many thanks John, a good narrative and plenty of pix, so I will add nothing to spoil your enjoyment except to add some appropriate music as requested. Perhaps John will clarify the difference between a 'Scotch' Pie and a 'Scottish' Pie in the comments.

For those that enjoy the feeling of ice cold water on the rocks! I will hold the educational supplement  until it fits in.

P.S.

I will answer Paul´s request for clarification about the uses of Scotch and Scottish as a PS to this blog rather than as a comment. There is no such thing as a Scottish Pie. Scotch is an older usage in Scottish English usage (if you follow me) than the words Scottish and Scots. For a full discussion on this you should look up the Wikipedia article called “Scotch (adjective)” which is quite informative. It would seem that old and traditional things tend to attract the adjective Scotch, such as Scotch Whisky, Scotch Broth and Scotch Eggs, and Scotch Pies have been made for the past few hundred years. Incidentally it has recently been established that a serving of those three items plus a Scotch Pie will undoubtedly qualify as “a substantial meal “for public eating purposes during Covid.

It is probably difficult for the English to fully grasp the subtleties of this matter, which the Wikipedia article illustrates quite well when it refers to A. J, P. Taylor as follows:-

In 1965, the historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote in his Preface to English History 1914–1945: "Some inhabitants of Scotland now call themselves Scots and their affairs Scottish. They are entitled to do so. The English word for both is Scotch, just as we call les français the French and Deutschland Germany. Being English, I use it."

Taylor had better tread carefully, or Queen Nicola will have him de-colonised.

More happily, I would refer you to the website “ScottishScran.com” for a very good article on how to make Scotch Pies, (Scran being a Scots word for “food”)

There is also a thing called a Scotch Snap. This is neither a biscuit nor a sweetie, but a syncopated musical rhythm in which a short, accented note is followed by a longer one, characteristic of strathspeys in Scottish Country Dancing music. I was taught to play the Scotch Snap when my Welsh violin teacher at school decided to get me to play the Scots Fiddle.

Well, there are enough different uses of the Scottish adjective in all that to keep Paul happy. I hope I have made things quite clear for him. We will close finally with another piece of music.