10th July CASTELO BRANCO

We negotiated the, even narrower than our track, track (as the market was on) and were checking on Gary by 8.15, we could see him working on his shed so we went down to see him (we thought we’d better as we hadn’t spoken to him for a couple of days). We left Gary to get on with his shed renovations; 10 minutes later he turned up at our place with blood dripping down his face – he’d managed to hit himself on the head with some falling concrete, fortunately it wasn’t too bad – heads bleed quite freely.

We went down to the market; it was almost identical to last month but without the wickerman; Mr Luis was there and invited us for coffee at the cafe. Initially we were told there was no electricity so we’d have to have cold drinks; Mr Luis ordered a brandy (this is 9.30 in the morning!), then we were told the electricity was back on, so I had coffee and Brett has a soft drink – the three drinks came to 2€30, that’s about £1.84. 

Brett carried on with his trench and I watered and watered and watered; my latest theory is that I’m not getting the water to the seeds (it’s staying on the surface and evaporating) so that’s why they haven’t germinated. The spring onions are starting to come through (11 days to germinate), but still no radish!

We had just finished lunch when a man turned up; it was the Nick that had befriended Gary a few weeks ago when he had all his break-ins. He’s been living in Portugal for eighteen months and is quite knowledgeable on the cheapest places to source material – so he should be a useful acquaintance. He stayed talking for over two hours – so we didn’t have an especially fruitful day.

Our leisure batteries don’t appear to be charging; it looks as if the faulty substation has blown our van battery charger (like it blew our two plugs, Mark’s extension cable and his charger, by the looks of it) which is a real pain, and there’s no way the campsite will accept liability (that’s if we could even explain it to them); so yet another job for us before we can sell the camper – to date we have to fix: windscreen washers, exhaust, shower tray and charger (hopefully some of it will be covered by warranty or insurance).

We’ve had three early mornings so tomorrow is a day off. Yippee a lie in!!!!!