8th July CASTELO BRANCO

We were ‘up with the lark’ and at the quinta for 8.00. First thing we checked on Gary I don't know how long are we going to have to do this for; he was grouting his tiles, he's nearly finished his floor.

As we drove back to the house a rabbit ran (hopped) across the track; we were so excited to see it, there’s so much wild life here, interesting stuff we didn’t get in Wales – wild boars (we haven’t actually seen them, but we’ve seen their tracks), rabbits, grouse (we saw her again today, she was making a racket), golden orioles, azure winged magpies (not our favourite bird!), snakes!, lizards, slow worms, frogs, storks, eagles (we’ve seen a few unidentified birds of prey circling on the thermals), swallowtail butterflies not to mention the big (3”- 4”) lime green, with blue spots, caterpillar which I have ‘googled’ and not been able to identify (Steph/Will?).

Brett strimmered the Fat Hen and grass that was covering the unused vegetable beds – it looks much neater now; then he cleared the track, to the quinta, of foliage; it was encroaching so much, the track looks much more navigable now.

I spent the morning making bird scarers – windmills, it was quite windy today and they were working well; and I spent hours watering ........................ it takes so long! We have French beans, mangetout, scarole and cucumbers all through – where are the radishes? I’m sure they should have been the first thing up. Then I sowed more seeds – nasturtiums, calendula, basil, sage, rosemary and flat podded beans (they don’t seem to grow runner beans here).

When we got back to the campsite Mark told us that their electricity wasn’t working; Brett plugged in his ipod to charge, it seemed to work ok then the plug went “phutt” and smelt funny and grew hot. We managed to destroy two charging plugs (for kindles and ipod) and Mark has a melted extension cable and dead electric kettle; we’re worried that our fridge and water heater might have been affected too (we can’t check until we have electricity!). On investigation, with the campsite staff, it was discovered that the main substation, that supplies electricity to the campsite, has had a problem – half the connections are melted and distorted and as it was Sunday nothing could be done about it until at least Monday. So we had no electricity which meant no refrigerator = no cold drinks.