18th August FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

First thing this morning we went to deliver Gary’s card; he wasn’t in, but we made a fuss of Betty, who likes to run in front of you and then roll over onto her back, trying to trip you up.

We have decided that one of the jobs we would like to do, before we leave, is put some gates at our entrance; the Portuguese are paranoid about security. Pam and Mark’s old owner keeps telling them to lock their possessions away when they go out and Joao’s son was asking where we were leaving our belongings while we were in Britain (Joao has offered to store the truck in his barn); which makes us a little anxious too! And when we come back we would like dogs, so gates would stop them from wandering off the quinta. Yesterday Brett started rebuilding the stone wall on the approach to the quinta; he had to manoeuvre some rather large stones which were now on the verge the opposite side of the track. 

I started preparing for our wine making by cleaning the grapes crusher; on Monday I’m going to look up the whole wine making process.

Gary liked his card; he got the bit about the odd shoes and made a point of saying that he got Betty’s meat from the butcher, not out of skips. Anyway the point was he got the joke and was touched that he had a personalised card. 

We had a lovely walk to the restaurant; it’s ¾ mile and takes 20 minutes (Brett would do it faster on his own!). It was still warm, the sun had more or less set, the cicadas were making their noise (singing, chirping, rubbing their legs together?) – it felt like we were on holiday and going out for the evening to eat. The people who own the restaurant were very friendly; Pam was in deep conversation with them (in French) when we arrived and had found out all their history; she’s French and he’s Portuguese, but worked in Paris for many years. The food was basic but plentiful and very cheap again; we had beers while we waited, wine and beer with the meal, soup (we hadn’t ordered it but it was our starter regardless) and main meals plus a side order of salad - 47€50 (that’s about £9.50 a head in sterling).

Pam and Mark bought themselves a Portuguese mobile and, as a ‘thank you’ to us for helping them move their furniture yesterday, they bought us one too. This means we can text one another without the messages going via Britain first! It also means we can give a Portuguese number to people who need to contact us over here (like the Mitsubishi man). So now we’re a three phone family!

The walk back home was very dark!