WAGS 29.04.2020:: Quarantine Diaries Week 7

OK. I'll come right out with it. This Wednesday, for the Lagos Town Chapter, was a much reduced walk, as I am carrying an injury which has restricted my walking.  My left knee has now joined my left ankle and my left hip in baulking at the demands I have placed on it since I started long distance walking way back in 1962 when I first took part in the Nijmegen Marches, a quasi military event which comprised 4 days of 40 km a day, mostly walking in step with ones companions.

    However not to be completely inert, I checked with the great thinkers.

Now,  I am usually acted on by an external force called Myriam.

Very appropriate metaphor, - I have been trying to avoid climbing the steep slopes, since I began the WAGS.

However there is light on the far shore!!:

So move or seize up. I needed a plan.

I cast my mind back to Sunday 26th, which was to be the date of the London Marathon which was cancelled because of the pandemic. Immediately a host of sporting substitutes were imagined which could not only provide some exercise, but also raise money for Covid-19 charities.

“The 2.6 Challenge can be anything that works for you,” says Nick Rusling, Co-Chair of the Mass Participation Sports Organisers group (MSO) and CEO of Human Race. “You can run or walk 2.6 miles, 2.6km or for 26 minutes."

"You could do the same in your home or garden, go up and down the stairs 26 times, juggle for 2.6 minutes, do a 26-minute exercise class or get 26 people on a video call and do a 26-minute workout – anything you like," he explains.

Some ideas were posted in the form of a Gif from which you could select a challenge at random by clicking it to stop.

#TwoPointSixChallenge idea? 🤔

Pause the GIF below to find your activity! 👊

pic.twitter.com/dunAmTo9pL      (Right click to open in new page)

Thus inspired, I decided to adapt the challenge to base on the number '10', which some of you may remember was the maximum distance proposed for WAGS walks in kilometres.

Accordingly, when I woke up, I did my usual 10 minute meditation following the Calm App*. which was appropriately entitled " Non Contention"
I then struggled to my feet and did 10 minutes of stretching based on Pilates, to rejoin the human race.
Next 10 minutes of  Brain Training, using the Elevate App**, which I find quite challenging./
A modest breakfast and a little caffeine completed my preparations.
      Meanwhile, Myriam was doing her morning routine: - 10 minutes vacuuming, followed by 10 minutes kitchen cleaning , and then about an hour of Pilates before her poached eggs on nothing.
     We indulged then in 10 minutes of Socratic debate, which Myriam won!

   

Starter photo: R-L: Myriam Behind camera, Me.

        We decided on a short walk, to build up some steps on the Withings.  First section uphill to Santo Amaro Market. First stop the orthopaedic shop, which was selling via a blocked doorway. Sensing a desperate victim, they allowed me in, wearing my mask and persuaded me to buy the most expensive Knee Brace in the shop. I left the shop wearing it, feeling some benefit.

Photo at end of walk: Both knee and ankle fully braced!!.

Once completed, we circled through the town to the Avenida and over to the Marina to check on social distancing status in Lagos. All appeared to be in order.

A little explanatory aside here.  On the 23rd (St George's Day) a gift arrived in our kitchen in the form of a young bedraggled Zebra Finch, desperately tired and crying for his/her mother. I caught him/her gently and kept him/her in a well ventilated plastic container to recover. By the time Myriam returned, I had decided that it was a Sign from a higher level, and that this little creature needed my help. I went across to the pet store and bought the cheapest cage I could find and some seed, just in case it wasn't a Sign, and he/she died during the night. Fortunately he/she ate like a seagull and revived rapidly, cheeping and beeping away to greet me the next morning. After long consideration, and in honour of the Patron saint of England on whose day he/she had arrived, I named him St, George/Georgina. 

The clear thinkers among you may have noticed that I used alternative personal pronouns in describing the fledgling.  Unversed in the ways of birds - indeed I had to resort to Google Lens to identify it as a Zebra Finch - I did not know whether it was an immature male or female at that time. 

So as we were walking past the Marina, I decided I would go to Pets For Life Megastore opposite Pingo Doce and upgrade his/her tiny 15cm x 25 cm studio accommodation to something more fitting for a Saint.

This I did at considerable expense, but then I discounted the cost of the free finch! Of course I also gained the benefit of a little upper body and core exercise, carrying it back against the wind.

We reached home without incident and having been on the net researching finches, I decided that until and unless, St Georgina reached maturity and declared herself a cock finch, a gender neutral finch or non-binary or gender apathetic or any other gender promoted by the LGBT support group, she would be female. And she was very happy with her new house, but not as tidy as the other female at the address.

