Letter from Espargal: 14 of 2010

We are back; back, that is, from Sagres, where we spent a night in the pousada, courtesy of Honda.

Let me take those elements one at a time. Sagres is a popular tourist town set on dizzying cliffs in the south-western tip of Portugal. It was once the home of Henry the Navigator, the site where he is popularly supposed to have set up his school of navigation. A great fortress wall still defends a promontory on the edge of the town.

Pousadas are a group of luxury hotels, once owned by the state, several dozen of which are dotted around Portugal in spectacular and historic sites. In Spain, a similar chain is known as paradors.

And Honda, from which we bought the CRV nine months ago, gave us a voucher for a night’s stay at a pousada as part of the marketing operation.

The problem in using the voucher, as always, has been what to do with the animals during our absence. We decided to take the two smaller dogs with us and to leave the bigger ones behind, having arranged with Marie and Olly (whose dog we sometimes look after when they’re away) to walk and feed them.

The journey to Sagres used to take us the best part of three hours down narrow, busy and windey roads. These days, with the motorway and a vastly improved road system, it’s half that. Making the journey in the CRV is a joy. There’s no hint of its 4x4 engineering.

SAGRES POUSADA

Sagres pousada is situated on a rise with views in every direction. After checking in we took the dogs for a walk around the cliffs. These provide popular fishing spots for athletic anglers (who every so often get swept off or fall in, with fatal results). In the distance we spotted surfers, black specs trying to catch toy waves into the beach.

DISTANT SURFERS
For supper we walked a few hundred metres down the road – past several smart and largely empty restaurants, to a typical Portuguese eatery where, over supper, we watched an enthralling match in the Europa league between Liverpool and Benfica.

I took a generous selection of bones back to the grateful dogs, who spent the night in the car. They were quite happy there, just below our balcony, although they were relieved to lift their legs first thing in the morning. The car is their second home. We seldom go out without them. Their beds live on the (carefully covered) back seats.

If that’s a lengthy account of a night away from home, it’s only because we have some good pictures to accompany it and not much else to write about.

On the way back we stopped off at a fancy new development, Martinhal, on the outskirts of Sagres. Our attention had been drawn to it by an article sent to us by a friend in the UK. The place proved as smart as the article had promised, and was still swarming with builders. Villas – of which there were several categories – started at half a million euros. Whether anyone was buying them was another matter altogether. We didn’t stop at the sales office to enquire. The road to Sagres is littered with lonely developments, flagged with posters promising buyers substantial discounts - largely empty monuments to the good times.

I had a horrible few hours on Friday night when I discovered – on checking the Euromillions betting site – that I’d failed to place the weekly Espargal syndicate bet, in spite of my conviction that I had. Just imagine informing one’s neighbours after a notional megawin that the millions they were celebrating had gone elsewhere. I texted them with grovelling apologies and held my fingers (and breath) that none of our numbers would come up. Happily, none did….none that mattered, anyhow.

The following morning, while checking the account again, I discovered that I had indeed placed the bet. It would appear that once betting closes on Friday evening, ahead of the draw, existing bets are no longer reflected on the site – not, at least, in the “bets pending” area that I check.

The rest of our week has little new to commend it. Jones has continued to pick away in the old sheep pen. With the return of sunny weather she has also taken to watering sensitive parts of her garden once again.

Nelson has continued to clear a heavily overgrown area between two fields. He also assisted me reinforce the timber spars of the pergola above the upstairs patio. The carpenter who erected it used just a couple of screws to secure each of the spars, one of which flew off and landed in the garden during a violent storm.

In the valley below us, farmers are turning over their overgrown fields with scarifiers. I have followed their example, trying to spare the wild flowers that are everywhere in bloom. In one corner of a field our favas (beans) are nearly ready for picking.

It pains me that our modest crop compares so unfavourably with a neighbour’s, whose sturdy plants groan with beans nearby.

I have also sent off by registered post two certified copies of my passport and an application form for a new SA tax number, in the (forlorn) hope that this may actually advance my efforts to extract my modest investments from Liberty Life. I understand from an SA cousin that her emigrant brother’s efforts to do the same were equally frustrating.