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Sunday 4 November 2012


3rd November CASTELO BRANCO

I don’t know why we were worried, the camper van got down the track quite easily! Which was a great relief; but I was very emotional leaving the quinta (home).

So now we’re parked up at the campsite in Castelo Branco with not a lot to do, and it's raining. Brett has had a shower, but I’m not enthusiastic, it's very cold and dank in the shower block.
 
Mark (and Glenn) turned up at the campsite this afternoon - he'd come for a shower!

2nd November FONTE DOS CLERIGOS


The new citrus trees have been wrapped in fleece, to protect them from frost, and all the gardening equipment has been packed into the shed. So that’s everything ready for us to leave.

This afternoon we took our valuables across to Pam and Mark’s; we met Mr Luis on the way, he said he will keep an eye on our place while we’re away.

Pam and Mark invited us for dinner and ‘film night’; we watched ‘Frida’ about the life of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, very enjoyable.

Tomorrow we are planning on moving the camper van out; the track is rather muddy where the ditches have been cleared out and we want to get the van out now rather than leave it until the last moment and then find out we’re stuck – we’ll stay at the campsite for a few days before we leave.

1st November FONTE DOS CLERIGOS


Lots of tidying up today; we cleared all the stuff out of the camper that we don’t need to take home, and stored it in the bedroom shed – the camper looks very bleak.

The olives are due to be harvested 2nd/3rd week in November, which means we’ll miss it, so unfortunately we won’t be making oil this year; but we did harvest some for brining/curing to eat. They are picked (actually they are ‘combed’ off the tree), and then put into very strong brine (enough salt to float an egg), left for several months, then soaked in water to get rid of the salty taste. We have so many olives it seems such a waste to just leave them on the trees, but this year we have no choice.
We have severalof different types of olives, all sizes and colours - they look like beads

It took less than 1/2 hour to pick a bucket of olives, as we have over 200 trees we're thinking of getting help for next years harvest - volunteers please!

31st October FONTE DOS CLERIGOS


Today’s Portuguese class was ok; Pastor Allen tried to conduct it solely in Portuguese, but that didn’t last for long! We’re now learning past and future tenses; which is fine on paper (when you can see it) but trying to hear the difference in tenses is hard.

30th October FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

It rained quite a lot throughout the night which really tested our newly concreted ditch; we were relieved to find that the only leaks now should be fixed by the addition of guttering around the roof and rendering the outside of the building.

We planted the fruit trees we bought last week, all the rain we’re getting should help them.

We went for a walk to the river; Brett, of course, had to cross it via the (4½’ high) stepping stones – I didn’t even think about it!

We came across a snake which we haven’t managed to identify (about 1 metre long).
Mark says it's a 'smooth' something, but we can't remember the rest!

29th October FONTE DOS CLERIGOS


Brett obviously was worried about the water getting into the gym/studio as we spent today concreting the ditch he dug the other week; we were at it for nearly six hours, but (if it works) it was a really worthwhile job.
A very useful ditch!
It started raining a couple of hours after we had finished the concreting so we had to sacrifice one of our tarpaulins (by cutting it in half) to cover all our hard labour.

We started watching ‘The Red Violin’ but I couldn’t stay awake and was in bed by 9.00 (real time 10.00 as the clocks went back on Saturday).

28th October FONTE DOS CLERIGOS


We expected to be woken up by the hunters, but they didn’t come onto our land until about 12.00; Brett was outside cleaning out the truck when a hunter walked past, he didn’t even say “Bom Dia”.

We’ve started organising ourselves for our trip back; today we sorted out the bedroom shed, so we can strip out the van and leave behind all the stuff we want to keep here. We’ll be leaving our Portuguese gas bottles; which means that we won’t be able to cook (not even a cup of tea!), or have a fridge, or be able to heat water on our trip back (we won’t have cutlery, crockery or cooking pots either (there’s no point in taking them back to UK then having to pay for them to be returned to Portugal). Our (portable) valuables items (like generator and strimmer) and our truck will be stored at Pam & Mark’s, which means we won’t have to worry about them whilst we’re away.

We had a very jolly evening; the choir that Pastor Allen sings with was in a concert tonight singing Gospel songs and Allen was singing some solos, he invited us (his class) to come along. It was a great evening (we don’t get out much!). The first choir up sang traditional Portuguese music (a bit dismal); but they had a lady who walked (actually sometimes she skipped) around the stage twirling this large flag, occasionally she had two flags, she was very serious about it; but then she got a huge round of applause and she was so pleased. Then there was a younger group who played folk music (someone said it was Irish music, but it didn’t sound like it to me), they were very good. And finally Pastor Allen’s choir did their ‘Sister Act’ performance; it was brilliant, we clapped and sang and gave them a standing ovation so they did two encores.

After the concert we, us, Pam & Mark and Matt & Anji (their workawayers), went to an Italian restaurant for dinner.