Funcho & Lynxes

 Funcho & Lynxes

In my last blog, I postulated  that we should get away from the  " we went up some hills, then down, had lunch and ended with a drink" format and wander further afield....see how you get on with this. 

To begin...there is a rumour that Ros has an interesting walk out at Malhao ( the place with the inordinately steep hill) but fortunately the rain gods have prevented us checking this out...4 times now. So, at short notice, I repeated  my November wak, but in reverse : what could go wrong?

8 of us met at the Silva , some admiring the strangely shaped squash on the bar :

Others were more interested in the picture on the wall ( those of a delicate disposition should look away now ) ;

( those wating the more conventional blog, have a look at last time's, albeit in reverse, at   AWW 2015-24: Lynx Farm and Arade

Anyway, the starter photo :

L to R : Peter, Tim, Fiona, Marian, Kieran, Sue, Ros...Geoff behind lens as Alan believed to be  Down Under still

We welcomed back Kieran & Fiona , the former recovered from plantar fasciitis  and set off, with Tim and Geoff  starting a knobbly knees competition....actually shaming those in long trousers:

Our first sight of the Funcho was amazing...it was FULL :

Contrast with 2024....

What did I say about nothing could go wrong by walking in reverse? We walked right past  the usual lunch stop, but found a better seat by the lynx farm turnoff :

With some shunning the bank :

Kieran was a late entrant to the knobbly knees comp:

Thence down to an equally full Arade :

Peter reckoned it was fordable here...at low tide, anyway.

Ros was intent  on giving away jelly babes, of which she seemed to have an inexhaustable supply:

And thence to the only water crossing of note :

Where Tim discoverd, he reckons, some Jasper :

To save you looking it up.... "Jasper......an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. The common red color is due to iron(III) inclusions. Jasper breaks with a smooth surface and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone. It can be highly polished and is used for items such as vases, seals, and snuff boxes" says Wikipedia. So now you know....can look very pretty when polished.

Back for a well earned drink.....I wasn't too sure about repeating the walk so soon, but the reverse direction seemed to work and many commented they don't recall walks anyway. So, I think I got away with it.

Thanks for coming, and reading....oh, in Alan's absence, here are some walking derrieres...

Oh, distance no doubt same as before, 14.4kms...and we never saw any lynx either.

Geoff

Christmas 2025 : Funcho walk and O Gralha Lunch

 Christmas 2025  : Funcho walk and O Gralha Lunch

Back in the days of yor , when  most of the current WAGS were regular AWW walkers, blogs were more esoteric : a lot of erudite discussion ( waffle?) and, almost as an aside, a few phrases along the lines of " we went up some hills, then down, had lunch and ended with a drink". These days , the latter gets expanded and the former ceases to exist. Perhaps this New Year we can revisit these old ideas, pehaps starting with an EXTREMELY belated blog of last December's Christmas frolic...otherwise known to Agatha C fans as "The Tale of the stolen Javali."

To begin....the usual coffee in the sun at O Gralha:

with Ros waxing about the Dutch coffee cups.

Nothing to do with the new owners origin ; a lovely lady from Moldova whose Portuguese ( says Ros) is worse than her English. But then she is a good cook and has changed the  closing day of the restaurant from a wednesday to a monday . Bad luck for my monday CVO rambler walks and lunches, Good News for AWW lunches.

18 came for the walk, usual crowd including Moura and Carol...plus Toby of course.

We set off by the snail farm, Peter wondering if we could ask for a tour...

Now that Alan our resident official photographer was back in harness, here is an example of his signature photo of walking derrieres...

The  Funcho was the fullest some of us had seen, so we stood to admire:

Jan had commented on my  previous walk that there weren't enough hills....though strangley  did not volunteer to go up here, which we had done in the distant past. Peter did volunteer, but he  would have been on his own .

This is beginning to sound a bit like " we went up some hills, then down, had lunch and ended with a drink", so had better say we got back to O Gralha to be joined by not only  Ken and Miriam , but Maria, a regular WAGS  walker but not seen on AWW for some time. Lovely to have her back with us. Some donned their Christmas Jumpers, with not an arrow in sight....

We had a rather exotic array of starters......we think this was some sort of baccalau...

And a rather copious supply of wine...

I think this was a toast to the AWW...

Not too sure about this one....

However, to get back to the alternative title.....where was my javali?7 were ordered, 7 delivered, but someone down the other end of the table must have mistaken javali for roast pork. The culprit remains unkown!

I managed to remember to thank the various Mrs's Kitty ( Jan, Ros, Julie, Miriam) and Ros for organising the lunch. ( I could digress on the plural  of Mrs Kitty.....not Mrs Kittys or Mrs Kitties, google thinks Mmes Kitty or perhaps Mses Kitty.....take your pick). Plus all the walkers and especially the leaders ( bit of a dying breed....3 current ones are injured, putting an extra load on those remaining)  Ros kindly presented me with a bottle :

Stephen kindly recalled the walk stats :

So, many thanks for reading this far ( if you have) and for another successful AWW year. Roll on 2026 and may our many injured colleagues soon get back to full health.

Thanks to alan for photos.

Geoff