Letter from Espargal: 5 April 2014

It's been a damp week. April gusted in as wet as March swept out. Four inches of rain fell in three days, six inches in six. And the wind blew and blew and blew; it's still blowing.

It blew so hard that it blew down one of David and Sarah's almond trees in the field below their house. I didn't know that until David's Portuguese neighbour, Silvia, called me to say that the tree was lying across her fence and blocking her driveway. She needed their UK number.

I went over on the tractor to take a look. Silvia pointed out that it had fallen on the spot where her small son waited for the school mini-bus. Sensibly, he hadn't waited there in the storm and to be sure no harm had been done.

I was able to contact David and Sarah to let them know what had happened. Silvia's father promptly carved up the branches and removed the foliage.

JONES AND LEONILDE AT WORK

We visited another Portuguese neighbour, at her invitation, to dig up a couple of pine tree saplings that had sprouted from seed dropping from the tree above. My part was to drive the tractor across with bucket, spade and pick; digging is not my thing. I discovered years ago that it was anathema to my back.

Unashamedly, I left it to Barbara and Leonilde who, between them, dug the saplings out, crouching down beneath the branches of the tree.

We brought them back to plant somewhere in the garden. We will have to choose a spot with care; pine trees tend to grow pretty big.

During a break in the weather, we went down to look at the river, 3 km away at the end of the road that winds down from Espargal into the valley. The water was rushing single-mindedly past, busy and brown, although not exactly in flood in spite of all the rain.

Even so, it will be a day or two before the four-wheel-drive vehicles that conduct pink-skinned tourists through the hills will be able to cross the ford. The season has just opened.

More on our minds for the next day or two will be the Portugal Rally as high-powered cars rip through the countryside.

After very much ado about nothing and six weeks of jetting about the world, as well as hanging around in customs, my long-awaited hikers' GPS finally made an appearance. The device is very clever with a great range of functions.

Fortunately for me, my Dutch neighbour, Nicoline, is high tech and familiar with the product, having set one up for her partner. She downloaded lots of essential software on to mine and showed me how to make the most of it.

MIKE WITH THE GPS AT THE SNACK BAR

Garmin, the suppliers, make great hardware but the preloaded maps are next to useless, presumably because Garmin prefers clients to buy the expensive maps available on its website. (Nicoline has discovered where to get excellent maps for nothing.)

I spent a couple of days acquainting myself with the device before handing it over to our friends and frequent Portugal visitors, Mike and Lyn, who are staying in one of Idalecio's

cottages. They are great walkers as they go in search of birds and flowers.

Idalecio and Sonia invited us down to admire a cottage that they'd refurbished. It looks lovely, ever so much cosier and more inviting than the sombre interior that I'd remembered from a visit several years earlier.

A hole cut through the wall behind the woodstove in the living room allows heat to enter the bedroom and bathroom area, greatly appreciated on these chilly spring evenings. We particularly liked the cottage names, carved on oak plaques.

Monday, as ever, brought May and English classes. We took May to lunch at a favourite restaurant, Cassima. There we were surprised and disappointed to learn that it was the restaurant's last day under the old management.

It was being refurbished before being sold to new owners, and the excellent Russian waitress, who has long looked after us, was leaving to look for a new job. We wished her luck; we will miss her, along with the good food she served us.

Our theme in the English class was the new airport for private jets that Loule's fathers had been planning to build before the financial crisis struck - and is now on hold. Never mind that there is a perfectly good commercial airport at Faro, just 15 minutes away.

A Spanish regional authority had the same idea a few years ago when money still flowed like water. It actually built its new airport - to attract tourists - at a cost of millions. To date, no tourists have landed there. Unabashed, the boss man reckons one day they will come.

We've had to amend the route of our morning walk. The owner of land across which we took a short cut has blocked the route; fair enough, he obviously didn't like the track we were making across it and we now walk round it instead.

The amended route still takes us an hour and brings us back home along much the same path. More taxing is trying to avoid any neighbours with dogs. Bumping into people doesn't present a problem; but bumping into their dogs can be quite awkward.

RAIN CLOUDS OVER BENAFIM

One damp morning the dogs sounded the alarm as we were about to go out. I peered over the balcony to see a car in council colours trying to drive up the steep track beside our fence.

The car contained two officials, a man who remained seated and a young woman who was looking for Casa Nada. As you may recall, we are making yet another attempt to get the place registered and she had come to check it out.

I showed her around the outside and I asked her if she wanted to look inside. Happily, she didn't, although she peered carefully through a window at my tractor and the implements on the walls. She asked me a couple of questions about the borders and the extent of the property before leaving as abruptly as she had arrived.

What she'll make of it is hard to know. We can only keep our fingers crossed that the council doesn't put us through years of agonizing bureaucracy.

SUCCULENT IN GLORIOUS FLOWER

You may gather from my somewhat abrupt style that I'm still dictating rather than typing. I don't enjoy it. It doesn't come naturally. I can't get much beyond a comma before pausing to think what I'm going to say next. The software doesn't abide aaaahhs and umms.

But it's clear that my RSI has come to stay for a while. It's now affecting my left elbow as well as my right and there's no cure for it but to stay away from the computer. I find that almost as hard as going on the wagon.