WAGS 30.11.2016: No charge for the loo madam!

Billed as  'A gentle reintroduction (for us) after our indolent month in UK,' apparently it wasn't gentle enough for Chris and Antje who had only just returned from near starvation but healthy treatments in India, and had been advised to take it easy.

   Originally we had 10 brave souls, considering the weather forecast, but at the last minute all Hopes were dashed as it required all of them to deal with matters arising from a no fault traffic incident the previous day, and Tony Webster had aggravated an old war wound by trying to kick start his Skoda.

 And so we were a very select 6, - Myriam, Ingrid, Hilke, Rod , Hedley and myself and of course Misty for security.   And as we all knew each other we didn't need a starter photo as we ambled out of Casa de Pasto Rodrigues at about 1030 with very grey skies to the west and frequent rumblings, which could not be ascribed to poor digestion.

View of the track

   Tracks were good, weather got a bit worse and then a bit better after we had donned our rain gear - or some of us had donned our raingear! I extracted my raingear sack from my bag to find that Myriam had replaced my perfectly good poncho with an old yellow anorak of hers which was neither waterproof nor commodious enough even for my svelte frame.

    The best part was that the whole walk was downhill apart from one short sharp climb up from Praia de Barranco, which Old RTC Hands will know well. It was almost like an MC Escher painting.

      Along the way out to the coast there were a lot of camper vans, mainly manned by Euro surfer dudes, and when we hit the coast we saw that the modified carpark was full of these vans and their occupants.

  We took a wrong turn into the bush and witnessed their personal hygiene arrangements.  Not a great by-product of the next free veggy generation, but since one of our topics for the walk was space diapers there was some discussion how this could be applied to free shitters in vans.

    There was some instruction on how to use the outdoor loos!

Brightening up (Thanks to photo editing)

Seascape: Praia de Barranco

On the way back we took in this enormous and rather exciting to some, Menhir.

There was even some floral grandeur on the way!

   Rare and exotic Algarve shrubbery

Before the heavens opened again we reached the sanctity of Casa de Pasto Rodrigues and struck lucky as the lunch of the day was roast pork, and having ordered out staple bifanas, we found great hunks of pulled pork inside rather than the usual thin and chewy slices.

Stats were as shown on the GPS, fairly respectable for a comeback walk.

       No appropriate quote this time, but an idea for a T shirt

Answers for what should be on the other side in comments please!!