Frank M was sitting at Cafe Paraiso da Serra in the village of Barrosas, waiting for the rest of the AWW walkers to arrive for the walk to Malhao.
A white panel van drew up and parked up opposite. The driver looked furtively from his cab, got down and silently and hurriedly left along the road.
A few minutes later 11 oddly dressed individuals jumped down from the back. They then lifted down a poor terrified dog. It looked as if they had been in the van for many days as they were blinking in the daylight.
To a trained observer of cross border evaders, such as myself, they looked mostly like refugees from the UK. I snapped this photo for evidence.
I walked over with an authoritative air and ascertained their names
David, Rose, Ros, Russ, Sue, Manuela, Linda, John Harrington, Isabella, Nick, Pam and the 4 legged Jasper.
Most spoke with various British Dialects. The dog did not say much. It was obviously the intelligent one and kept its mouth closed.
They set of westwards with me trailing. They had just turned off into the bushes, when suddenly the GNR came roaring up.
I believe that the locals in the café “were in on it” as they advised that they were expecting a host of cyclists. I did not realise they meant motorcycle police. However the police roared past and the dirty dozen wandered down the tracks until they came upon the location of one of the “fell by the wayside” AWWrs: Lynn.
There they collected 3 local dogs that wandered the rest of the walk up to Malhao and then back to Barrosas.
It was over the first small range of hills and down into the valley crossing the stream twice. There was a little water for the dogs but not enough to cover the path.
Then it was “UP UP and Away” in a constant climb to Malhao. (There is a prize for whoever identifies the original singer: the chance to lead a walk in a few weeks time).
And then we were at the top: and it was only 11:15. Too early for lunch, so we visited the circular building which one day might open as a café / restaurant and met the owner who was too busy with other things to get it up and running.
The view was great: pity the photographer did not have a camera with a zoom: and we had collected another dog. And some of the refugees would not take orders and wandered off rather than posing for the photos.
Then we decided that spiritual guidance was required.
Or was it that some just wanted to do those exotic UK dances such as the Highland Fling or Morris Dancing. The dogs were not amused.
We wandered through the village of Malhao, which was gorgeous. We saw the trig point up to our left (NW) of the village. Although foreign refugees, we tried to blend in by yelling “Boa Tarde” at some elderly local residents. We went round the back of the village and had an adventure on a path untrodden by any AWWr including the walk leader. We crossed a small stream with real running water, on some stepping stones, and took a overgrown path up the hill. It got worse and worse and the leader was obviously nervous and nearly at the stage of turning back, when the sun came out, the path widened and we went over the summit and it was then all downhill for another 9km to Barrosas ( except when it went back up again: but those sections were easy).
We passed the actual Buddhist centre and at the 4 way junction, 4 English gentlemen on the large cross-country motorcycles stopped and allowed us to pass. We all admired their once shinny machines now covered in the Portuguese dust.
The photographer was too lazy to get his camera out to authenticate this meeting.
We seemed to be floating in the stars on my beautiful balloon ( see above), as we glided downhill.
As we reached the café, we were surprised that so many locals had come out to greet us. It was full. Then:-
It was the Volta ao Algarve. We looked for John and Jim but they were nowhere to be seen. However this was the peloton, they were probably in the breakaway group out in front,.
Distanced Walked: 17.8km
Total time: 5hrs (this included 30 minutes lunch stop)
It was a great day: And the readers should not believe everything
Frank (14/02/2018)
(And the white panel truck that they all came out of was registered in Holland and the walk leader never even got a bulb on Valentines day: However even better, he was presented with 6 fresh eggs and 2 avocados that had been picked that day. He had boiled eggs for tea, as his wife was out playing Mah-jong)
