25th June CASTELO BRANCO

Today was HOT, 40°C in the shade (in fact when we got back to the camper it was 43.5° inside the van) and it’s draining to work in this heat.

Our first job was checking on Betty as Gary had cycled into Fundao at about 5.00 a.m. – she seemed very pleased to see us.

Brett continued digging, this time access around the house so he can render it when the time comes. And I did some gardening, clearing a bed to put some vegetable seeds in. I tried to continue using the water from the large water tank but Mr Luis’s hobbled together pipes burst – he had joined a 19mm hose to a 50mm pipe by shoving the hose into the pipe and filling the gap with concrete, and then wrapping the joint with tape!!!!

Today we saw our female grouse again; she was making quite a racket so we went to investigate. She was standing under one of the orange trees calling and as we walked towards her these little baby grouse scattered around our feet!

I had hoped to capture the chicks too, but they are so well camoflaged that I can't tell if I have!

So we left so she could gather her family together. Brett saw this huge bird circling over the farm, it could have been a Golden Eagle we couldn’t quite see it clearly enough, it was jolly big.

We picked and ate oranges and peaches today, and a few figs but they’re not quite ripe yet. The trees are literally dripping with fruit and we’ve been told by quite a few people that lots of the fruit trees fruit twice, if not three times, in a year!! The orange trees, for instance, have ripe oranges on them and small (about 1” diameter) green fruit forming from the March blossom (and we were picking oranges when we first viewed the quinta in February, so it looks like orange trees produce fruit, more or less, throughout the year.

Orange

Peach

Apple

Pear

Plum

Grape

We used our plunge pool!!! It was quite cold when we first got in; it did a brilliant job of cooling down our core temperature; we could float in it but our heads and feet touched the walls.

We checked on Betty again before we left for Castelo Branco and then went into town to buy seeds (endive, French beans, mangetout, spring onions and radish) and the bits to fix the irrigation system (they cost about 2€ in all, so “why Mr Luis why?”).

It was so hot in the van that we had to cook dinner outside; unfortunately we’ve taken our chairs to the quinta so we still had to eat in the van. We’ve got to find a new parking place; the van is obviously getting the midday and afternoon sun on it (as Brett says it’s just a big metal box, exactly what is put on the roof to heat the water, in fact the ‘cold’ water in the van is warm).