Fuseta Portugal

Not much of a blog this one. We’ve spent two nights in Fuseta Monocarpacho, and one and a bit days (as you’d guess). This is rural Portugal, only about nine miles east of Faro, maybe only thirty from Albufira.
Fuseta is a fishing village and as per the previous post (maybe not explained specifically), and an area of `semi subsistence farming’. I say that because clearly some of what’s grown here goes elsewhere, but from the shops and stalls, quite a bit stays nearby.

The Entry Channel to the Village

Birds a Way out on the Sandbars

Inner Beach, Outer Sandbar

Channel Through the Sandbar to the Sea

There is a small fish market (which we couldn’t go in). A tiny railway station and train service and overall it’s just pretty and quaint and local. There are a couple of hotels or apartment blocks all closed up for winter, and there is our municipal campsite.

Fully Tiled Buildings

It’s a two night town if you’re touring, though there are plenty of over winterers on the campsite (predominantly French and Dutch). Fuseta is everything Isla Cristina just a way back over the border in Spain could be. A small fishing village with salt pans for preservation and a nature reserve. The difference couldn’t be more pronounced, this place is fantastic, clean within the parameters of a small town at the mercy of the Atlantic, cheerful and friendly.

Storks and Waders

Disused Salt Pan

Highlights for us have been the birds on the disused salt pans, eating fish and prawns caught that day in a restaurant that expands its alfresco seating and re-jigs everything on the fly to accommodate the customers, the fish is cooked on a double level Barbeque on the pavement, the salads, bread, olives and a half litre carafe of wine and beer and desert (as per previous post all come in at €20 or €25 and the bill amount is written on your paper tablecloth). They only do lunch, in the evenings they are closed.

Borage and Bees

Train

There are good well marked cycle paths, that zigzag between small holdings and homes and cross single track an unmade roads here and there. I was constantly reminded of England in spring, but for the occasional cactus or Prickly Pear.

That's Some Fresh Fish

There is something to be said for the land management here, Bees are everywhere. The lanes where the Borage grows actually hum with the noise of bees  (as did the almond groves way back in Spain). If there is a problem with bees in the UK, then based on what we’ve seen here, we the people are likely to be the problem somehow or another.

The sand bars just off shore are a protected area, though you can pick up a small boat and be dropped on them for an hour or two. They extend for at least twenty miles and when we get to Faro, we may go on one of the boat tours if they’re running.

It’s been pleasant and we looked forward to more of Portugal.

Lunch

Shadow Selfy

Urchin

Nowhere Week

It’s been one of those weeks, where nothing has happened and nothing has gotten done. In the Motorhome there lies a roll of noise deadening felt from here: http://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/c-126-felt.aspx and a role of carpet from here: http://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/c-81-rubber-backed-carpet.aspx (same place obviously just different pages ... we picked the very dark navy blue for the cab). The noise deadening felt is for inside the engine bay and bonnet, and if there is enough I will add some to the rudimentary hard rubber stuff inside the door metalwork.

A week or so ago I replaced a broken window winding handle, and got eyes on with the issue of renovating the decor panels on the inside of the doors. This requires those little plastic retaining clips because the ones on the motorhome are twenty years old and brittle. However if thee seek, thee shall find: http://www.tools-supplies.co.uk/panel-retainer-clips-770-c.asp. These guys are primarily for the automotive industry direct, however as long as you are willing to buy packs of x50, when you may only need x20, on balance your going to save yourself some time. And I have found without exception so far, that if you are willing to stick a sample of what you want in the post to these people they will come back with and exact match or as near as damn it match, and advice on how to make it work.

For instance, the cab door seals on the motor home are shot, after a bit of trawling I found these guys http://www.sealsdirect.co.uk/shopping.asp?intDepartmentId=8#74. Even Peugeot don’t make the door seals for our cab anymore, so we had to find a next best fit (if you’re interested it’s the ETS1472 that we settled for) 9 metres of it.

Why then if I have all this stuff lying around waiting to be done, have I not done anything? Well I’ll tell you why: Pesky fucking germs is why. We are both run down, a bit skint and weary. It’s been a tough year since February. I know this because I looked back through the blog this week, from the first foundations post, through to Septembers last post, and re-read the rollercoaster that’s been the last eight months. While I reviewed I added some pictures, tidied up some grammar and spellings that got missed despite quality control reading everything in Word, Blogger and Blogger preview pane ... you would be amazed at how each view actually highlights issues such as “were and wear and where, or than and that” in the wrong places, but spelt “spelled” write ... right ... so spell checker doesn’t highlight them, but all the same they are the wrong forms of the word. I think it happens because I’ve been writing something else somewhere else and a particular form of a word is lodged in my forebrain (that’s a metaphorical forebrain by the way ... I have no idea where the brain actually caches its frequently used words for the auto complete function when typing).

