AWW 2015-24: AWW 5th June 2019: The Sleeping Giant of Malhao

With a degree of trepidation we met at the top of Malhao for 09:30 on the 5th June.

We all know the Portuguese tale of the Sleeping Giant. And it was evident that this was the location. He had left his Lego set out for us.

Sleeping Giants Lego set.

So we decided not to disturb him so early in the morning and we quietly took cars up to Sitio Das Eguas to start our walk.

There was 13 walkers plus 2 dogs who braved the temperatures.

As John H was in attendance the photos in the Blog are of a high standard compared with those generally provided by the walk leader.

Off we walked down into the valley. Surprisingly for the time of year, the stream still had water and there was a stop just in case any of the 2 legged walkers needed to go for a paddle. The dogs obviously did.

But where comes great valleys, comes great hills, and up we skipped, till the still green valley lay far beneath us.

The leader was lagging behind and the paths were many, so you can see that some would stop and gaze downhill to see if the leader had decided to go off on one of his frequent meanders.

Is Frank Coming This way?

And as we came down to the new road that is being built from "nowhere" to Algandouro at a cost of Euro 1.2million, we found the original setting for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where the young Harrison Ford was washed through the caverns with a torrent of water.

Who turned the water off?

So we by-passed the road and strode up past the Buddhist retreat centre to our scheduled lunch stop at Malhao. It was fine to sit in the shade

However it was noticed that Jasper had gone hi-tech and was sitting there connected to the internet. I thought that a smaller aerial would have been sufficient in Malhao, but when we looked we had no cell phone signal, so Japer was obviously the intelligent one.

After a leisurely lunch and suitably refreshed we set off up to the fire watch tower, where the watchers were just getting lunch. I have no idea what they do when they need to go to the toilet.

We stopped for the obligatory photo at the trig point. However most were more concerned about where we might be going rather than watching the "birdie".

Are we really going along there?

I think that they were all concerned about the malevolent looking tree, just down the path.

But we tiptoed past and after a mainly downhill saunter through a second valley with more water stops for the dogs, we were back at the cars and soon having a drink at the café.