Rod finished his teaser for the walk (for those on WhatsApp anyway) with the words: " A few more hills than last 2 weeks but just about within WAGS limits!" For those that have walked with Rod over the years, alarm bells rang loudly and continuously. Aside from the fact that ANY walk would have had a 'few more hills' than the last 2 weeks, this translated to the initiated as " I haven't reccied the walk yet, but I do know where it starts and finishes, and it is quite hilly in that area!"
The problem with a WAGS Walk, and why we set out limits, is that some weeks one or more of the participants may feel a bit more 'G' than the other WAGS, , and may not be able to keep in step, nor sing while marching uphill, nor even jog the last 3 kms to reach the appointed cafe before all the bifanas are gone!. Our repertoire so far has been reasonably well calculated and remembered, and there have happily been no casualties - so far!.
I personally have been walking in the Algarve for 20 years, and to the best of my knowledge I have never started a walk at Cafe Silva, and the first half of the walk was all completely new to me and well worth the Fuzers.
The walk itself was based on the area known as Vale Fuzeiros, although Cafe Silva is outside the village boundary. Rod's instructions to reach the start were on the basis of ease of following rather than the shortest way, and so we found ourselves swing well east of Vale Fuzeiros and turning at Amorosa before heading west through the village and out the other side where Cafe Silva, a great barn of a country house with a huge car park and dining room sat in lonely splendour.
Now despite some vague murmurings among the PAASL cognoscentii and our native Portuguese speaker, I think I have established that 'Fuzeiros' has no meaning in Portuguese, so must be a proper name rather than a rural explanation of the contents of the valley. There was a whisper that Fuzeiros were riflemen, but that is not true, and Fuzileiros is the correct term. Google Translate gives the meaning of this as 'Marines', although Fusiliers ( a soldier armed with a musket), would seem a better translation. The full term 'Vale Fuzeiros' is translated by Google exactly as the title to this piece. Tant pis!
Rod plus five of us (myself, Myriam, John, Maria and Ingrid) successfully found Cafe Silva on time, and we lingered over our coffee, hoping for Tony to arrive as he had intimated the night before.
Not sure why we have all got wood, but Maria won!
but after a longer than statutory delay we left, and happily just before we turned off the main road, the roar of a Skoda, hoving into view, announced his belated arrival having been cruising the area for 40 minutes in search of the cafe. Alas he had forgotten his dog leads, but no worries, improvisation is a WAGS skill and a quick rummage in the boot of the Skoda solved the problem.
An Orderly boot = an Orderly mind!
Rod, despite a multitude of estate management and domestic problems came up with a report on the walk late on Saturday, which I set out in an unexpurgated form, profusely illustrated by sometimes irrelevant photos.
The route by Garmin and Google Earth
The route by Komoot
Showing 11.6 km, 2 hrs 34 moving and 410 metres climbing. GE and Garmin only made it 10.8 km, but who is quibbling?
Rod writes
Locating Café Silva, as a new venue for some maybe, stretched the navigational abilities of an anonymous few so that arrivals were spread out over around half an hour. Well. so what .... it was a WAGS walk and Café Silva was open for coffee.
The early Starter photos, less the latecomer!
In any event John H, Maria, Ingrid, Paul & Myriam, Tony (plus Shadow and Jess) and Rod eventually turned up. The route was comprised of various bits of different walks strung together, some well known and some indeed unknown.
Palatial Mansion
We circumvented the palatial mansion behind Café Silva with its own moat reservoir (actually with plenty of water in it) and climbed up the beginning of the ridge to the west of Vale Fuzeiros. At the top the track peters out as we passed two ruined farmhouses...splendid sites and one wonders what story describes the absence of renovation.
Des. Res.
Beyond these a narrow tarmac lane begins with a number of attractive cottages and villas and some interesting outcrops of Grès de Silves, which of course will be better known to readers as a clastic rock with sand grain and iron oxide called Arenite, a very local formation of which is much used and loved in Silves.
Squashed face (you had to be there!)
Rock Nymphs
We then drifted off the ridge a bit to the west before returning to pass by the last few house on the northern end of the ridge.
The path threaded its way through pines and eucalyptus before descending to the main Vale de Fuzeiros road. After a short walk along this we took a track off to the east in the direction of Amorosa. This crosses the valley floor past a farm or two and a reservoir before ending in a narrow footpath which climbs up to the village. A short walk through the top end of the village took us to the top of the parallel valley to the south. The track eventually descends back to Val de Fuzeiros but on the way down passes a large Quinta (belonging to a chap well known to some of us!) which has some chickens supposedly well guarded by wire net fencing. Shadow and Jess found a way in however and nothing could deflect them from their target...the target was soon delivered lifeless, to their master who could only consign it to an ignominious funeral.
Their Master (on the right)
Nobody was around so one just has to wonder how often the owner counts his chickens. That distraction past, the track gradually wound down to the main Vale de Fuzeiros road. A short walk along this returned us to Café Silva. It was of course All Saints Day and by the time we got there it was well peopled with Celebrants.
All the finishers
The wait for our repast was therefore longer than it would usually have been but when it did arrive it seemed to be well up to WAGS specifications...indeed the tosta mista (with tomates) ranked amongst the top of the writer´s experiences.
Prato do dia
John appears happy with his bifana...........
.....while Rod is reserving judgement on the TM, which he later enthused about.
And so home in various different directions this time...one evidently even allowing supplementary refreshment for some with the AWW´s at their rather more down market establishment after their umpteenth circumnavigation of the Barragem de Arade. A walk of a variety of interests and at 10.5k and with only a couple of hundred metres height gain/loss nothing too strenuous even for WAGS
Roderick Frew
And to finish a few highlight photos on items that Rod chose to ignore.
The effort required to park this unwanted car in the wilderness outside the village was worth it!
Great efforts were made to befriend the locals. This lady explaining the finer points of making bedding for her chickens without using a feather mattress.
These cultivated peppers were pronounced to be 'Bishop's mitre', but to me they had been treated with a gene from the end of the Bell Pepper, so are more correctly termed 'Bishop's Bell End' (as the Actress said). Some found their way into pockets and rucksacks.
We came across a major Caracois retail centre, and Maria (centre behind the bag of snails) interrogated the owner at length, to discover they were not bred nor harvested locally, but imported from Morocco.
The gate post, continuing the snail theme.
More snail memorabilia.
A peacock, divested of most of its tail feathers, and a rare red-necked cockerel, (bottom right)
The finding of a Geocache made the whole walk worthwhile! I was smiling when M started to take the photo, but alas by the time the shutter clicked - the moment had gone!
Maria in the pomegranate tree
Still some water in the private reservoir.
Up the hill to Amorosa
A bifana, bursting with vitamins.
A good WAGS walk, within limits and with a coffee at the beginning and a bifana/TM at the end, except for Myriam who insisted she had expended enough energy walking and talking to go for the Prato do Dia, massa de peixe, which she enjoyed enough not to require dinner. Some paths we had never visited and in an area not normally frequented by the WAGs who are western biased.
After lingering over our snacks John and I set off back towards Silves in convoy, and spotted the remnants of the AWW who had finished a walk near the Barragem, and were having a quick drink after. We recognised one or two of them too!!
And a picture quiz to finish: What sort of road is this?
Hint: It is not an anagram of the first three letters of the first word!!
"Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young."
It was a really enjoyable walk in a tranquil countryside with a variety of scenery; in good company and lots of interesting topics of conversation. Thank you!
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