Let us down again??

21kms walk this morning, half an hour lunch and we are off again to attempt our second walk of the day.

It is 2.35pm. This afternoon’s walk, much shorter. Only four kms. I think we deserve a rest.

We are starting exactly where we did this morning, although when we reach the junction just before we get to the concrete electricity pylon, we turn left following the PR2 route.

We have only one more day left in Portugal. We would have been here about fourteen days the shortest time we have been in a country so far but it has been quite intense. We havedone half of the walks suggested in the book. The walks we have not done are either short walks or sounded much more boring than the ones we have chosen. There is only so much time you can spend walking in the Algarve, believe us.

Tonight, we will head off to the coast and spend the night in a proper aire, where we can recharge Dora with electricity and water. We have been off grid for three days. Dora has been quite good creating electricity through her solar panel so we can write posts at the end of the day.

Gary is impressed by the almond trees, he has never seen one before, really?  I am impressed too, because of the fact that the tree is blossoming now, in January!!

As we walk, the smell becomes more intense. “Which herb is this?” Gary asks. It is tavisco, a sort of wild rosemary. We tried to use it to make our meat balls last night for dinner but we didn’t particularly like it, too strong. The herb is much better off being left in the countryside to provide nice and fresh smells to the walkers.

It is getting a bit chilly and Gary hasn’t brought his fleece this afternoon. He is already starting to moan. No one else to blame though. It is going to be a long walk, even though it is only four kilometres!

The track leads down, meandering into a valley. After fifteen minutes, we meet the first stream. It seems Gary has negotiated this one successfully!

The track continues, sneaking up through the pine forest.

The path gradually swings towards the left, almost going back on ourselves.

After half an hour, we now go under a set of electric pylons. We are not sure this is the same set up electric pylons we saw earlier, at the beginning of the walk. The ones we passed were concrete pylons and these ones seem to be metal. From here, we can count the pylons, the first two are metal but the third one is concrete. So we are now pretty sure that that one is the pylon at the beginning the walk.

It has been interesting for us to have used this so badly written walking guide. By looking for Julie’s clues we are spotting her mistakes, the important points of reference she has missed that would have been useful to the walker.

We discuss how we would have described the route ourselves and we are learning loads by trying to re-write the descriptions on these posts. For example, I have now realised the significance of the electric pylons. You spot them and remember them and, if you come across them again, you are in a very good position to work out where you are and which direction you have to go.

We come across a junction of tracks, one going straight and the other one, bending sharply right. A sign post with two signs is knocked down, pretty useless. We lift it up, one sign points to the GR13 and the other one to the PR2. However, as we know our general direction, we continue straight, generally towards southwest.

The path now goes upwards, leaving the pine trees behind us.

The yellow and red slashes of the PR2 continue to appear frequently enough to reassure us we are on the right route.

According to Julie, the theme of this walk is the rural architecture. So far, we have not seen one building after we left the village. This seems a bit strange as other walks that she has describes contains more rural features than this one, and she has mentioned none. We haven’t yet lost all hope, we are still awaiting for those remarkable architectural features!

After distance 40 minutes we can see Casas Baixas, our village.

We continue on our main path down to the village, ignoring tracks going off left and right. It passes a series of cultivating fields.

An old rural structure appears on our left. Would that be that rural, antiquity structure promised by Julie?

We pass over another small stream and climb over onto a road. We are now at the edge of the village of Casas Baixas.

Casas Baixas is a small village. We are quite glad that in both walks we have done today, we have ended up going through the village so we can explore it. We didn’t have the opportunity last night when we drove with Dora as it was too late.

It has probably sixty to seventy buildings. Some of them look modern constructions and others look they are just falling down.

Some of the interesting features we have found in this village are open ovens adjacent to a building, almost like a big external BBQ’S. Is this the architecture that the author references to? This would be strange as both other walks also pass through the village, but no reference to it then!

We are now back at Dora. We have completed the walk in fifty minutes, one hour and ten minutes less than estimated by the author. The shorter the walk, the quicker we tend to do it. Again, she is so inconsistent with her timings!!

We have only one more walk to do before we head back to Spain.

SM