VA Day 11 Cachopo to Castelao

The group assembled at Tia Bia Barranco do Velho for the start of 3 days of tough walking in temperatures of 30 degrees and high elevations. Jim was in teacher mode as he tried to explain that there weren't many hills and that he'd manage to cut 5 km off the walk. Notice how we all paid attention!

We set off using Geoff's now very familiar car sharing app, and headed to Castelao where we left half the cars at the bus stop and then on to Cachopo along the winding road through the hills.

Left to right: John, Martin, Alan, Ken, Rafa hiding, Jill, Miriam, Geoff, Sue, Jan, Bica, Susan, Marian and Jim.

It was by now nearly 11 am and we were already feeling the heat, but we left the town of Cachopo behind and headed away into the hills.

We passed plenty of rural life along the way.

There was some shade which we kept taking advantage of before it was up again, and I mean up!

 Evidence of how hot it was!!

Jim then told us that there was a story attached to the castle in the picture plus the house with the helipad for the lunch stop at Alcaria Alta.  He set us a challenge to come up with the best story! But first we had a long, hot climb from the castle up to the house!

        

There were several versions put forward: one involving Prince Andrew who entertained his friends in the castle then needed the helipad to fly them out; another citing an AWW who fell in love with the lady imprisoned in the castle and crashed the helicopter trying to escape with her; and the third a rambling story about Snow White which we never got to the end of 

Exploring the deserted house and picking the abandoned fruit!

Are we nearly there yet?

The hill was so steep Jim tried walking backwards

 

Soooo hot and too tired to carry on.

The last hill was absolutely relentless with temperatures well into the 30s and humidity of over 80%. We were all so pleased to get back to the cars.  John gallantly volunteered to ferry the drivers back to Cachopo to collect their cars. He wished he hadn't.  It was a long way!

Sue obviously had the sun go to her head! We were very happy to get back to Tia Bia and a very welcome drink or four!

Stats:

Apologies for this.  Couldn't upload Geoff's Stats, and Gills didn't show the route as such!.

Distance: 14.3 km

Moving time: 3:35 h

Ascent: 486m

Descent: 435m

Average moving time 4 km/h