Cabo Espichel

The south west face of the Setúbal Peninsula starts at a place we thought was rather special (I devoted a chapter to it in my book Camel Spit & Cork Trees), but which seemed to underwhelm anyone we took there, Cabo Espichel on the Costa Negra – the Black Coast – so called due to the dangers it posed passing ships. It’s not a pretty spot as such, but it is dramatic. What makes it special is the Sántuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel, a religious folly that looks like it would make a great location for a remake of The Magnificent Seven. This remote spot once bustled with pilgrims to the extent it was virtually a small town, even boasting an opera house. How can anyone not be impressed by that? Add to this the dinosaur footprints in the surrounding cliffs, relatively easy to spot once you get your eye in, and it’s a fascinating location. There’s a café at the sanctuary, and food trucks often roll up at weekends, so a good spot to hang out for a couple of hours.

Lagoa de Albufeira

Head north and that golden strip of sand soon begins. Heading north isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds. The roads in this part are of the maze variety, and finding your way to specific spots is time consuming and requires excellent navigational skills, even if utilising Sat Nav. But it’s worth the effort. Fabulous beaches are ten a centimo in Portugal, but the Lagoa de Albufeira stands out from the crowd as being a bit different. A huge lagoon sits just behind the golden sands, stretching inland for just under 4km. Its eastern end is a sanctuary for birds. In among the marsh willow are grebes, teal, ducks, cormorants, warblers, and kingfishers, whose Portuguese name guarda-rios describes these electrifying birds perfectly. On the lagoon are ramshackle islands consisting of floating huts; fishing is still a vital part of life here, and rows of fishermen can often be seen casting their lines from the shore.

The area of the lagoon closest to the Atlantic draws the greatest concentration of sunseekers. On a sunny January day, we had the beach virtually to ourselves, wandering into O Lagoeiro restaurant overlooking the lagoon for hearty portions of choco frito, chips, and tomato rice without a problem. But in summer months it is a different story.

Costa da Caparica

I’m not a big fan of Costa da Caparica, the northern stretch of the peninsula’s coast, and find it on the garish side, especially after the relative rural tranquillity of the south of the peninsula. For a start, it’s not uncommon to see prostitutes in the shade of stone pines by the roadside, a bizarre sight in a rural setting. Then, when it becomes more built up the further north you travel, the roads are lined with huge shacks selling everything you could think of connected with family beach holidays: from windbreaks and towels to balls, umbrellas, and enormous airbeds. Want a floating flamingo the size of a small boat? Costa da Caparica is the place to get it. Continuing north, the more it resembles any bog-standard resort area, albeit one for Portuguese rather than foreign visitors. The densely populated northern area of the Setúbal Peninsula is not particularly attractive, generally performing the role of an affordable place to live for people working in Lisbon. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of surprising nuggets to be found, but to do so often requires negotiating confusing urban jungles.

There are mini oasis amid uninspiring architecture. After the tower blocks of Costa da Caparica, Trafaria, on the north west tip opposite Lisbon, has the laidback feel of a South American beachside pueblo.

The beaches on the Costa da Caparica are, admittedly, stunners, but in summer months virtually inaccessible … unless you’re happy to throw yourself into the madness. We did during August, once, finding ourselves crawling for miles and miles in a snake of traffic as everyone searched for the rare beast that was an empty parking spot within walking distance of the golden sands. It was oppressively hot, and the jammed dusty roads claustrophobic; we couldn’t wait to escape to the southern end of the coast which wasn’t anywhere like as manic.

It’s better to visit the area in spring and autumn, outside of holiday season, when it’s still hot enough for quality beach time, but without the crowds.

Jack and I can’t remember a year when we had lambs in November, eight so far and at least one more ewe heavily pregnant. Last spring we had a surfeit of male lambs who, when they got to around six months of age, had to be given to a neighbouring farmer as they had begun to noisily head-butt each other in the sheep shed every evening. I guess the threat of competition must have spurred the big old ram into action as a result of which, we now have this baby bonanza. Thankfully, most of the newborn this year are females so they’ll be able to stay, augmenting the small flock.

Like a living barometer, you don’t need a calendar here on the farm to tell you when the seasons are changing, the animals do that for you. Almost overnight it seems, the cats have doubled their body size, their skinny summer frames now clad in luxurious fur. The adult sheep, sheared to within half a centimetre of their skin at the end of spring, are now wearing thick, shaggy coats while the spring lambs, now six months old, are sporting tightly-coiled woollen onesies.

