WAGS 2021: Wednesday Algarve Geriatric Saunterers : 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

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.