AWW 09.12.2009: A Silves Special, or Breaking One's Duck

It was a damp and chilly Wednesday morning, with many a gentleman and many a lady still abed after the Round the Corner marathon, but at Casinhas Cafe a select group of five assembled.

Their sense of style was immediately evident: none of that customary disorganised, last-minute scrimmage that has come to be known as the Starters Picture: instead, there was an elegantly posed, well-composed, and comfortably seated “Team Portrait”.

(Click to enlarge)

The Fortunate Five

Those Five were:

John H ( breaking his duck as Leader): Two of the Gang of Three, i.e. Tina and Ingrid: Hazel: and Andrew, giving JH some moral support (much-needed - see later)

Statistics (courtesy Ingrid):

Total distance 18.1
moving time 3.33
total time 4.42
moving average 5.1 (wow!)
overall average 3.9
total ascent 168
max elevation 105

The Track

Casinhas was still closed when we set off, precisely at 9.30, but after a gentle stroll of some ten minutes we found a convenient nearby Casa providing all necessary creature comforts, i.e. commodes, crackers and coffees (Starbucks and free trade, so we were told.) Thus internally and morally fortified, we then proceeded comfortably through scented orange groves. Andrew began planning orange liqueur production using the masses of uncollected windfall fruit which we saw.

Then……Calamity struck; I had failed to recognise one of the most obvious of all obvious turnings and I led the group perhaps a km or so the wrong way before necessarily back-tracking. The depleted Group of Three were remarkably charitable about this, sotto voce criticisms only.

An embarrassed Dodo tries to re-orientate.

Thus it was that we arrived at Cafe Sustelo in Poco Barreto, half-an-hour later than I had intended, for a mid-morning beer. The beer was good, the ladies’ rest-room apparently not so good. However, Andrew was greatly impressed by the unusual monumental marble fittings in the mens’ room which were duly photographed (censored:Ed) and are worth a detour for those interested in that particular type of architectural specialism.

We then struck back into wooded territory, watched by a smart Dalmatian, and past that extraordinary deserted house on the walls of which are repeated written descriptions of a domestic tragedy.




The Dalmatian






The Gang of Three minus 1 plus 1

Some story


By now, my sense of direction had been restored, and I navigated the team reasonably well, past the turn-back point where we had been an hour and a bit earlier, on past cultivated small-holdings and flocks of sheep and goats. One flock was guarded by a pair of dogs, with small cow bells round their necks, and linked together by a chain –an unusual sight – little threat to us but tricky for them in the undergrowth.

Luncheon was taken in a suitable location –so I thought - there was ample convenient stone seating and shade was not a requirement that day – but apparently that air-conditioning and de-humidifying equipment were not quite up to the required standard.

Lunch stop

While lunching, it emerged that the reason the Group of Three were down to Two was that Alex had got injured during SCD. (Not “Strictly Come Dancing” but Scottish Country Dancing). If it was a result of my doing Strip The Willow with her rather too vigorously last St Andrew’s Night, then I must apologise to her, not only on behalf of myself, but also on behalf of Scotland and on behalf of Scotland’s Supremo Alec Salmond whom, when I next see him, I will ask to arrange it so that she can go for free medical treatment in Scotland, as everybody can when they are there. This, as you all know, is possible only because England is currently sending so much money from Westminster back up North under the Barnett formula. That formula is terribly complicated and few people other than Barnett and Harold MacMillan have ever really known how it works; but essentially, it’s an annuity funded by the aggregate of the excise duty that England has diabolically been charging on guid Scots whisky ever since Hanoverian times (1745), net-present-valued at current Albanian interest rates, then divided by the distance from Earth to the Moon (on a good day), multiplied by the square root of the applicable year’s Grand National winner’s starting price, to a toss-up factor of the previous year’s GDP . Go for it. Alex.
Meanwhile, Hazel, who had already done 28km the previous RTC day, deputised for her well enough in this day’s 18km.

Show me the road to go home

After lunch, Ingrid intimated that she had a meeting scheduled with a top Government official for later that afternoon. So now, with time running short because of my stupidly missed turn earlier on, we switched on the after-burners and really rocketed home, pausing on our way downhill to Casinhas only to say hello to Misty who was pacing disconsolately behind Rod Frew’s fencing wondering why we were not taking her out for a walk. Rod meanwhile remained immovable in his retreat.

Back at base, Casinhas was throbbing with local life, the ice-cold canecas went down a treat, and Ingrid, fashionably re-attired for her meeting said…….

”Ciao!”