22nd June CASTELO BRANCO

We’ve done as much as we can to the living room floor; by the end we were digging to a depth of 18’’ into the rock strata. I thought brilliant, that’s the end of digging for a while; I asked Brett what our next job would be, he said digging a walkway out behind the old animal sheds – that’s at least a metre in depth and probably a metre width for approximately 3 metres i.e. at least 3 cubic metres of soil and stone!!!!

One of our unidentified fruits - it looks like a furry apple (any suggestions welcome) we have masses of these trees

While we were having lunch we heard a car horn ‘tooting’, Brett went to investigate; it was some of our neighbours come to introduce themselves – Joao (he said we can call him Jony) and Ilda. They came with a box of goodies  - cherries, loquats, lettuce and a big jar of their own olives in brine.

Goodie Hamper

We had a long conversation with them; he said he studied English, but it was as good as our Portuguese! And he kept lapsing into Fench! Anyway this is what we think he said ........

·         they have a swimming pool that we are welcome to use

·         why didn’t we bring our campervan to our quinta, we said the track was to narrow, so then they suggested we could park it at their place/they offered us their spare bedroom, saying it was too far to travel daily to and from Castelo Branco and it was expensive

·         come and visit us, tomorrow, for something to eat. He then drew a clock and said not to come between 2 – 6 p.m. as that was siesta time, but we don’t know if we’re to come before 2.00 or after 6.00!!!!

They were really, really friendly and they definitely asked us to visit them “amanha” (tomorrow) – but the rest we’re not sure about. So we’re going about 11.00 a.m. and if they wanted us later we can always come back – and we’re not taking our swimming costumes!!

We walked across to check on Gary’s quinta (about 150 yds from our house) before we left (we check when we arrive, after lunch and before we go home) everything was quiet and orderly. As we walked back we noticed a large fire in the Fundao direction; we had already planned to finish early and go to Fundao, to visit Lidls so Brett could buy tea (we were also buying it for Mark and Glen). Brett commented that we didn’t have insurance on the quinta, which is a bit worrying.

So we bought our tea and some lidl’s ‘Greek’ yoghurt which I love and on the way back to the campsite called in on Mark and Glen, to check that the third joist had been put into place – it had. They told us that they had been watching the “Bombeiros” (firemen’s) aeroplanes on their way to put out the fire. Everything is really dry here; some of the Portuguese (not all, there’s plenty with pastures just like ours) plough in any land which isn’t being used (e.g. between and around olive trees etc) as a precaution against fires (Mr Luis keeps trying to get us to do it, but at 35€ an hour for 6 – 7 hours we can’t afford it and, as Brett says, we want to encourage the grass to grow as we want to graze animals).