After a bit of a shock for Dave involving some ‘Chocolate Covered Cornflakes’ – an interesting start to the day – we grabbed Alan from two floors below us and headed up to Camacha. I disappeared for a while into the Café Relogio and the basket factory. The others discovered this only when vetting today’s photos for a suitable blog image! Today’s route took us up to the Levada da Serra, which contours at around 770 metres in a westerly direction through ‘Paradise Valley’ and on for several miles to its abrupt end above Funchal. Here we dropped down a road to about 600 metres, to pick up the Levada dos Tornos for the walk back to Camacha, stopping for lunch en route. Alan, unused to these excursions, had left his lunch at home. What was in his rucksack then?We continued on to a bar that we failed to walk past. Here some fresh tuna accompanied the now familiar Coral beer. Both the tuna and the beer made Alan much happier. Here it is traditional to leave tips in bars, but there is also a practice of them providing customers with little extras such as nuts or olives or ‘lupin seeds’ – a sort of butterbean, or in this case - fresh tuna. Seems fair enough, but apparently the Brits still rarely leave tips.
Six hours on the trail had made for a good day out, after which we returned via one of the many supermarkets to collect essential supplies (mainly more beer).
The Marie Celeste was then swept out and tidied up, as best we could, whilst we had baths one at a time (one plug for two baths, no shower curtains) before A & C joined us for a pleasant evening with spag bol cooked in a pan with a breakable (it broke) handle, under Hugo’s expertly assembled light fittings (30w bulbs), on his folding (collapsing) chairs.
And then we chose today’s photo – of Dave entering the long tunnel on the Levada dos Tornos. Alan and I walked round because A had no torch, and as Anne and I had discovered on our last visit, the path in this tunnel gets very narrow, so a torch is really quite important.
No comments:
Post a Comment