WAGS 26.06.2019: Season Finale and 'Sovraccarico de Pizza'!

The final walk of the current season, to be followed by a blow out of meter-long pizza was announced early enough, but met with muted enthusiasm. Whether it was the potential heat of the day, the remote location of Lagos, aversion to pizza or indeed lunch, the injury toll occasioned by a hard season, or any other valid reason, may be hard to discover. 

       Rod and Dina were both unfortunately being out of the country. Apologies from Ingrid, Terry and Jill, Lindsey and Peter soon came in. Chris and Antje were on for the Pizza, but holding back on the walk, until nearer the day; John, Maria and Hilke would walk and eat, Hazel would do a short walk and eat as she was still nursing a fractured foot. Yves was fulfilling his matrimonial care duties,; Frank waited until the deadline was past, and then decided to come, but after arriving at Aldi in Lagos, he apparently couldn't find the Cafe do Bairro nor anyone who knew where it was and after a failed attempt to telephone me, headed back homewards.  I did call him when he hadn't arrived but he was already passing Odiaxere, and gave up. Tony is remaining firmly in retirement, but from the remainder of the list I heard nothing.

Maria modelled my new Tilley, and managed to look HyperKewl despite the size difference.:

According to Tilley:-Our sun-protective Hiker's Hat is designed with an evaporative cooling insert, powered by HyperKewl™, to help relieve heat stress during treks. A rear brim loop provides a place to securely clip your Hat in place when not in use. These unique features, plus all the usual Tilley® Hat benefits make this the ultimate Hat for the trail. 

Look forward to:

• Maximum sun protection - fabric is certified UPF 50+, the highest given
• An abundance of shade - broad brim protects from both sun & rain
• Keeping cool - the HyperKewl™ Evaporative cooling material absorbs & slowly releases water through evaporation to help ‘super charge’ the body’s natural cooling process.

And so the starting line up looked like this: Maria, Myriam Hilke, Antje Paul, John

An effective low angle shot by John's remote camera.  We got on our way at 0945, and it was a pleasant day, a bit overcast with a light breeze. (I got that in early as Myriam castigated me for the last blog when I didn't mention the rain. - and I thought only the English were obsessed with the weather!)

Over the hill by Lidl and past the mosaic specialist, who doesn't have much new work on display.

Further up, a moment to contemplate the new development planned the other side of Avenida da Fonte Coberta.

We dropped down towards Modelo/Continente where the rural part of the walk would start. Antje left us at this point to go to the Post Office via her car where she had thoughtfully left the PO Box key.

Across the large field, the sky turned atmospherically cloudy, but the  rain didn't threaten.

Was this a discussion on how to cook pizza?

The high (or low) point of the walk was the Tunnel under the A22 extension, which is only accessible after prolonged dry weather.

Will I fit?

Hilke looked doubtful at this point, and started murmuring about 'bad knees', but most of us had been through before and the photo opportunities were a bonus.

Myriam posing for John who was still inside the tunnel.

From the other side.......

....and the other side!!

It was dark in there!

Once more out of the breach......

Piece of cake!

We crossed the N125 and walked up through the opulent Boa Vista Golf resort which is ever expanding, and all the cleaners and gardeners use electric golf carts to cover the vast distances between their jobs.

The Hills are alive.....

Soon on the way to Porto de Mos and Maria was happily engaged collecting her starter for the evening.

I meanwhile had one of my geocaches to check-

The view down to Porto de Mos was splendid as usual, and the breeze was very pleasant.

Down the last slope and Antje and Chris were in the carpark.

Antje joined us for the walk back to Pizza Oliva, and we hit our mark at almost exactly 1 pm.

Hazel and Chris were at the cafe and we had 8 for Pizza.  This was not only an auspicious number in Chinese - .......

No. 8 has long been regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture. With pronunciation of 'Ba' in Chinese, no. 8 sounds similar to the word 'Fa', which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success and high social status too, so all business men favour it very much.

.............but also in Italian, as a One -metre Pizza has 4 sections and we were in a position to order 2 one-metre pizzas and each choose a topping for one section. True democracy!

Once I had established the rule, attempts were made to sabotage it  - "but I don't like ham!"  -  " I want that one as well!"  - "I must have anchovies" -  "I don't know what it is but I'll just pick a number!"  etcetera

   In the end I had to make a couple of tough decisions - particularly for Myriam who protested that I wasn't allowing her to choose what she wanted  - " but someone has already chosen that!" and we ended up with two gloriously varied pizzas. For the record, I carefully wrote down the numbers against each topping on a scrap of paper, and handed it to the very attractive Moldavian Pizza specialist waitress - who proceeded to translate the numbers back to the names in her order book.  I can't remember the names of all - Capriccioso, Especial, Quattro Formaggio, Marinara, Tuscan etc but the numbers went like this. Chris - 17, Antje - 10, Hilke - 5, Hazel - 13, John -15, Paul -12, Myriam - 7 and Maria - 20.

   This was such a complex challenge for the pizza chef, that it took a while to arrive and the bruschetta complimentary starters were a fond memory.

While waiting, John settled his debt to me for the text message I had to send him owing to his reluctance to use WhatsApp.

Plus ca Change!!  Not like a Scot not to take advantage of free messaging!

Hazel and I had a 'bag-off', which Hazel won by producing a second minimalist folding bag.

