Christmas Walk and Lunch 2023

Christmas Walk and Lunch 2023

Qs : How many emails does it take to organise a Christmas Walk & Lunch ?

As : Well Ros had about 130 , a symptom of a lot of hard work!

Plan A was to go back to O Folklore and for Terry M to do a short Terry A Memorial walk beforehand : this was scuppered when that restaurant decided to close for a week. Ros stepped in with plan B, the Ti Raquel just outside Messines, with a local walk from the Intermarche. All seemed fine until  long-overdue rains threatened to flood the tunnel under the railway, with Ros considering it too dangerous to clamber up, and down, the railway embankment. Anyway, a check the day before revealed all was Ok, so 16 walkers met at the appointed hour :

Without Alan and his fancy gizmos, yours truly took the outside photos to save Ros more work,  & I also volunteerd to do the blog. You probably know most of the walkers by now...but we welcomed back Don from Canada after a number of years, and his wife Wendy, making her inauural visit.

Off we set , with a very manageable ford:

By now, we had picked up a couple of extra walkers, Richard and Gerry. The sun even came out , but here is my imitation of Alan's famous back-sides photo....

BUT what are they all staring at ? 

Was it a bird? a plane ? superman perhaps?

No.....4 walkers had defied logic and gone walk-about over the bridge:

Instead of taking the perfectly sensible route under....

Don gallantly climbed to help the errant-four down the other side....

I had memories of Yves and his cliff climbing, but fortunately Bombeiros assistance was not required.

Down on the level and safety again, Ros gave us a brief reminder of the  Battle of Sant Ana :

Which sparked off a number  of discussions about the recent film Napoleon and the logic of the British Squares, until we rested in the sun:

And back to the Intermarche, passing  a sign recalling memories of the VA last year:

A quick change and a quick drive to the restaurant to meet up with the other 9, making 25 for lunch, including Dinah, Yves and Eileen It was a bit noisy, but portions were massive with doggy bags aplenty. Alan did the restaurant photos, other than this of Miriam:

I thanked Ros for all her steling wok in organising the day , and I think John thanked me ( vino tinto was flowing by then).....we toasted Absent Walkers and Friends. 

Thanks to all for making it another memorable AWW year, looking forward to coming back in 2024.

Geoff

Lunch photos from Alan