WAGS 2021 06 23: Seasons Finale or Closing Down

 

I had hoped to be able to produce a blog this week which was rather more cheerful than the Lamentation from the pen of Rod which we had the previous week but, alas, that has been hard to achieve. Everywhere we go these days, we seem to find things closing in on us, “cribbed, cabined and confined” as the poet had it.

Be that as it may, 6 of us gathered at Café Elias for the final WAGS walk of the season – and some season it has been, what with all the restrictions and interruptions.

Dina, JohnH, Rod, Hazel, Myriam and Yves

After the Starter picture, we set off up into the Serra but, even at the beginning, we found that a previously useful parking spot has now been walled in, as can be seen behind Hazel in this picture.

No big deal - there are other spots where to park. However, then, when we reached the top of the first ridge, we came across newly-laid foundations for a gateway at the top of another of our favourite access tracks.

Why would somebody want to put a gate across something that has been a thoroughfare for ages? And if that gate is going to be there to stop people from going down the track, what is there likely to be at the lower end of it? Something to stop people going up the track? But the Leader did not have long to ponder the question because we noticed that Yves had disappeared along another track and had not reappeared for some time. Tempting as it sometimes is to leave him to his fate, we felt that in the interests of classic photography we could not let that happen; so, while the others waited patiently, the Leader went off in search of him. A good half a kilometre away, there he was, upon top of a hill apparently transmitting some sort of wireless message via a field radio and aerial set in his back pack. Who he was in communication with it is hard to say – can´t have been with HuaWei, not with that antique sort of kit.

Radio Operator, French Army surplus circa 1957

The reassembled group then wandered past that old building, perched high on the ridge with commanding views, which for some reason always reminds me of Fats Waller´s song “My Very Good Friend The Milkman” containing as it does in its middle eight the words:-

“Then there´s a very friendly fellow who brings

All the latest real estate news

And every day he sends me blueprints

Of cottages with country views.”

A middle eight (or bridge) despite its name is not exactly in the middle of a song. For example, in a typical 32 bar number, - e.g. 4 x 8 bar sections in the format A,A, B, A, - B, usually in a modulation from the key of the main theme, is the middle eight and is the third of the four quarters. I am glad to have cleared that up for you.

Yves then took some of his customary artistic shots of the cottage to justify the search and rescue 

and in a relatively cheerful mood we carried on but the mood wasn´t to last. As we descended the ridge, we began to hear the some of heavy machinery and there it was - a massive JCB re-grading a path along the bottom of the valley. 

Re-grading in this instance meaning levelling, widening and obliterating of nearby undergrowth, all to make access easier for monstrous logging equipment.

What had been one of our favourite tracks like this

has become this

and this

and this

Nothing but thick dust now, and thick mud when it rains.

On we went, into increasingly bare hills sides. The absence of familiar scenery and the monotony of the logged landscape are quite disorientating and the Leader was twice glad to be able to call on the experience of our Local Guide (a.k.a. Rod Frew) to correct his compass bearings, otherwise he could have led the group way too far, which was not what we would have wanted on an increasingly hot morning.

Turning for home, we paused on a ridge and from that vantage point we watched the progress of a logging machine, nicknamed Praying Mantis by Hazel, as it trundled aimlessly across the barren wastes which reminded Dina of Morocco. It was then that I recognised the location below us.

This it what it looks like now:-

The blue circle marks the spot where these next two photos were taken, back in April 2020:-

Enough said.

The Praying Mantis, or Louva-Deus

Heading back towards Café Elias, we passed by a small barragem and then re-joined that track at the top of which we had earlier discovered the foundations of a new gate. Our forebodings came true for there, at the bottom of the track, where there had been a small farmhouse with productive strawberry fields, there were now the pillars for another gate, to prevent access.

The strawberry fields are no more but the house has been smartened up by dint of a coat of lurid blue paint. 

Rod found out from a somewhat taciturn bystander that the new owner is Portuguese, but even so it seems likely that that particular pathway into the hills will now be closed to us. Private and ever more private.

Back at Café Elias, Yves and Dina immediately made themselves scarce going off to attend to some pressing administrative matter. The remaining four stayed awhile to take some refreshment. Then Rod made his way home, and three of us adjourned to Casa do Pasto Norinha for lunch where we were joined by Maria. The majority had sardines which by all accounts were delicious.

The Track and Statistics

Only Yves and the Leader will have done the full 8.28 kilometres, for reasons explained above.

To close, a few words from Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters

and that song by Fats Waller, to cheer us all up.

WAGS 2021 06 16: Aguas, alas, Belas no more, or A Torrent of Tostas

This week´s blog is a lamentation from the pen of Rod Frew. Here it is, unexpurgated. Ponder on it, mortals, and weep.

A rather late, even than usual, and somewhat gloomy and joyless report. 

Once  upon a time Aguas Belas lived up to its name as being probably the most attractive valley in the Serra de Silves.

