The most remarkable event of this past week was a walk on which our neighbours, Olly and Marie, led us through the hills. This is really a picture letter - and the pictures must speak for themselves. Let me preface our outing by talking for a moment about the Algarve countryside. For the most part it’s wickedly rocky. The remains of old walls line the hillsides, evidence of generations of hard labour by subsistence farmers who moved the rocks to eke a living from the land.
Most farmers lived in small communities, often of barely half a dozen houses. The houses were thick-walled, built of mud and rocks and finished with lime plaster. The roofs were tiles laid on canes.
One such community is Estiveira, clearly visible about 3 kms away on the next rise. It was there we started out on a 3-hour walk that led high into the hills. Nary a soul was about – just an occasional bird or lizard.
Three times we passed deserted hamlets, the small houses bereft of their roofs, lying open to the sun. Some of the walls had started to collapse, exposing their rock and mud interiors. In the main though, the plastered walls and the decorated "platibanda" strips along the top of the walls were in good shape.
Within our lifetime, these dwellings would have been home to thriving communities. It's sad to see a way of life come to such an end. From the hilltop, we looked down on the next village, Esteval dos Mouros (the Stable of the Moors) and beyond it to the coast. We wound our way down through lazy carob plantations to the main road. Our dogs panted in the heat, too tired to bother with the village dogs that objected to their passage.
The heart of Esteval dos Mouros is the café. It’s the most welcome café on earth. We set up table in the shade of a tree outside and sipped icy beers, hot coffee and baggies. Jones laid out the last of the marvellous Christmas cake from our house sitters, the Ferretts, which she’s been rationing. 
The dogs crashed in the shade. The café owners turned out to be cousins of several of our neighbours in Espargal. They were pleased to be able to chat to us. This is a part of the world where just about everyone seems to be related to everyone else.
The return was by a shorter route that climbed steadily back into the hills. We took frequent breaks in the shade of carob trees. Estiveira, when we reached it, looked almost as sleepy as the dying hamlets. Our arrival aroused Tomasia, (a friend of a neighbour) who rushed out of her house to offer us refreshments. There was little other sign of life. Without either new blood or new estrangeiros, Estiveira’s future is not rosy. (Jones says she thinks it's blissful the way it is.)
On our return Jones and I both went out like lights on the bed, in spite of the growl from Natasha’s busy vacuum cleaner downstairs. I was woken by a sudden Jones leap from the bed. She’d been woken herself, she confessed a minute later, by a bite on her tummy, courtesy of a tick she’d picked up along the way. It went down the loo. Jones’s soft heart for bees and butterflies, which she rescues from the windows, doesn’t extend to ticks.
After dropping Natasha in Loule that evening, we went on to Faro for cocktails to mark the opening of a new rehearsal room for the Orchestra of the Algarve – of which we’re minor patrons. Following drinks and a few forgettable speeches, we trooped inside for a little chamber music.
Chamber music is something that mainly I can live without. Even so, I quite liked a piece for piano and cello. (Jones preferred a piano-bassoon - spelled “basson” - duet.) I failed to recognise the cellist, whom we’ve often seen, because for once she had her hair drawn back – and was chided by my beloved for being obtuse. (I think that’s a kind of angle.)
We made another trip to Faro to renew my international driving licence, discovering on arrival that the offices of the Portuguese AA had moved from the outskirts to the centre. So we trekked in and hunted around for somewhere for the dogs to lift their legs. Prominent signs banned 4-legged visitors from the few green spaces. At least I found the new office free of customers and was able to leave with the document 20 minutes later. It’s never been sought on my many visits to Canada. But Sod’s law says that it would be if I didn’t have it.
On the way home, we stopped off at “Honda” to check out a minor intermittent leak that, has irritated Jones by dropping oil on her cobbles. I’d taken the car once before, soon after the service that provoked the leak, but without having the problem identified. While Honda raised the car and Jones walked the dogs, I wandered around the showroom, eyeing the latest models and wincing at the prices. The new CRV costs 45,000 euros plus – nearly half of it tax. It’s outrageous.
The repair took an hour and a bit and felt like three. Honda said they’d replaced a minor part that was damaged. I said there’d been no problem prior to the last service. Honda insisted that it was a coincidence. I had my doubts. So did Jones, who wanted (me) to argue with Honda. But the bill wasn’t large and Honda had fitted us in without an appointment. So we paid up and went home. Two faults in 8 years isn’t a bad record.I dropped in one morning on the little old cobbler who operates, hunched over his last, in a dark Dickensian room close to the senior university. A handwritten sign, tied to the railings, proclaims his trade. Shoes, bits of leather and scraps of iron lie scattered about the room. I wanted to take a picture but the old man said the place was too untidy. I presented him with one of one of Jones’s shoes, the stitching of which had given way at the heel.
Several days later I went back to fetch the shoe. The cobbler had sewn a neat patch inside the heel, maybe half an hour's work. The charge for this, he said, was one euro. I gave him two and he thought it was Christmas. He, and one other old fellow, are the last cobblers practicing their trade in Loule, and are going the way of Estiveira. The new breed operate in shopping centres, with a range of high-tech “while you wait” equipment. I like the old ones better.
So that’s our news. We are preparing for the arrival of our house sitters on Tuesday evening. The next day we take the train to Lisbon – and the day after we fly to Frankfurt and Calgary. The plan is to spend some time with my family in the Rockies before we drive to Vancouver to meet two of Barbara’s nephews. Then we have a week on the Canadian Pacific coast and the Queen Charlotte islands. We are due back in Portugal on Thursday June 5.
Post Script: Olly received a birthday card from our gifted artist neighbour, Sarah, with her impression of his very bad experience on my tractor, the day the clutch failed and he went whizzing down the hill. The picture is accurate to the extent of having even the right licence plate. 
Although (and here one must forgive the artist) the treads on the tractor's rear wheels incline the wrong way.
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