Up until last weekend, the stork nests at the abandoned herdade which we walk to on our customary circuit through the cork forest, had lain empty since  early October when, during a short cold snap, their residents had flown south in pursuit of the sun. With this month’s heat, they’re back. Three days ago, we watched a plough churning the open fields beyond the forest, in its wake twenty or more egrets feasted from the newly-turned earth while beyond them, we counted sixteen storks, patiently standing, socially-distanced from one another in the neighbouring field, waiting for the egrets to move on with the plough so they could high-step amongst the fresh furrows.

Autumn on the farm means oranges and the lower orchard is heavy with fruit. Having picked the low branches bare, Dona Catarina can’t reach the upper foliage where the majority of fruit nestles, hidden inside its leafy camouflage so it only becomes visible once you’re standing directly beneath the tree, craning your neck. On Friday I headed down to the orchard to collect enough oranges to squeeze for breakfasts over the weekend and few extras for Dona Catarina.

Picking the oranges is a hit and miss business thanks to the sheep who, the minute they spot anyone coming into the orchard, crowd around your feet, jostling for prime position and threatening to knock you off your delicate, tiptoed balance. Orange-lovers, the prospect of fresh fruit sends them into a frenzy, not helped by the fact that Dona Catarina operates a ‘one for me, one for you’ system with them when she’s picking. I operate no such system, sticking rigidly to the ‘they’re all for me’ method. Consequently, I have to carry an open rucksack into which I can drop the fruit. Although I’m almost twice as tall as Dona Catarina – she is exceedingly petite – the upper branches are beyond tiptoed reach even for me so I have to jump, grab a branch and pull it down towards me, specks of dust and fragments of bark threatening to blind me. Then, with my only free hand and usually one eye shut because there’s dust in it, I have to pick the fruit and drop it into the rucksack while maintaining my balance against the tide of woolly bodies. Inevitably, there are casualties and an orange tumbles to the ground where it’s instantly snaffled amidst a noisy kerfuffle.

When I get back from the washing line, I grab the wood basket, and head back out to replenish it from the pile that Jack chain-sawed at the weekend. We’ll be lighting the wood burner soon. Once the sun drops towards the horizon, the temperature rapidly follows suit and inside the house, it’s already shiver-inducing cold.

Outside, the last cries of ewes and lambs fade as Dona Catarina feeds the flock and closes the gate for the night. Silence falls across the farm. Within the hour we light the fire, the aromatic smell of wood smoke mingling with the heady scent of freshly-picked oranges crowding the fruit basket. This week is set to turn colder and we have rain forecast from Wednesday. I might have to get the hot water bottles out, our final defence against the bedtime chill. Winter is not far away.

And that’s how it usually starts.

Dishes on restaurant menus fall into three categories for me – the ones I like the sound of, the ones I don’t fancy, and the ones which I don’t have a clue what they are. One of the latter is usually what I eventually opt for.

Pondering how a chef would turn the Italian peach purée and Prosecco cocktail into something that was suitable to eat as an entrée was enough of a hook to make me order one.

A year ago Andy and I sat on the terrace of a shepherd’s hut on a plateau in Slovenia whilst I tucked into a bowl of gruel otherwise known as buckwheat mush and sour milk. Why? Because it was there… and I hadn’t eaten buckwheat mush and sour milk before.

The unfamiliar simply has more allure than the familiar.

I knew this was the case with food and travel experiences in general, but a discussion about a future which, thanks to Brexit, is uncertain made me realise that both of us also subconsciously relished the unfamiliar in everyday life far more than we had realised.

Discussing what would happen if, come the end of 2020, we are ‘kicked out’ of Europe thanks to the (spit) wishes of others (am I bitter? you bet I am. I’m Buffy in episode 3 of season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer bitter) we talked about the scenario where we might have to return to Britain.

Initially, and trying to look on the positive side, the idea of not having to formulate words in another language before undertaking any transaction held a giddy appeal. In the last few days Andy was taken into the dim depths of a retrosaria (old-fashioned haberdasher) on a back street in Setúbal in order to find the perfect replacement button for a pair of shorts; I had my first post-lockdown haircut, explaining to a Brazilian barber in bad Portuguese how I wanted it cut; and I arranged to have the front two tyres of our car changed at a local garage. Their shocking baldness was pointed out to us by Andy’s brother John and our nephew Liam whilst we were in France… just before the 1600 km drive back to Portugal.