The track following the valley almost to the top used to accompany the stream all the way with multiple crossings and was shaded by the ancient acacias and medonheiros lining the river bed. Every curve revealed another  lush vista  between the trees, green and shady even if the stream had tried up in the height of the summer, passing the occasional  evocatively ruined farmstead until one eventually came upon the mysterious old medronho adega  long ago abandoned, but still with a small, grassy meadow alongside  where you could relax lying in the shade and dream of another life long gone.

No more.  Eucalyptus has one again taken its destructive toll. The track has been levelled and widened to take the massive machinery which the culling of eucalyptus demands, the valley trees have all been slaughtered  by howling chainsaws to make way for 20 ton tractors pulling huge trailers laden with the dead, the ancient ruins and the medronho distillery now only  like gaunt skeletons  in the desert.  The once peaceful  valley now reverberates with the roar of powerful diesels, and the screams  of armies of chainsaws. The hillsides, now mountains of treeless dust, crawling with machinery of death. The shady forest trails are now churned  and ground up by  massive wheels and tracks into powdery dust bowls waiting for autumn rains to convert them into torrents of mud and sweep them to the valley below.  Soon the battlefield will be quiet, the dead will have been carried away but the desolation will remain. 

It was to here that John and Hazel, Terry and Jill, Frank, Myriam, Yves and Rod  set off on a still relatively cool  June morning from the Café Para e Fica. The ever chatty and friendly Ana Maria has now parted from the owner's son and, although we  saw her briefly collecting some of her belongings, the café is now served by other hands. 

We were quickly served notice of what was to come on the walk when we were obliged to take refuge from the first of many  trucks carrying eucalyptus bodies to the paper mills.  It must be said in small mitigation that the drivers did take the trouble to slow down so that we were only partially covered with fine dust. We continued through this scene of ever increasing desolation until we ascended a once shady track to the near ridge. From there we were able to see the scale of this veritable desecration of once beautiful countryside.  Desecration of a countryside, for the principal benefit of  large industry and opportunist landowners overseen by totally inept government  departments, which will take a generation to recover and even then dependant on future plantation strategy and destiny.  Over the ridge we began to escape the turmoil although the advance party chainsaw infantry had been at work  leaving the track strewn with fallen trees and obstacles. Over one of these Frank came a cropper and  began losing copious blood from a damaged knee.  Yves, a fully equipped medico as usual, donned his PPE gloves and leapt into action. Within minutes a tourniquet  stemmed  the blood loss and assorted unguents and a dressing was applied allowing Frank to march on undaunted.

Crossing the bottom of the next valley, normally impassable, had  been opened up by the advance  guard allowing us to reach the track on the other side. This track headed up to a ridge between us and  the beginning of the Aguas Belas valley enabling us to complete a wide circle. It did however involve a very steep descent to the valley floor, made even worse by fallen trees across the track. In the end a slow descent but at least without further incident or accident.. 

And so back to the café.  There somewhat to our surprise, the good chap now serving customers announced the 7 tostas were nearly ready. We had earlier enquired merely if they were available. Perhaps they had a prompt from Ana Maria who would have counted our numbers whilst she was there.  In any event, although there were 8 of us walking and only 6 staying to eat, we felt obliged to accept all 7. (Why 7 tostas for 8 walkers is a puzzle unlikely to be resolved.) And the tostas kept coming; there was no stopping the tide. No particular hardship as they were rather good and all were consumed.  And so ended what will probably be the last Aguas Belas walk for a very long time. Perhaps we should invite Greta Thunberg on a walk there to see what demand for paper does for environmental destruction and pollution and give her another axe to grind.

Rod Frew.

Rather than break the flow of Rod´s jeremaiad with pictures, I will simply make them an addendum to his text. 

Perhaps some sorrowful music would be a suitable closing piece.

Post Script

    These blogs seem to be getting later and later in publishing, whether reflecting the fact that having been retired for a number of years, our sense of urgency has been eradicated, or just an unfortunate chain of events and interruptions has caused the delay.

  Well a suitably grave recital for the endpiece, it is the first time I have seen subtitles, which give lie to the dirge.

    Regrettably the Alexandrov Ensemble Choir (the main part of the Alexandrov Ensemble) credited with the video is no more. It was established in 1926 in Moscow by Alexander V. Alexandrov as a military male voice choir of tenors and basses who were members of the armed forces. Alexandrov directed the choir until he died in 1946, when it was taken over by his son Boris from 1946 -1987. Since then there have been various directors and in the 1990's the first female (serving army personnel) were permitted to take part usually as soprano soloists.

In 2007 for the first time boy sopranos and altos were allowed to participate, from the associated school choirs.

    In 2016, 63 members of the choir died among 90 passengers in a Russian Military aircraft which crashed on the way to Syria, without survivors. I am not sure whether it has been resurrected.

    Some lovely purple prose above from Rod and the theme was well illustrated by John and his Sony.

   Anyway I have no time to scribble on or it won't be published before tomorrows walk. My coffee journal may be continued in my other WASPS blog.

   Ate a proxima,