This blog, covering the WAGS celebration of St Vincent´s Day 2017, will be in three (possibly four) parts. This is the first part, written hot off the trail, by Paul, and it deals with the Sunday´s walk. This is then followed by two more contemplative or recollective pieces penned by the indefatigable Rod several days after the events and after he had composed and delivered an altogether ground-breaking post-political-correctional Toast to the Lassies for Burns Night. The first of Rod´s two pieces covers the Sunday evening meal. The second one deals with the Monday´s walk. And then, for the fourth part of the blog, in addition to the statistics, we may with luck be able to persuade Myriam to describe the post-walk Monday lunch.With such profusion of literary talent at our service, it will best if your blogger now curbs his penchant for the blue pen and hands over to Paul.
WAGS 22/23/01/2017 - NOT the RTC
We do not know if Saint Vincent of Saragossa was a Walker but, given the price and availability of transport in the 3rd Century, it is probable that he was. On the other hand, it is very doubtful that he ever was a Geriatric, although no record exists of his age at the time of his savage martyrdom in 304 AD in Valencia.
His connection with the Algarve and the Cape that is named after him is that, after his martyrdom, his body was put in a sack and thrown into the sea. The body was recovered by his Christian followers who had it conducted to a monastery at what is now Cape St Vincent and a shrine was erected over him, which was guarded by ravens. Ravens had apparently kept vultures away from his body in Spain while he was being recovered from the sea.
What is a definite fact is that his Feast Day is 22nd January, and so, having adopted him as our Patron Saint as AWWs some years previously, the WAGS have now taken on the mantle of keeping his memory alive, thus usurping the role of the Ravens.
And so it came to pass that, on 22nd January 2017, we arranged a two-day penance in the form of two walks on consecutive days, interrupted by an evening Feast in Vila do Bispo. Rod had organised 9 rooms in the Mira Sagres Hotel, which oddly enough is in Vila do Bispo, and had booked a splendid feast for dinner at Café Correia which, oddly enough again, is right next door to the town´s Correio.
First day walkers are shown in pre-start photos, which also reveal that the weather was not quite as ordered, being rather cold, somewhat overcast and initially prone to a light drizzle.
There were 17 walkers on the Saints Day, 22nd January, starting at the sculpture park near the Trilho Ambiental on the way to Castelejo. As it was to be a lateral walk, finishing at the Cape, rather complex transport arrangements were innovated on the day, and amazingly proved rather successful, and fortunately we had Susan available to mount a rescue if needed, as sadly she had strained a muscle and to her very evident dismay was unable to join the walk.
At the start: John, Geraldine, Maria, Hazel, Susan, Paul, Antje, Rod, Myriam, Hilke, Gita, Lindsey, Thyl and Ingrid (in a Belgian show of unity),Chris, Andrew, Richard, and Janet
We set off almost at 11am as planned, along the broad sandy paths towards the Torre de Aspe.
Barely 300 metres into the walk, the first excitement occurred, when Myriam investigated a small bag by the side of the road and found that it contained three pairs of clean knickers. This, as you can imagine, provoked intense speculation, but the hopes that it was the first of many similar stashes along the way proved groundless. Some said that they were labelled St Vincent's, but it is more likely they were St Michael's!
Male, female, or convertible?
Despite a little precipitation and the usual halts for robing and disrobing, we made good time, and on reaching the crossroads, the committee decided to take the option of visiting the Coastguard House and the Torre de Aspe, which added a couple of kilometers to the route. Chris, who had seen both many times before opted to continue slowly on with Antje, cutting out the optional excursion and waiting for us to catch up.
Alas, the Coastguard House is even more vandalised than on our last visit, not a pane of glass unbroken and all furniture and fittings inside damaged. It is a splendid site though and nearby the views North up the coast are spectacular.
The old hands indulged themselves in a sea of nostalgia recalling the glories of the RTC days when, to reach this point, we had to negotiate a not inconsiderable climb to the House.
Nostalgia demands monochrome
And in those days we could do so, though the general consensus was that our current approach was quite agreeable and has the same result.
Back round a slightly different path to Aspe, always impressive close up, and just time for a photo or two, and we caught Chris and Antje up after about 15 minutes.
Torre de Aspe, can be seen for miles
The path to the Cape was easy and fast including a short break for those who brought sandwiches and some spectacular cliff views.
Soon we got to the start of the descent to Praia de Telheiro, where we all successfully negotiated the safety ladder. Maria even managed a quick twerk* on the ladder, but I was not fast enough to capture it on video.
Most climbed down back to the camera…
….but Andrew preferred the full-frontal approach.
*( “Twerk” , by the way, is an early 19th Century coinage for a movement perhaps a blend of twitching and jerking, now revived in the patois of discos specialising in hip-hop; I´m sure that Paul can elaborate.)
Susan was waiting at the Telheiro Car Park with the ambulance, and Chris, Hilke and Geraldine availed themselves of this health service for various reasons, and took the fast route to the Cape.
The Health Service awaits
By this stage our progress and underestimation of the distance meant we had to step it out to achieve our ETA of 1530 hours. The reason for our need to arrive at that time was that a ceremony had been planned to inaugurate a statue conceived, created and provided by a Finnish part-time resident of the Algarve, Rikki Graunhe. We had met Rikki a while ago as he explained his reasons inspiring, and his tribulations in realising, his dream of getting the statue erected in the Lighthouse compound at Cape St Vincent. Too much to detail here but it is a credit to his tenacity and perseverance that the statue had arrived and was positioned in time for the Bishop of Faro and the President of the Vila do Bispo Camara to inaugurate it on this year´s Feast Day.
We arrived, strung out along the road, in heavy, driving rain that started when we were about 15 minutes away, and was enough to soak most unprepared WAGS fairly comprehensively. The ceremony, unusually for one in this part of the Algarve, started almost bang on time. The Bishop must have had an understanding with his boss, though, as the rain paused during the ceremony which was attended by a couple of hundred tourists and villagers bussed in for the event with a posse of wet and weary WAGS as witnesses.
A couple of short speeches, a touch of choral music, and the idiosyncratic statue was exposed to the elements for the foreseeable future. It will need to be enduring and hardy as its subject, though perhaps the form is not to everyone's taste.
Towards 4:30 pm we felt our obligations to our Patron Saint had been discharged, and so miraculously boarded just the right number of cars and returned to the Hotel for beer, showers and preprandial relaxation, before the evening's festivities.