None of these things are remarkable, but each required using different subsets of words (hairdresser words, haberdasher words, mechanical mutterings – of which I’m poor in English let alone another language). Here’s the thing, when you’re in a land where your foreignness stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, where your grasp of the language is pitiful, every little transaction that you manage successfully feels like a small victory. It can be hellishly frustrating and depressing when it doesn’t work out, but most of the time we are rewarded with surges of feel-good adrenaline just by achieving simple tasks we wouldn’t think twice about doing in Britain.

When we first moved abroad, feeling different from those around us, like awkward outsiders, was intimidating and off-putting. I remember a tiny Mexican bar on a back street in Puerto de la Cruz whose counter I yearned to sit at, but I just didn’t have the bottle to enter.
Now I’d walk straight in without hesitation. Being an awkward outsider has become normal to such an extent there’s a fear that not having to struggle to communicate; of understanding exactly how to do things in any number of situations; of being able to tell a fishmonger exactly what you want him to do with a piece of monkfish, might actually make everything feel far too easy to the point of being banal. Sounding the same as everyone else around might even seem a wee bit dull.

A world where unfamiliarity is a regular visitor has become highly addictive – an addiction we’re not keen to relinquish.

The Bellini arrives; there’s no evidence of Prosecco or peach – it’s shocking green with a dollop of Chantilly cream on top. It looks more like a detox smoothie than a ‘creative’ version of a sinfully good cocktail. It is also disgusting, the cream and green combination really doesn’t work, it makes me feel quite queasy. Andy laughs at my expression and says “that’s what you get for always picking the oddest thing on the menu.”

There are times I really, really wish I’d stuck to strolling down familiar street.

After 14 years in the Canary Islands, and craving adventures somewhere new, we swapped our settled life in the North of Tenerife for a decidedly unclear one in Portugal.

“The first sighting of a wooden post with the word contrabando etched into it is quite thrilling, prompting thoughts about the people who walked these illicit paths, some of whom still live in the neat white houses nestled into the valleys around us. The path climbs through a cork forest, their trunks stripped of precious bark leaving them looking naked and slightly, but not unattractively, odd…” – Walking in Smugglers’ Footsteps: Camel Spit & Cork Trees

Our quest to find the ideal place to live, combined with missions to create Slow Travel holidays, took us from the honey-coloured coastline of the wilder side of the Algarve to the verdant valleys of the Minho in the north, and from living beside a smugglers’ trail in Alentejo’s ‘beyond the back of beyond’ border country to a small farm next to a cork forest in the Setúbal Peninsula south of Lisbon; an area of fisherman and farmers where stork colonies squat on abandoned farmhouses and flamboyant flamingos wade through oyster beds.

“The back door is flimsy to say the least. Thankfully it doesn’t last long as just as it starts to get cold something starts to eat it from the inside. We bring Dona Catarina in to the house to listen to the audible chomping.
“Oh!” she cries when she hears the loud munch, munch, munch before covering her mouth and giggling.” – Warm Days, Cold Nights: Camel Spit & Cork Trees

As well as coming to terms with the idiosyncrasies of life in a different country, our voyage has been one of discovery, of gradually getting to know a fascinating country better – exploring a cape where the Virgin Mary was spotted riding a giant mule up a cliff-side; learning about a festa where young children are encouraged to smoke cigarettes; finding out why cork trees have numbers chalked on their bark; and being introduced to regional culinary specialities which included pigs’ blood rice and bizarrely-named desserts such as lard from heaven.

“We plonk ourselves beneath a TV where Sporting Lisbon are beating Basel in the Champions League, much to the disappointment of the locals (all Porto supporters), and let Vitor do the ordering. When he orders sarrabulho the waiter’s eyes flick towards us and back to Vitor again before he asks in Portuguese, “Are you sure?” He’s a man who has had previous experience of Brits being ‘surprised’ by the region’s speciality dish.” – Lazarus Roosters & Pig’s Blood: Camel Spit & Cork Trees

As it so often is when it comes to travel, the many characters we met along the way made the journey all the more interesting and enriching.

“Francisco finally appears, late (maybe he struggled to catch a taxi as well), looking exactly what we hoped a Portuguese Count would look like. He’s tanned and roguishly handsome with an unruly shock of silver hair; his eyes sparkle as he speaks; his hands flamboyantly accentuate every word; a smile permanently plays across his lips as though everything amuses him; and he’s wearing a green, collarless jacket which gives him the appearance of Christopher Plummer’s Captain Von Trapp.” – Dinner with the Count: Camel Spit & Cork Trees

Camel Spit & Cork trees is a travelogue which is partly about learning to live as a foreigner in Portugal and partly about delving under the skin of areas that aren’t so well known outside of the country. It’s about the land, the people, the food, the weather, the wildlife… and the insects. It’s also packed full of historical, cultural and quirky snippets we picked up during a journey which has not only been an education, it’s been a lot of fun… mostly.