When the first pizza arrived, Hilke and Antje fell on it like ravening lionesses, not even allowing me to wait for the second pizza to hit the table for the historic double  One-metre Pizza photo.

Digging in!

Luckily the second pizza arrived and our ace cameraman manged to capture this shot which didn't reveal too much of the desecration of the first pizza by a skilfully placed ice bucket!

We engaged the services of the lovely waitress to take a team photo from each end!

Jyll arrived to say hello towards the end of our feast and helped us out with a slice.

And happy to say, everyone left the table replete and content, sometime after 3pm and we left a couple of small portions for the Roman Gods of Pizza as a thankyou.

The walk track and stats:

First from John:

Stats:-

Total distance: 11.1 kms. Total time: 3 hrs 15 mins.

Moving time: 2 hrs 36 mins.

Moving average speed: 4.2 kph (Could be described as a snail´s pace, what?)

Ascent: 298 metres.

My ViewRanger Stats(regrettably not saved until I had been sitting for about 40 minutes)

Stats

And the ever-reliable Official Garmin:-

which gave the ascent as a mere 194 metres.

Whichever it was a fine walk and a congenial lunch. Summer is here and some WAGS will emerge early  from their torpid beds to flourish as APAPS and as breakfast specialists.

WAGS 19.06.2019: Back and Walking

       I don't know why, but it appears to be a recognised phenomenon, that as one's years advance, memories of your rose-coloured youth rise to the surface of your consciousness at the exact opposite rate that the reason why you walked into the living room just now, fades.
    And so it was that as I sat down to try and report the walk on 19th of June, I couldn't immediately recall too much detail, but, unbidden, into my head sprang a song which I had not thought about in years, but was so vividly reminiscent of happy times - and I could remember all the words, despite it having been recorded 59 years ago in 1960. This was it:

Now I was about 12 or 13 when this came out and Helen was probably one of my first teenage crushes, despite only being 2 years older than myself. But then I have always liked older women!!

  Anyway, the sentiment stands. Walking back to Happiness!

We were back in the Algarve and back Wednesday WAGGing. Rod was still unavailable, and after last week's debacle, I wasn't expecting too much in the way of company, but in the event, we had 6   WAGS and a couple of Geocaching friends from Warwickshire to augment the talent on display.

L-R: Seated: Emma, Hilke, Peter, Myriam, Maria.
        Standing, Gary, Paul, John.

  Gary, my Geocaching friend from Stratford upon Avon, who rejoices under the geocaching name JimJinks, has been known to be a tad obsessive about his hobby. At the time of writing this he has found 24,177 caches over 1000 of which he was the first one to find them. He has been Geocaching since March 2006, just 3 months longer than Myriam and I, but our grand total is 2139.  However, we have finds in 21 different countries whereas Gary has only in 12 countries!!  Emma herself has over 4000 caches found.
       
     Anyway, it was a dull cool morning when we gathered at Vadibar in Barao Sao Joao.  After the usual greetings, pleasantries and a bit of reshuffling of cars by those that hadn't found the correct parking area, we set off.  My original intention had been to attempt to follow an all new route uploaded by someone else to ViewRanger, but unreccied by me, but not wanting to embarrass myself in front of visitors, I determined to follow the tried and tested 10 km route, only in reverse. Then I did embarrass myself as I boldly turned left at the church to realise that Sculpture Hill was not where I thought it was.  A bit of direction seeking of a local, by Myriam soon had us at the right  junction, and ready to head up the hill.

 Meanwhile the ladies spotted a donkey foal, and the usual discussion about the names of crosses between donkeys,asses, horses,  mules, hinnys, jennys and jacks ensued, although the only thing of which I was certain was that the young of all of them is a foal.

Getting the hill out of the way early on.

Nice trumpet shaped flower - can anyone identify it? Plantsnap, my app says Trumpet Vine

BSJ's prolific sculptor, Deodato Silva has  been working hard and there were more than a few new sculptures on the hill......

.....including this one of a man extricating himself from the nails on a cross......

...and this immodest young lady with a fig necklace munching on an estrela.

On on and up.........

The girls in the band

Imaginative groupings

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

A pleasantly shaded walk through the forest to Pedra Blanca took is past some amber forming from the sap of a fir tree.

 The Obligatory Trig Point Photograph at Pedra Blanca

Spot the Difference!!

Peter decided to call it a day at Pedra Blanca as he was a bit out of training and headed back directly to his car. We carried on with the circuit.

We ambled gently round the long flat section, and I ignored the short cut which would have robbed us of our 10 km  target. (see below)

John's track. His stats were rather modest compared to the official ones, but made us look quite good on the ascent: Total distance 10.1 kms.

Total time: 3 hrs 06 mins

Moving time: 2 hrs 17 mins.

Moving average: 4.4 kph.

Ascent: 340 metres.

Viewranger had this track and some enhanced stats

Wheras the official Garmin record showed this:-

but an ascent  of only 230 meters. 

The bus we were looking for , solar powered and eco friendly as befitted a village of vegan eco warriors.

 Anyway we finished at a decent time of 1pm, and Vadibar was not too crowded as we were only 7. The lady owner provided us with good bifanas and toasted sandwiches plus the usual libations.

Relieved that we didn't have to suffer the  cuisine of the Palm Tree Cafe we agreed  that honour had been satisfied,and parted with the possibility of a walk and a metre-long Pizza to round the season off.

The wisdom of age: 'don't stop walking.'   Mason Cooley