Summer's end

I remembered how Kimberley summers felt during the two hottest months of summer in Portugal.  Temperatures didn't vary much over the few weeks - going down the 24ºC (75ºF) at night and burning a steady 35-38ºC (90-100ºF) during the day.

The days were actually not that uncomfortable - on the whole, excepting when the ubiquitous evening breeze and then the winds howling into the night took a break and left the night air still and hot.  The house stays cool if you close the doors and windows at around 10am.  You can open up again when the winds pick up in the evening so we used our air conditioners during a few of the windless nights but every other night we left the windows open for the breezes to cool us.

It is incredible how quickly you get used to these high temperatures.  We are feeling quite chilly now that the summer is almost over and the morning temperature starts at about 15ºC (59ºF).  It will be interesting to see how the winter feels.

We had all of our children and grandchildren visit this summer. 

A crazy but happy couple of weeks with high demand for trips to the beach.  

Over time my relationship with the beach has changed somewhat - I remember summer holidays in Kenton-on-sea and the Fish River that were idyllic as a young parent, but realized more recently that a big reason was that you could escape the sun and boredom of just sitting in sand to lounge with a book on the deck of the holiday house.  

Given that our house is 30min drive from the closest beach in Portugal these beach outings were, of necessity, extended affairs which were greatly enriched by an umbrella and collapsible camping chair that we bought to increase the likelihood of me joining everyone in the hot sand.

Quietness has returned after the flood of small bodies - the smallest of whom had me running in circles indoors in a nerf-gun war that ended suddenly when I ran around a corner and smashed my toes into a industrial strength glass door leaving one of them bloodied and swollen.  My grandson came to me every day after that to ask if I could run yet - my answer was always "nope"!  Fortunately the pain was mostly over after a day and I'm left with a toe that reminds me of the incident with a sharp pain if I tread on it in an unusual way.

Other than that, it tolerates being put into a hiking shoe and taken on long walks.

One of my hiking partners from some years ago when we were hiking the 40 4000ft mountains in New Hampshire is coming to Portugal next week to hike the Portuguese Caminho do Santiago - a variation on the famous Spanish pilgrimage route to the famous cathedral.

Bruce was a colleague of mine for a number of years but we developed a friendship at work and over the many hikes that we did together.

Bruce recently lost his wife to Alzheimer's disease and he had been walking steadily for months as a way to process what he described as "the long goodbye" as he took care of her at home over the few years of her decline.  After her funeral someone told him on an impulse that he should look into the Caminho and after some research he decided to take the time to walk in Europe. 

When I heard that he was planning to come over to hike I decided to join him for a few days - thinking (sensibly) that it was not really in me to do more than that.  I use the very obvious excuse that he'd get sick of me, following the advice my grandmother often repeated about fish and visitors going off after three days.

I started my preparation during the summer, walking in the mornings before it got too hot and trying to build up to the distances of the three initial days of the hike (which are 21,14 and 22km).

 Anne joined me for the shorter stretches which included an adventure when we inadvertently entered private farmland of lush avocado trees and were accosted by the farmer who chased us down in his truck and asked what we thought we were doing on his land.  Of course the language barrier being what it was, Anne blurted out for some unknown reason "Nous sommes perdus!" (we are lost) in French and I tried the mix of Spanish and Portuguese that sometimes works for me to say "we are trying to find our way home".

After our fence climbing adventure

We ended up having to hike to the bottom end of his farm and then climb over a house-high pile of rocks and over his fence to get off his property.  I pointed out to Anne that getting in on the other side had been deceptively easy but I lack the nuanced Portuguese to have pointed this out to the farmer at the time.

I scoped out a 15km circuit near our home which includes some lovely scenic views of the countryside.

During the shorter training walks we came across a variety of dogs - for the most part they are behind fences, but occasionally they run out an open gate behind you which is always a little freaky as they rush at your ankles barking furiously.

We took some dog treats along with us after the first couple of incidents, thinking that we could distract the dogs with the treats.  Unfortunately farm dogs will ignore the treat if you put it down and will dash off it you toss it over to them - which gave us an idea to use a trick we learned as children in South Africa - to bend over and pretend to pick up a stone - which sends the dogs scuttling off.

Anne has a hiking pole that she brings along with her and she passes that to me if we get close to dogs in the open and I just point it at them as we pass.  I'm not sure why I want the stick because I think we'd both be doing the same thing if they attacked - waving it at them and shouting, but at least we have a plan!

The scariest dog encounter was a group of three dogs who looked pretty mangy and ragged and were fairly far from any visible property line - we assumed that the house was in the bush some meters out of sight and the dogs had heard us approaching and came out to ambush us.

They looked intent on encircling us and kept on dodging in to get closer so I was doing some pirouettes with the hiking pole and fake picking up stones until we were out of their territory.

My second long hike was a 22.5km hike along the coast at the end of a famous coastal path called the Fisherman's Trail (or Rota Vicentina).  The end of the route is the train station in Lagos, Portugal and we began there and walked along the coastal cliffs to a lovely beach called Porto do Mos where we had lunch and Anne stopped to swim and soak up the sun while I continued to a beach town called Luz.

The total waking time on this longer hike was about four and a half hours but we took six and a half with the lunch break.

Luz from the top of the coastal cliffs

For those interested the Fisherman's trail is about 226km long and is usually walked over 13 days (17km average) with the longest stretch being about 22km.  There is a great interactive map from the link above that shows where food and sleeping stops here - a mixture of hostels, small hotels and small cafe-bars.  I know that some people bring a small tent along so that they can camp if they don't get to a hostel or hotel.

We'll park that as an adventure for another time!