A bit superfluous this track picture, and the stats are not particularly astonishing, 

But you have to remember, I was a Walking Wounded WAG, and I had already had a good workout before we started. To compensate, when I had downed the traditional TM and coffee, and after a short hiatus while I watched an episode of Death in Paradise (how appropriate), I did a full 10 minutes on the exercise bike, and racked up another 2.5km.

And that was it for the day. Yet another day on which we did a bit more than sitting in the armchairs and fighting off tooth decay!

And finally, to prove that the universe is in balance, on Freedom Day, to commemorate the Carnation Revolution, we found an expired seagull on our terrace.

Not a mark on it - and Myriam was quick to deny any responsibility - but perhaps a tribute to the power of malignant thought, or a suicide because he had been spurned by a mate . Anyway I thought rather uncharitably -' that is one less to crap on my car!!'

And now over to Silves. JohnH reports:-

Since we are keeping the activities of the Intrepid Four WAGS Irregulars under wraps (the Thought Police are everywhere!) I make no apology at this stage for re-opening

The Guinea Fowl Chronicles

even although there hasn´t been a great response to its contents so far from our culinary correspondents.. Perhaps all such discussion is conducted via WhatsApp and so gets lost to the generality of mankind.

You see, what has been puzzling me quite a little while is that both Terry A (Happy Birthday by the way) and Antje are both in favour of skinning the birds, whether they be guinea fowl or pheasant, (Paul maybe too, I don´t know) whereas it strikes me that much of the delicious fat and flavour of the bird rests in its skin from which the fat can be rendered. I suppose one could drape a pheasant with masses of bacon before roasting to keep it moist, but I would prefer to taste pheasant in my pheasant, not bacon. How do you keep a skinned bird from becoming too dry is the question.

In passing, here is a short video of how to skin a pheasant - not, maybe, one for the squeamish.

Now, of course, I completely understand that, if you´re running a Shoot commercially, what with costs being what they are these days, one is always having to be looking to make economies - keeping an eye on the numbers of gamekeepers, ghillies, beaters and other hangers-on, and so on – naturally one has to. And I suppose that it follows that one would also have to think about cutting down a bit on the number of pheasant pluckers that one employs.

(And that, by the way, is not a Spoonerism. A Spoonerism, for those not up to speed with English idiomatic oddities, is where one inadvertently transposes the opening letters in a two word phrase, e.g. “recently deceived” becomes “decently received.” )

No, no. Pheasant plucking is, or was, a traditional British rural occupation, a way of life, and the more one favours skinning the bird and not plucking it, the more that old rural life is threatened. In the same way, with traditional British industrial life on its feet, these days one seldom comes across a saggar-maker´s bottom- knocker (fans of What´s My Line will know exactly what I am getting at. See Wikipedia ). It stands to reason, doesn´t it ? If you don´t have to have saggars made any more, you don´t need to employ people to make them and, as sure as day follows night and night the day , you don´t need to employ people to knock the bottoms of them, do you? Another traditional skill lost. Alas, alack a day!

So this Chronicler would like to hear from those who like their pheasants skinned, not plucked, and how to cook ´em. As for me, I am glad the locally available guinea fowl ARE plucked.

Casting the Chronicles aside for the time being, what have Hazel and I been up to? Well, on Monday 27th April, we did an APAPS recce. Who knows, the Thought Police may relent later this year and let us out for our breakfast feasts. I thought at first that we had found a perfect track for the APAPS. It was 7.50 kms long, took us just under 2 hours, and was within reach of at least two welcoming hostelries of the breakfast persuasion. But then, oh no! The total ascent came in at 632 metres.

There is no way the loyal APAPS are going to put up with 632 metres, not even for two fried eggs and bacon plus extra tomatoes. So that´s a non-starter. Was my GPS gizmo playing up? I cross-checked with my iPhone Health App. Correct distance 7.50 kms precisely. The app doesn´t give ascent in metres, but what it does do is give the number of flights of stairs equivalent that we had climbed – 32, it said !!!

A word of caution here may be in order. The Health App is, I think, produced by the Great British NHS (genuflect, genuflect), but to borrow the thoughts of Archimedes who famously was the first to ask “How long is a piece of string?” I ask “how high is a flight of a stairs (according to the NHS)?”

632 metres divided by 32 flights = 19.7 metres ??!! Cannot be !

Has anybody else out there got this Health App on their iPhone? What is the length or height of their average flight of stairs? Archimedes would like to know.

Then, after Wednesday 29th April, the Dragon Empress (a.k.a. Myriam) agreed with the Portuguese Prime Minister that it is now legal for people in Portugal to assemble in groups of no more than 5. So I can now reveal that the Four Intrepid WAGS Irregulars did in fact meet for a walk that day. We walked from Pescadores - shut, of course, - but, if you know the password to the backdoor, coffees do appear.

A normal walk, nice weather, wild flowers at their best.