So what’s camel spit got to do with anything? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Camel Spit & Cork Trees, a Year of Slow Travel Through Portugal is available in both paperback and eBook from Amazon.

Worried or are they just from Braga?
A month later and we’re exploring parts of central Portugal with James from Inntravel who’s spending a week checking out various parts of the country. It’s a dreary Saturday and normally picturesque towns look decidedly underwhelming. There’s an absence of people around which we put down to it being a dreary day at the end of February. We part company in Coimbra, James driving north whilst we jump on the train back to Lisbon. It’s monsoon-ing it down and there are very few people on platform as we wait for the train from Braga. We take to our seats and comment on just how oppressively silent the nearly-full train is. We figure the people from Braga are just more reserved than their southern counterparts – a woman across the aisle is crocheting a doily. The city does have that ‘Braga prays’ tag after all. But maybe the Portuguese, keeping a close eye on what is happening with their exuberant neighbours, are just more aware of the impending storm.

Alentejo and the first mask
With walking trips coming up in April we need to get the muscles into some sort of shape, so mid-March we drive south a short distance into the wilds of Alentejo, discovering one of the best walking routes we’ve notched up in the area – a heady mix of lakeside strolling and scented forest trails across hills where wild flowers are just bursting into life. Driving back home, we stop at a small supermarket to pick up something for dinner. It’s a Thursday night and cupboards are quite bare before the big Friday shop. The little supermarket is no different than normal, save for one thing; a boy of around 11 is wearing a face mask. He looks rather strange, out of place. I notice other shoppers staring at him.

The madness descends
Less than 24 hours later and I wish we’d bought more at the Alentejo supermarket. The madness we’d been reading about in British press reports descends on Portugal. There are queues of shoppers at each till, their trolleys piled high with produce including, of course, multi-packs of toilet paper. We’d been crowing to family in Britain about how the Portuguese weren’t as hysterical as some Brits, there had been no panic-buying here. I got that wrong. People around where we live don’t have much money. I say to Andy there’s no way they can sustain panic-buying like this for more than a couple of weeks. Later that night we read the Portuguese Government have introduced restrictions and social distancing recommendations. People must have got wind prior to the announcement, hence the attack of panic-buying.
What’s interesting is many Portuguese self-implemented social distancing when they saw what was happening with their neighbours. They react in an eminently sensible and pragmatic way without being directed to. As a result the Portuguese Government doesn’t introduce as strict restrictions as those in place in Spain.

Empty shelves
A week further down the line and we stumble into a horror movie scenario whenever we leave the quinta. There, surrounded by fields, vines, and cork forest, life doesn’t feel any different than it normally does. Even the village, whose streets are normally devoid of people anyway, seems much the same as usual. But the roads between the house and Palmela, where the Pingo Doce supermarket is located, are empty of cars. So is the supermarket car park for that matter. The supermarket itself is closed. They’re operating flexible hours, closing the doors to restock when shelves are empty. We try a nearby Aldi. It is open, but the aisles have been stripped. Supermarkets are now operating a restricted number of shoppers system but, as there’s very little produce on the shelves, there are few shoppers anyway, so we waltz in and leave with a tub of yoghurt, the last tin of tomatoes and a couple of tins of tuna.
We try the mini-market in the village. There’s no queue and life inside is reassuringly normal. The diminutive woman owner chats away happily to the handful of locals who still use it as much for the social aspects as shopping. We fill a basket with vegetables, beans, beer, soap, bread, eggs, water, and crisps, feeling as if we’ve struck gold. In the space of a week we’ve come to appreciate just how precious fundamentals are when they’re suddenly not so easy to get hold of. Instead of working out meals a week in advance we have to be more spontaneous, cooking with what’s available. This part is actually an improvement, we create new recipes and rediscover forgotten favourites.
We tell friends in Britain about how surreal it all is, but we can tell some can’t quite imagine the scenario we describe. Despite what’s happening in other countries, Boris Johnson’s Britain is ploughing a different field, one similar to the Netherlands and Sweden, where the herd immunity approach is being tried. Life there sounds as though it’s going on much the same as normal. It seems insanely reckless to us.

