A Scramble around Silves

A Scramble around  Silves : 7 November 2018

After a night of heavy rain and a cloudy start to the day, it was perhaps surprising that only 2 walkers cancelled, citing a downpour in Vale do Lobo-land and jetlag from the land of the rising sun. The remaining 18 , having found somewhere to park in a congested  Jardim do Largo  da Republico,  gathered in the Pastelario Tio to gossip, warm up and completely ignore my entreaties to venture out for a starter photo. Hence, it was only Frank and I that made the official starting grid

though Russell arrived a nanosecond later. Their consciences stirred, the rest emerged and were photographed for posterity a little later. They were,  Lto R :  Richard, Cycling John, David, Russell, Susan, Linda, Jan ( incognito), Sue M, Martin, Stephen, Sue, Iggy, Ros's rear, Frank, Isabel's rear, John....Dolores was late again.  I should add, that we welcomed Dolores, Richard and Iggy to their first AWW , and Stephen returning for some more punishment.

I obviously missed our resident Starter Photographer's  ( John H)  persuasive tongue : he and Hazel being AWOL back in Bonny Scotland.

It soon began to get warm, blue skies and sunshine appeared, so Jan stripped off, admired by some local fowls:

  

Onwards and upwards for the first third of the walk, with some reasonably tight groupings:

until we reached the new watchtower/rest station:

 

 and then dropped down to  another ruined farmhouse:

downhill all the way, and over an apology for the river Enxerim :

I had warned everyone about the steep hill, but don't think they believed me when I pointed out the motor-cross one:

 

Not that the one we ascended was much less steep , with a lot more straggling :

  

We were now in the midst of the  fire-ravaged countryside, which , whilst very blackened, did show some signs of regrowth already :

 Sue M  gave us a bit of a scare by donning her new cagoule. She pretended it was spotting with rain, but I think she was just showing-off it's rather fetching design :

A couple more hills/slopes , and then a well-earned rest at the top for lunch .  Cycling John looking as if he was the most comfortable:

For some reason, no-one wanted to climb the optional extra to view the trig point, so it was mainly all downhill, circumventing a few dark oily-looking puddles en route:

  

There were mutterings at the bottom about climbing up to the windmill, but mutiny avoided and we traversed the slope to by-pass the actual windmill...picking up dirty trousers and, in poor Cycling John's case, a nasty looking cut leg, ably bandaged with some assistance from nurses Russell & Jan :

Time to admire our earlier climb :

 before heading down again , past the remains of the unknown walker, and some bracketed fungus:

  

Before a well earned drink, back at the Tio...rarely has Sagres tasted so good.

The consensus was that it was almost 21 km and John's machine reckoned  total time 5h 30m hours, moving time 4h  45m, av.moving speed 4.3kph ( very creditable bearing in mind the hills ; we must have come down very quickly),  av speed 3.7kph.

Max elevation was  157m , ascended 531m...1742 ft sounds much better and it felt like it!

Thanks to John for stats, thanks to all who came .

Geoff