Awayday 2025 : Carrapateira

 Plan A was to continue the GR15 route north of Alcoutim but our recce party all came down with injuries: plan B was to explore further the Fisherman's Trail south of Aljezur, but David had to have a minor op , so  Plan C was devised. Ros would lead from Carrapateira, Tim & Bruce from Bordeira on Day 2 and Steve & Margaret woud explore hidden lakes from Bordeira on day 3.

Hence 11 walkers met up at the usual Carrapateira cafe  where Ros explained that this was the first walk she did when she joined the AWW in 2012....hence there was no need to recce the walk, especially as she had done it more recently with Marian. What coud possibly go wrong?

Anyway the intrpid band  of 11 set off , up a stteep hill, before gathering for the starter photo:

L to R  :  Julie, Ken, Margaret, Steve, Tony, Sue, Tim, Linda, Ros , Miriam...with Toby & Bica and Geoff behind the lens.

Without planning the boys were in blue, the girls in pink :

  

...but 2 looked as if they had opted for Reform turquoise....

Anyway, onward and upward, until we saw iur first trig point, though noone seemed willing to climb it..

We were missing our Official Photographer Alan ( still awol) but here are his trademark  views....

We passed a des res that surely only needed a bit of work...

We paused for a Minute's Silence at 11.00. Ros must have been a girl guide as she came prepared with secateurs.....albeit we did loose the trail for a while and needed to backtrack...

Up more hills....

 and then a glimpse of the sea and a chance to get one's breath back..

It was time to say farewell to Ken and Miriam...note his fashionable cummerband, which he reckoned didn't help a lot...

Some had a rest...

We wondered what these markers were for....they seemed to be spaced about every quarter/third of a km and counted down to something/somewhere...

These signs were also new to us...

We wondered about a challenge for our next awaydays, unti we discovered it was  "The Atlantic Coast Route, also known as EuroVelo 1, it  is a long-distance cycling route that stretches approximately 10,650 km (6,620 miles) from North Cape in Norway to Valença in Portugal, passing through nine countries along the Atlantic coast."....so perhaps not!

We were getting peckish, but Ros recalled a green field with cows where we could lunch....this seemed unlikey on the ridge we were on, so Linda declared UDI...

The rest of us opted to trudge on a bit to get out of the wind...

Ros was beginning to think we might have wandered of the planned track when the path we were on petered out and descended precipitously down a very steep slope...

Gentlemen Steve gave Sue a helping hand, but some of us slithered down on bottoms!

Some mountain gazelles coudn't see what the fuss was and had a snooze waiting for us...

Some lovely views of where we had been...

and where we were...

Back to Carrapateira for a coffee...to find K & M waiting as hotel in Aljezur wasn't open in afternoon!

7 of us went to Aljezur for the night and sampled the local hostelries:

This is what we did :

 

All in all, a good first day despite a couple of hic-cups. Overall speed, considering the steep ups and downs, not too bad methinks.

Thanks Ros for leading ,  Julie for the evening photos and Steve for some others.

Geoff