A fortnight into lockdown
It’s incredible how quickly the abnormal becomes the normal. Queuing to get into a supermarket wearing a face mask and gloves doesn’t feel quite as apocalyptic as it did just a week ago. The shelves are relatively healthy again, save for an absence of gloves and antiseptic wipes. At first we couldn’t get any fresh meat, but even the demand for that has calmed down. Whether people have adjusted to the situation or just run out of money, I don’t know. Apart from the reduced number of shoppers and the fact most, not all, wear face masks, it feels normal; more enjoyable even. What’s quite amusing is, now Boris Johnson has caved and implemented similar restrictions put in place in other countries a couple of weeks ago, friends in Britain start telling us about limitations of movement and waiting in line to get into supermarkets.
Our village shop has proved the epicentre of normality, but it illustrates a rather odd approach to COVID-19. In the bigger supermarket in Palmela there is no interaction between shoppers, everyone maintains a respectful distance. In the village shop, some locals behave much as they normally would. It’s as if they believe the virus only wears a stranger’s face. Dona Catarina has been guilty of the same. She keeps her distance from us, almost to the point of running away whenever she saw us in the early days. But when the water stopped running and she had to call in an electrician she knew to fix the pump, she walked beside him as normal. COVID-19 has also caused an outbreak of irrational behaviour.

The last week in April
A pattern has well and truly been established. All paid work and income from sales of guides has virtually dried up, and some outstanding trips we were seriously excited about have been cancelled. Others for later in the year are close to being cancelled. But there have been upsides. We’ve both been able to concentrate on a couple of projects which have been sidelined for a long time due to other commitments. Subsequently, work patterns remain similar, except we stop work early afternoon to catch up with reading books that have been left to gather dust for far too long. At around 16:00 we pull on our hiking boots and take to the cork forest right outside the farm’s gate. There is a network of tracks in the forest and surrounding fields, most are access for cork workers; although, we’ve never seen anybody actually stripping a tree of its cork. The tracks mean we can mix and match paths, creating different routes of between four and five kilometres, all the time. The irony is, notching up on average 30km, we now walk more in a week when we’re at home than we did pre-lockdown. As it’s spring, the countryside is a much appreciated antidote – there is no endless, stress-inducing stream of sensational news among the viper’s bugloss and Mediterranean thistles. Shopping yesterday seemed even more normal than in previous weeks; no queue to get in, shelves fully stocked, more cars on the road.

There have been no new cases in Setúbal for a few days and mortality rates in Portugal are lower than in many other European countries. Where the death rate in Spain is 45.5 per 100,000, in Portugal it’s 7.4. Incidentally, Britain is 26.
Possibly people are relaxing slightly, maybe a new normality, whatever that means, is beginning to take shape.

At this point Andy rolls her eyes and says “you say that, but you always wolf it down when we have a pud.”

That’s true as well. I love good puddings. The thing about dessert menus is in some countries they can swing from the divine to the deadly dull, especially in traditional restaurants. You never know which is going to show up. Portugal is a classic example of what I mean. This is a country whose dessert menus are dominated by puddings made from left over egg yolks after nuns have used the whites to starch their wimples. Conventual desserts have novelty value when first encountered, but after numerous occasions discovering all those desserts with odd little names (nun’s belly, lard from heaven etc.) consist of the holy trio of egg yolks, sugar, and cinnamon, it all gets a bit samey. But then, deliciously fruity crumbles, and dreamy, creamy cheesecakes can turn up on a lot of Portuguese menus as well, just to confound expectations.

My least favourite part of a meal is dessert… unless there is something which awakens the sweet-toothed child that slumbers within. And there regularly is, no matter where we travel around Europe.

White chocolate egg, Italy and Portugal
The dessert menu at Mundet, located in the non-touristy town of Seixal on the other side of the Tagus from Lisbon, is inspired by Alice Through the Looking Glass, and does feature goodies suitable for a wonderland setting. Humpty Dumpty involved a white chocolate egg enclosing Mundet’s take on a traditional sponge cake called pão de ló. It was fun, lip-licking tasty, and reminded us of another white chocolate egg dessert which caused a WOW moment, as it was dropped from above diners’ heads to smash into pieces on their plates. That one was at the two star Michelin restaurant Piccolo Lago on the banks of Lake Mergozzo in Italy. All night we wondered why there were sudden outbursts of laughter at tables around the restaurant, until a huge,white chocolate egg whizzed past Andy’s head to explode on her plate, revealing an anarchic splodge of raspberries with banana and caramel ice cream.