Back to the plot; germs have laid me low, when I’ve not been coughing like a championship cougher, I’ve been sitting on the sofa drinking hot tea to sooth my aching neck and feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been looking out the window at the weather and watching the leaves on the Lime Tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia_cordata turn yellow and scatter before the wind (really it’s just a week since most of the leaves were still green and still attached).

So the wind has blown and it’s been bright clear blue for an hour, and then dark and drizzly for an hour ... the weather is confused. I’m lacking energy and motivation, and I chide myself that if I’m too ill to go to work, then I shouldn’t be outside cutting carpet and messing around with high temperature contact adhesives under the bonnet.

Is the week a total loss? No. I’ve written several thousand words of the book that I’m writing, and I’ve made backups both to external hard drive and USB stick of everything important, I’ve tidied the blog, and posted pictures where appropriate. And now I have rationalised everything and thought it through writing this piece. I don’t like being under the weather it compromises your sense of self regardless of achievements under duress.

Until next time then, ttfn.

Sloe Gin

On the lighter side of life, I found a Blackthorn bush (Prunus Spinosa) in a spinney so loaded with sloes, that it was decided that Sloe Gin had to be made again this year. Last year we made three litres and gave it away as Christmas presents. This year I thought we were going to be completely out of luck as the rainy summer seems to have kept the bees away from the bushes out in the open and the fruits that there are, are hardly worth the bother. However on the way back across the fields from the MOT test centre last Friday I found some sheltered Blackthorns, under a Willow spinney (Salix alba ... but I’ve not checked) running along a banked path with deep ditches either side. These ditch banks have their own populations of burrowing bees.

Now I’m not an entomologist or a botanist or an ecologist or other modern day bio-diversity and habitat specialist ... but I’d like to think I’ve just seen a bit of cause and effect. To whit: Bees protected by bank and trees, Blackthorn bushes protected by trees, heavy rains feeding black thorn bushes, hence giant sloes (some had started to go over they were so juicy), and either side of that protected spinney Blackthorns almost devoid of fruit. So what I think I saw there is a tiny 50 by 8 metre island habitat. I may be talking utter bollocks, and maybe the bushes beyond the spinney have been ravaged by Wood Pigeons ... but that wouldn’t explain the difference between Blackberry sizes inside and outside the spinney and the below average numbers in our usual picking spot down near the river. 

    

So on the Friday I earmarked the bushes for a Sloe foraging session early Sunday morning (around 10am in the end ... we had good intentions honest). And then we went out for the shopping trip mentioned in the previous post. Followed by the calamity of the roof leak on Sunday (which if you are interested will be fixed by a complete new felt roof being installed tomorrow Friday 28th September £650 cash) ... PS: Fuck You David Gauke, if you want to eliminate the black economy and tax avoidance at low level ask your senior colleagues to stop giving my hard earned money to fuck nugget bankers that spunked trillions on dodgy deals ... lets shake hands and call it a rebate. 

Back to Sunday afternoon, and the roof leak had been reduced from a Sev1 to a Temp Fix in place. So we sat down to stab almost plum sized sloes with map pins (not silver tined forks ... we keep them for special and if the vicar is popping round ... ahem). We then forced the sloes down the necks of 1.5ltr bottles of Gin or dropped them on mass into Kilner jars with the pre-requisite amount of sugar, a damn fine shake to get the fermentation going and retired to the lounge to write blog posts and watch the Brendan Fraser movie Journey To The Centre Of The Earth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/ (I would have given it 7/10 myself IMDB’s reviewers must have been expecting Ghandi or something FFS it’s a kids film).

So despite the expense and the worry and the rain that means we’ve had to tell the Estate Agent not to bring anyone around this week in case there is water dripping from the ceiling into an Ikea storage box perched on the kitchen counter... not that anyone has requested to come around; well we’ve still had some fun making Christmas hooch. And if there is a Giant Intergalactic Spider watching over us (See South park episode Red Hot Catholic Love for an explanation ... I can’t be arsed), then perhaps he’ll cut us some slack now, and point a willing cash buyer who doesn’t like to haggle in our direction and we can move forward with travel plans.