It was the annual jumble sale this weekend. Which involves a few British people staring forlornly at a few Portuguese people who are staring bemusedly at a pile of junk. True to form, I think we accounted for a good percentage of the day’s takings, having bought two painting easels, another wicker seated chair and a really cute little box seat – oh and a vegetable rack thing on wheels that I can use to carry my things around the house and workshop. We had a picnic on the way back though, and stocked up on Vinho Verde in the Portuguese supermarket, and when I got home I defrosted in a warm bath – so not too bad a day really.
Sunday we went for a bike ride. We went on one of our favorites, which is towards Usagre, cut across to the Bienvenida track and home. We had a picnic – soup and pasties of course – this time sat on the edge of an olive grove which was rather pleasant. Ian carried the soup and pasties in a backpack. He is refusing my latest idea which is leg warmers with a pasty pocket. I think this is a great idea for several reasons – not least if we warm the pasties before we go they’ll keep his legs warm. Needless to say, we have different opinions about this.
What we did learn on our bike ride is that there were quite a few dried up streams – which have now turned into flowing rivers. All were passable, but not without a certain amount of gymnastics…
Manuel has started on the kitchen. He arrived yesterday having been rained off another job. However it’s not raining today, so he is back on the other job and coming back here this evening.
There is a lot of building work in general going on at the moment. The next phase in the pavement project appears to be going on with a vengeance. The aim is that wherever in the village someone starts from, they will be able to walk to the cemetery on a pavement with lighting. The pavement is currently being built around the fiesta ground, and around the tennis courts. They also have started building changing rooms for the tennis courts. Tennis is popular with the youngsters, and the tennis courts are well used. The building work at the castle continues too, this is a massive project and it does look good. They are really ‘just’ making the walls safe, however because they are so big, it is obviously a significant project. The new trading units are coming on too. These are nearly finished and there is a new road to them which makes things take shape. We also noticed that when they did the new road, they also scraped the surface of a lot of the tracks, this evens out the holes and bumps and is a big improvement. There is a track that we cycle up that would have been impassible for cars, however the new scraped surface has evened it all out.
Davy is still limping, but not quite so bad. He is jumping a little more, so that’s a step – or jump – in the right direction.