Deep-fried ice cream, Glasgow
It is true, the west of Scotland is deep-fried Nirvana – a land of battered sausages and hardened arteries. As teenagers we never thought twice about ordering deep-fried pizzas and Scotch pies from the local chippie after a night on the Tennents. But deep-fried ice cream at Oriental fusion restaurant Opium on Hope Street was a first for me. It consisted of a large ball of vanilla ice cream enclosed in melt-in-the-mouth golden, crispy, batter, drizzled with chocolate sauce and honey; the epitome of sinful dining.

Salt and caramel, La Palma
The first time we knowingly tasted salted caramel was at Jardín de la Sal on the volcanic badlands at fiery Fuencaliente, the site of a brace of volcanic eruptions, the last being in 1971. The restaurant specialises in giving traditional dishes a contemporary reboot. The signature dessert dish (literary as the chef actually signed it using caramel) was as wildly surreal as the surrounding terrain – featuring an eruption of chocolate mousse; chocolate cake; almond ice cream; broken Oreos; dried banana; toasted almonds; passion fruit syrup; yoghurt, and goat’s cheese foam. The salt used to elevate the caramel to the culinary heavens was from the salt pans outside the restaurant. Caramel desserts without salt just don’t make the grade now.

Mountain of cream, Bavaria
There’s no split personality issues with desserts in Germany. This is the country which gave the world the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte – Black Forest gateau. The problem in Germany is trying to not eat too many delicious desserts. Sometimes a mission impossible. We don’t like to eat a hefty lunch mid-hike, but the desserts at Windbeutelbaron (a mountain lodge en route to the infamous Eagle’s Nest above Berchtesgaden) tempted us right off that path. Their speciality is a puff pastry, fresh cream concoction known as Der Windbeutel which is inspired by the various peaks of the Watzmann Mountains forming the panoramic view from the lodge’s terrace. Each cake is gigantic. We showed some restraint by sharing one, whereas most other customers devoured a mountain to themselves.

Spanish toast in Extremadura
If you like French toast, you’ll love torrijas, the improved Spanish version. The really good ones are as light as air, despite some looking the size of a brick. I could mention a few places where we’ve eaten outstanding examples, but the torrija cacereña at El 13 de San Anton in historic Cáceres gets pride of place as we enjoyed such a good evening there, plus the torrija was accompanied by English cream, coffee ice cream, and Licor de bellota.

Deconstructed classic in Drôme Provençale
According to some online sources, the USA is responsible for the gift that is lemon meringue pie. I’m afraid I’m not buying that story. Other sources attribute it to Victorian England; although nearly everybody accepts a form of lemon tart has been around since way before Columbus crossed the ocean blue. Meringue is a French word, so there’s definitely some French influence. It’s one of my favourite desserts, and when spotted on a menu every other option becomes a blur. The most memorable in recent years was a deconstructed version served in the leafy courtyard of L’entre2, a charmer of a restaurant in a typically Provençal stone house just outside the old centre of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux.

Pure pantomime, Tenerife
It takes some talent when a chef can please the taste-buds and put a smile on your face when you’re suffering from the flu. We’d booked Michelin star El Rincón de Juan Carlos in Los Gigantes months in advance and had spent all day in bed, sleeping, sweating, and shivering etc. after succumbing to some bug picked up thanks to the poor hygienic habits of too many of the guests at a resort hotel we’d stayed at. But there was no way we were going to miss a meal at our favourite restaurant in the Canary Islands. One of the things we enjoy about avant-garde dining is the sense of theatre and fun (see white egg previously). Chef Juan Carlos ended another triumph of a taster menu with a flight of pure whimsy in the shape of a bonsai-sized candyfloss tree. Magical.

Awesome apples, Austria
It’s unfair to pick out one restaurant when it comes to apple strudel as I don’t remember having a bad one anywhere in Germany, Austria, Croatia, or Slovenia; all countries where the dish crops up all the time on dessert menus. We’ve flaked their pastries in roadside cafes, alpine lodges, farmhouses, and bustling city centres. Purely to choose one to illustrate, I’ve opted for Gasthaus Zum Kranz in Freiburg. It was a cosy, convivial, traditional restaurant in the Altstadt whose apple strudel in custard rounded off a tasty introduction this environmentally friendly city’s gastronomy.

Hot and cold in Venice
We expected the gastronomic offerings in Venice to have suffered due to overtourism, just like we’d previously experienced in places like Dubrovnik. We ended up pleasantly surprised both by the quality of the food we ate and the fact that after dark there were nowhere near as many tourists filling the streets. On sultry summer nights good restaurants were far easier to get into than some other popular European cities. Our visit was topped off by a delight of a dessert at Impronta Cafe (not a cafe at all) in the arty Dorsoduro district – mascarpone cheese custard on a meringue waffle with lashings of hot liquorice and star anise sauce. The Italians simply do good food like nobody else.