However, in those woods and hills there are more and more of those signs appearing saying “Entry Forbidden.” As walkers, we pay little attention to them, little that is until one comes across this, near the Aquas Belas track

a deliberately felled tree trunk across the track.

Didn´t of course stop us but, obviously, wheeled vehicles are not encouraged. Didn´t stop Maria either who triumphantly proclaimed that she had managed to get her leg over.

Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.

And then, would you believe it, after last week´s Silves Python tree episode, this week our Wild Life Guide, Back near the canal, Yves did spot a real snake. Luckily, he lived to tell the tale.

And then a few steps down the road, he had another encounter with a stuffed reptile,

on this occasion, a crocodile. Who can tell what he will encounter next week? And what is it about Algarve that makes people want to keep stuffed replica reptiles in their gardens?

Back at Pescadores, we shared our carefully measured social distancing with the residential cat,

Luckily, the backdoor password was still valid and some very welcome cold beers did appear plus nespras, graças to Dona Fernanda.

And let´s close with a little ditty to commemorate those very much under-appreciated knockers of the bottoms of those  skilfully crafted saggars.

WAGS - ARADE 29.04.20 A Floral Spring Homage

With surprisingly little cajoling this week...chief blogger has clearly given up any hope of this particular contributor ever being in accordance with his tight copy schedule... well herewith for any who might be on the edge of their seats in anticipation.  One excuse is that the Frew estate is undergoing an extensive programme of maintenance which, by the obvious force of destiny, is being handled by the resident staff. There is therefore a strictly imposed list of priorities, which lamentably is not always headed by WAGS blogs. Nevertheless, with some margin before next Wednesday, it can now be reported that  Frew, pai e WAGS filho once again set off on warm day to take on yet another walk near the limits of WAGS capabilities.

We parked by the Arade lake and set off up the same valley the WAGS had headed just a few weeks ago. The intention was to take the first branch valley north, the entrance to which our august leader made such a balls-up of finding on that previous walk.This time he made no such mistake. The beehives threatened to be a discouragement but in the end the steep uphill track left them to the right.

     

A Quercus suber that didn't survive....plenty have.       Rosa arvensis    

  

Phlomis purpurea

   

Centaurium erythraea                                                             Asphodelus albus

  

Malacothrix saxatilis                                                                Apis Mellifera on Oenanthe aquatica

  

Tuberaria guttata                                                                    Anyone?

             

Cistus ladanifer                         Digitalis purpurae                      Spartium junceum                   Gladiolus palustris

The valley track had clearly been little used and then only  intermittently  by hunters, by javali and probably by deer. A very attractive trail with plentiful wild flowers and a trickling stream. 

  

Some very evident activity of Sus scrofa                                     Quercus suber regrowth

After a long but not particularly steep ascent it eventually takes one up to the ridge along which runs a stretch of the Via Algarviana and on the other side of which is the head of the Aguas Belas valley. A good spot for the drone to take in some of the extensive views.

  

Tracking amongst the flora

The floral valley we meandered up

The track then joins the big main route going north from the eastern Arade.

On the other side of this track is the long descent back down to the Arade lake and to the foot of the Funcho dam  Down this we headed. From the top we had observed a couple of hikers making their way up. We crossed paths some half way down and greeted them from an appropriate distance. From the breathless response we were unable to ascertain in which language it was mumbled. 

The next point of interest was coming across a large pile of cable and aluminium protective foil with the rubber all burned off.  Some years ago a local Silves mafia had developed a trade in cutting and removing extensive lengths of electrical and telephone cable, burning off the rubber in some hidden location and then flogging off the copper. All this became irritatingly frequent until  the principal gangsters perished in a car crash on the A1...this was not caused by a daring manoeuvre on the part of a GNR pursuit car but just normal Portuguese driving!  On this occasion whoever perpetrated this dastardly act was obviously caught in flagrante or found out that the cabling didn´t appear to have much copper in it, for it too was left lying there.

  

Wire rustlers gone by..

And on we went...

We then approached the Arade lake and had the option of turning left towards the Funcho dam which would have meant a circumnavigation of the Arade lake and  therefore what would have been an over 20k walk,  or turning right and taking the private road around  the Arade lake. We turned right.

  

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward...

It appears the track has been well used and although the no entry sign was still in place we passed through without any problem; indeed the original Quinta house appeared unoccupied although the newly built neighbouring house had some maintenance work underway.

And so we completed our walk without further distractions.  So after 9.5k and an energetic  over 400m of accumulated height gain we felt we had don our bit for this week.  The tosta on arrival back at the ranch had to be taken on the hoof lest the  maintenance programme should fall behind schedule...and that in turn might mean an even later blog submission next week!

Map 'n Stats

...evidently my 'Viewranger' is not very well calibrated. We will stick to Frew Sr's figures