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