Hard to beat puds, England
I’m biased, but nowhere in Europe does puds quite as good as Britain. And yet I struggled to come up with a standout one from England. Not England’s fault, it’s just that we don’t spend much time there and when we do it’s usually with family, so desserts don’t often figure. Then I remembered a December day a couple of years ago, sitting by the fire in Yo Olde Nags Head in Castleton with snowy scenes outside the window, good company at my side, a craft ale in my hand, and a bowl with sticky toffee pudding in caramel sauce on the table in front of me. These are the sort of ingredients that make hearty, British desserts difficult to top.

The man in the van asks a question in Portuguese. Bingo, he’s after directions. I’m okay at directions in a couple of languages. It seems to be one of the first things taught when it comes to learning languages. Before we moved to Spain we took Spanish lessons at the Cervantes Institute in Manchester. The first lesson involved directions, and it stuck. It’s amazing the number of times I’ve had to say “sigue todo recto” (continue straight ahead). Maybe I just used it a lot because I knew it.

We spend 30mins a day on Duolingo, learning Brazilian Portuguese (Duolingo doesn’t have Portuguese Portuguese). It’s not perfect, but it helps. We can hold basic conversations, up to a point, with Dona Catarina, our landlady. But she’s extremely patient and speaks very clearly. The problem is when anyone else other than Dona Catarina speaks to us in Portuguese.

The Portuguese, like the Spanish, are complimentary when you make an effort, telling us we can speak it well after we rattle of a few stock phrases when we know we’re appalling. Many can speak English and are happy to do so, especially after we’ve tried speaking Portuguese. Thankfully they are not like the Richard Head in the Norwich tower block who posted “We do not tolerate people speaking other languages than English in the flats.”
Imagine if people in other countries took that stance? I can just see how “we do not tolerate people speaking other languages than Spanish” would go down in the parts of Spain popular with immigrant Brits? We briefly worked with a woman who questioned what the ‘de la’ of Santa Cruz de la Palma meant, and she’d lived on Tenerife for 30 years. Once in a supermarket in Los Gigantes I had to explain to the English shop assistant what a bocadillo was.

We’re at the ‘learning key phrases’ stage; thinking beforehand how we say something in particular circumstances. It works well… until people reply. The funny thing is ‘prepping in the head’ before any conversation becomes automatic. When we’re in Britain I can find myself thinking ‘how am I going to say this?’ whilst waiting to be served in a shop, or queueing for train tickets etc. before another voice in my head says “it’s English ya dunderheid, you don’t have to think how to say it.”

We’re at the post box because we’re waiting for a haggis we ordered online to turn up. It’s the morning of Burns Night and our last chance of having a chieftain o the puddin’ race to celebrate. It was ordered three weeks previously and is due to be delivered by ordinary post. Couriers are a no-no. We have only had problems with courier services since we’ve been in Portugal; they are shocking.

They don’t appear aware many citizens have post boxes such as ours, it always comes as a surprise when we explain what it is. They can’t deliver to them because a signature is required, so they ask about neighbours. Trying to explain our neighbours have a post box for the same reason as we do seems to also come as a shock.

In theory there are ways around it. Some have pick up points. But the last time we tried, we found a delivery notice in our post box telling us our parcel was at the nearest pick up point. It wasn’t.
There are other courier services which advise to get in touch to make alternative arrangements and then don’t answer emails, website contact forms, or telephone calls. On Tenerife we could ‘talk delivery drivers in’ over the last few hundred meters. Here they won’t phone.

So we stick to Post Office deliveries. If something is too big for the box the postman leaves it at the local mini-market.

The missing haggis is the first time they’ve let us down.

The man in the van asks for help with directions. He shows me a sheet with the address he’s looking for. It’s the street we’re on, but I immediately recognise the address as being a post box. In fact it’s one we’re standing in front of.

I point this out to the delivery driver. How did he not know it was a post box? I ask what he’s delivering, just in case he has a wee haggis hidden in his van. It’s a heating system. He ain’t going to deliver that to a post box.

We leave him to it, another delivery not delivered by courier service, and wander off haggis-less.

The haggis turns up a week later, the part of the delivery notice with our name on it half eaten. I take it into the mini-market and hand it over. The woman knows us by now and doesn’t even read it. Instead she laughs and says “caracois” (snails) as she reaches for a haggis-sized box.

