APAPS 21.5: The Unintended Trig Point

 

Not much news doing the rounds at the moment about Scotch Whisky, apart from an item telling us that the Glenfiddich Distillery in Speyside has started using whisky as fuel for its delivery lorries instead of diesel. They don´t use the actual distilled spirit – they are not that daft – but they now use the dregs of the malted barley (which they used to sell off as cattle feed) to make a bio-fuel, a fuel that produces 95% less CO2 than diesel.

Casting about for other news items for the Blog that have absolutely nothing to do with APAPS walking or breakfasting, my eye was caught by an article in a local rag about strikes being threatened in Comboios de Portugal. Did you know that, if you are lucky enough to be employed by CP, you have a battery of no fewer than 8 trade unions to protect you from your unscrupulous employers.

They are ASCEF (Association of Intermediate Chiefs of Railway Exploration), FENTECOP (National Union of Transport, Communications and Public Works), SINFB ( National Independent Union of Railway Workers), SINDEFER (National Democratic Union of Railways), SINFA (Independent Union of Railway, Infrastructure and Related Workers), SIOFA (Independent Union of Railway and Related Operators), STF (Union of Railway Transport), and SNTSF (National Union of Railway Sector Workers). I wonder which ones are Marxist, Trotskyist and Leninist.

And now to the week´s walk. Only four of us turned up at Pescadores at 7 a.m. that morning, what with the Whittles being away travelling, Hazel being still hors de combat (although she was there for the breakfast), and Maria away being an Angel of Mercy.

The walk was something of an experiment in that, instead of leaving Pescadores to the West, on this occasion we went East along the canal, directly into the rising sun.

The Leader had a vague idea of heading up into the hills at some point or other and, luckily enough, a suitable track did present itself, a track wich led us up past a castellated building.

Not large enough to rival Silves Castle, more of a “folly” as these things are called in GB.

As we climbed, we could see a trig point in the distance and laughingly said that trigs were not really what APAPS is all about and so we dismissed the thought.

Soon the hills began to be quite seriously steep and Rod, in his capacity as Local Guide, began to recall that, in years gone by, he had led walks for the AWWs over three consecutive killer hills. He suggested we take a contour path but, because of work on electricity pylon installations, the landscape had been reshaped and reconfigured by bulldozers, that path came to an abrupt end and we had to retrace our steps and had no choice but to tackle the hill immediately above us.

The Road to Nowhere

Out comes the liquorice

Fortified by liquorice provided by Myriam, we managed that climb and found ourselves overlooking the Arade Barragem.

Now there was only one track to follow and that inexorably led us to the very trig point that we had earlier decided to ignore. Nothing for it but to take the traditional trig point photos.

and, thanks to Photoshop, a special guest appearance.......................

Then it was a desperately steep scramble down from the trig to find easier ground.

The Track and Statistics

Conversation over breakfast seemed to be mainly about Chinese words for seafood. In Mandarin, the word is, I think, relatively innocuous 海鲜

but in some dialects saying See Ham or something like that leads to what can only be described as lavatory humour.

Dona Fernanda did us proud as always with the breakfast and Senhor Bento provided us with some splendid plums and figs as a bonus treat.

Last week´s Blog had a small competition which asked

“What is the connection between these four items ?”

CRIME          NAKED          GAZIER          AGARICS

In France      In Germany      In Italy              In Spain.

Surprisingly, no one submitted any answers (although I suspect that Paul knew the answer straight off ).

Do I leave it one more week or let you out of your misery? You will probably say thank you if I give it now. Here it is:-

MERCI          DANKE          GRAZIE          GRACIAS

This week´s challenge is to give a title to this early morning shot by Yves, a Caption Competition. Answers “on a postcard” (as they always say) direct to Yves.