23July1995

Portugal: Sunday 23rd July
My dear folks,

(Part 1; Part 2 to follow:) It's the hottest part of a roasting Alentejo afternoon. We are luxuriating, just for a day, in the Herdade D. Pedro, a magnificent old Quinta which has been converted into tourist accommodation by the owners, a Briton & his Portuguese wife. It lies in rolling, cork-oak studded Alentejan plains. Jones lies asleep on a double bed at the far end of our red-tiled bedroom. A panelled mahogany door gives on to a football field of a marble bathroom. I am in the adjoining sitting room. Over the heat-hazed fields, I can see the castle-town of Terena shimmering on a distant hill. In the courtyard below, the two big dogs are plonked in the shade offered by the cars. They don't raise their heads at the arrival of visitors. It's just too hot.

The reason we are here & not in our intended destination, the little cottage we love on the banks of the Guadiana River, is that I screwed up the dates, in spite of twice going back to the patient farmer's wife to change them. As we were about to set off today, I discovered first that we were booked in only from tomorrow & then that the cottage was not available tonight. So at the first cafe stop, we consulted Jones's magic Alentejo travel book which recommended an Herdade (Inn) in the vicinity. We found it 2 hours later, 3 kms from the main road at the end of a track. Our hosts are kind & attentive, happy to keep our drinks & barbecue supplies on their ice. It's my kind of place. Jones, I think, finds it a bit grand. Also, she fears she may be required to take breakfast in public, a fate even worse than sharing a bathroom. She longs for her secluded riverside cottage. Ah well, tomorrow we'll be there!

The Herdade, unlike the cottage, has electricity, which allows me to sit down at my leisure at my laptop to reflect on my holiday. I enjoy my holidays so much. This one started nine days ago with the usual TAP flight from London to Faro where I found Barbara waiting for me at the airport together with Cathy & the two girls. They had flown in from Frankfurt the previous day & were installed in Seventh Heaven. It was hot & we had a black hire-car, a Fiat Punto, that was delightful but a mobile microwave. Jones was still painfully thin, Cathy as I remembered her, Anita the same only bigger, & Erica sensationally poised on the threshold of adolescence. Down the highway we went & up the hill to Cruz da Assumada where I longed to see how MCP had turned out.

It had turned out marvellously, as though designed to curl in the arms of Seventh Heaven. Since my last visit, a patio had been added to MCP & extended sideways, converting the former Pigpen (walled garden) in the process into a workshop. The project is, at last, all but completed. Hallelujah! It's very satisfying but like most projects, has run rather over budget - partly because Sterling has crashed & partly because we tended to have expensive inspirations, like adding a workshop, en route.

The torrid weather arrived with us, baking the Algarve in a fierce & relentless heat that had even the lizards scurrying for cover. We rise about 7 to get in a few hours' work before the sun roasts us. The first beer shandy appears mid morning, followed by lots of its mates. The liquid goes straight down my throat & into my shirt, making big damp stains. Afternoons are spent mainly indoors. The girls go for swims around 5 but it's closer to 7 & still painfully hot when I make my first visit to the pool. The sun doesn't lose its sting until 8, sinking over the western hills in a spectacular pink ball 90 mins later although it remains light until well after 10. We often swim again after supper, either in the pool or in the sea, & again at midnight before retiring. That's the nicest swim of all, poised between the stars & the lights.

At night, we dribble with perspiration & can scarcely bear the weight of a sheet. Anti-mozzie tablets emit fumes supposed to be inimical to mozzies but some mozzies don't know that. On the mozzies & the horse flies, we wage an unrelenting war. The latter are several times the size of their lesser cousins & haunt the pool where they like to nosh humans. Brendan's authentic Witbank swatters are our secret weapon & we never go without them. There, Cathy, Erica, Anita & I stalk the little bastards. The first whack, even with a Witbank whacker, generally merely stuns them but sufficiently to feed them to the ants that police the pool. The ants seize their victim & drag it, kicking & screaming, off to their nest - dramas which have us peering down in morbid fascination!

Andries, our (summer) resident retired-diplomat, wages a similar war on the front patio of his apartment where he likes to sun himself for most of the day. He refers to the ants as Mr Cavaco's men, a description I love. Mr Cavaco is a little gent who owns large bits of Loule, including the funeral parlour whose black-clad denizens inspired Andries's description. As always, we get along with the spiders & love the little lizards that so frustrate Noite, the cat. Noite is generally to be found in a shady part of the garden or lying in her basket on a chair in the two's-a-crowd duck-your-head sitting room of MCP.

Because the interior of MCP is so small, Jones makes a point of keeping it exceptionally tidy & leaning on her husband to do the same. The tiny bathroom is tiled with the white marble we bought on our last trip to the Alentejo. There's a pixie basin & a loo; the shower works well although Jones, who hates being cold, complains that she is haunted by fears that the gas-bottle feeding the heater will run out. Above the bathroom is the (former) sleeping pad, just big enough for a double mattress. After sleeping there for some weeks, Jones decided, wisely in my view, to move into the larger room when it was completed (& turn the pad into a sitting room). I insisted only on getting a bed to go under the mattress.

From the bedroom, one descends down steep stone stairs into the kitchen. The old bread-oven has been turned into a cave-like pantry. There's a small fridge & a hob; Jones has declined either of the establishment microwaves. Above the bread-oven, there's a nook with a clothes rail. And that's about it. But it's lovely, with wooden beams, a cane ceiling & stone facing. Outside, the patio boasts a king-sized barbecue, set into a chimney with a traditional Algarvean top.

I got a call one day from a Portuguese neighbour who had some problem with his trees. I invited him up for a chat, the least I could do, as I'd quietly lopped off a few branches from trees which were dropping leaves all over my pool and roofs. Portuguese law on these matters is complex. Up he came for a pleasant chat & the problem, a matter of some branches blocking a passage, was quickly resolved. But the upshot was that our conversation turned to two elderly implements from the ruin of his cottage (right behind the Quinta), a plough & a wooden barrow for carrying stones. Both now decorate the Quinta garden, though I fear I shall have to nail them down if they're to stay there.

Jones & I have got into the habit of driving down to Loule's central square after supper for coffee & macieiras. Refreshments are available from a stall until the early hours. The kids of the town play tag, sprinting, shrieking, dipping plastic bags in the fountain & hurling the contents at each other. Sharp-eyed parents sit & chat on the benches. Motorcyclists gather on the pavements to admire each others' machines, occasionally screaming off in deafening demonstrations of their potential. I don't know how sleepers manage. The local police shrug it off, taking the sensible view - I guess - that there are worse ways for the populace to expend energy on hot nights. The row continues well past midnight when we retreat up the hill to the peace of the Quinta. (End of Part 1)