It’s simple, old fashioned, postal deliveries on a local level and, apart from this occasion, far more efficient than any courier service. At least we did get the haggis in the end.

Without leaving the house, apart from essential grocery shopping, we’ve managed to find ourselves the victims of fake news in a national paper in the UK.

A week ago we were strolling around Albufeira (a sprawling sea lagoon not far from us rather than the tourist resort in Portugal’s Algarve) under cloudless skies. Then the weather changed. The cloud rolled in and brought some much needed rain; some of Portugal’s reservoirs are still worryingly thirsty. Although it wasn’t what Brits would class as being bad weather, we decided we’d wait until another blue sky day came rolling along before heading out on a long walk or an exploration of a drive. But it didn’t happen. By the end of the week, we had pea-soupers which lasted all morning.

An upside to cloudy skies has been warmer weather at night. Over the course of the week the nocturnal temps have risen from 3 degrees to a positively balmy 14. The temperature inside the house more or less mirrors the outside in the rooms where there’s no heating. As a result, the farm’s wood pile has been taking a beating this month. Gardener Fernando has been hard pushed to keep it stocked, each day his chainsaw has been growling away (thankfully a decent distance from us) in a bid to keep us supplied with fuel. There could be a fuel crisis on the horizon though as DC has just told us that Fernando has found a new job. I’m not particularly bothered about having to brush up on my wood-chopping skills as A) I sorted out my own wood supply for years on Tenerife and B) Fernando regularly finds new jobs but his lackadaisical approach to keeping to set hours usually means he’s back working at the farm after a week or so.

Following the fiasco with the burning plug socket last week, we’ve shifted our work space to the warmer confines of the living room whilst winter lasts. Its wood-burning stove keeps the room cosy but, being an antiquated affair, it’s long past being effective. It devours logs for a couple of hours before it’s ready to spread the love (i.e. heat) around. DC has promised us a new stove which a neighbour, Senhor Zé, is going to install. Senhor Zé must be in his 70s. He’s deaf so shouts all the time which makes him always sound angry even though he’s not. He’s also got a sizeable allotment along the road which produces mutant-sized fruit and vegetables. One time he gave us a courgette so big that after 5 consecutive days of using it as creatively as possible, we still had to dump half of it.

The stove was supposed to be installed this week but has been postponed after DC and Senhor Zé realised the chimney from the new stove came straight out of its top, whereas it comes out the back of our current one. Things are rarely straightforward here.
“Sempre problemas,” is one of DC’s favourite phrases, along with “é natureza” uttered philosophically when something bad happens to one of the animals.

Anyway, I digress. We’ve spent the week typing away in our living room office only pausing to eat, break up cat fights, or to reunite a distraught lamb with its mother (who is usually only a short distance away – sheep aren’t bright creatures).
Meanwhile, in another world, there’s a Labour leadership election taking place in Blighty. We’re both overseas members of the party and are so privy to straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth information as well as the views of other members on associated facebook groups. Part of the debate around choosing a new leader has involved much naval-gazing regarding why the old one was battered in the voting booths.

This week the Telegraph printed a news article with the headline “Anti-Semitism election row was stoked by Israel, Labour report says” which went on to say that “Labour’s overseas members have been accused of “conspiracy mongering”.

As those “conspiracy mongering” overseas members include us, as well as another 3,5000 members, the article came as a bit of a shock, especially as the Labour ‘report’ which prompted it, about Labour’s performance at the 2019 GE, wasn’t an official report at all. It was just the musings of an individual bloke who shared his thoughts on the group’s facebook page. I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time as it was no different from any John or Jane Doe sharing their views on social media; definitely not worthy of space in a UK broadsheet.

It might not be fake news exactly, as the document did exist, but it certainly wasn’t presented in a wholly accurate manner. At best it was seriously misleading news. And mislead it did. Many comments attached to the article on the Telegraph’s facebook page were outraged. One made me laugh out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of its content.

“It seems morbidly sinister…a UK party being influenced from overseas. How many ” members ” in this sense are trolls in Russia, Venezuela, Gaza , or any other leftist cesspits worldwide? An independent enquiry needed , to discover what this lot are all about.”

I read it to Andy just as there was a screech and a hiss outside our window.

“What this lot are all about?” I laughed as I rushed to the rescue of a cat being badly bullied by Darth Lilie (the farm’s baddie cat). I reckon the person who posed the question might be seriously disappointed by how mundane the answer is.