3March1996

My dear folks,

Faro airport! It must seem a bit like Frankfurt to Rolf or Calgary to Kevin, a pausing point at which one changes modes of transport. Jones is not with me. I have left her behind at the Quinta on the loveliest of spring afternoons beneath the bluest of blue skies. As usual, I've seated myself in the mezanine floor cafe-bar with a stiff expresso coffee (here called a bica) on the one hand & a stiff maciera & coke on the other. There was an ill-tempered British woman ahead of me at the cashier, treating her husband like a servant. He must have been her husband because nobody else would have taken it. I marked her down as a Quinta de Lago type - from the expensive development on the coast.

My ten days are up. They flew. They always do. If I hadn't sat down to write to most evenings, I hardly have known where they went. Still, it was a creative little break & one always returns with a sense of satisfaction from such excursions. This morning dawned blue & cold. It took us a couple of hours to finish the fiddly bits of holidays that always wait till the last minute. Then we went for a walk into the hills. Jones wanted to show me some rock outcrops that she had previously visited & which made a big impression on her. We slipped out through the side gate & negotiated the ancient path that runs between crumbling rock walls separating the fields until we hit the track that winds a couple of miles down to the Lisbon road.

The outcrop of rocks is clearly visible from the track. Several huge guys tower in the air well above the surrounding scrub & tree tops. The area is absolutely littered with the cartridges left behind by the pestiferous hunters who plague the hills in winter. A curse on their houses! They had at least beaten paths through the scrub which were easy to follow. The first two big rocks were came across were merely impressive, some 10 metres high, easy to scale & offering a magnificent view from their tops of the surrounding countryside. To have had such in one's garden would have been the crowing glory. Five mins away was another grouping in a rough circle, like some Portuguese Stonehenge. There was something eerie about them, the brooding presence we are led to believe inhabits Ayers Rock in Australia.

I clambered up the biggest with some care & began working my way along the side while Jones explored below. A few metres further on she came into view again, as I peered down, at the bottom a great vertical shaft that runs through the rock from top to bottom. It was as though a giant machine had drilled out a metre-wide borehole. It was clearly nature's work although in what circumstances I cannot imagine. Below it, some human hand had cleared a circle, piling up the rocks in a rim around it with the exception of a solitary rock that sat in the centre. That it had some mystical significance for someone was very likely. A local German leads parties to the rocks which he has studied & believes to be the heart of some ancient Atlantis civilisation. The skeletons of thousands of marine-creatures embedded in the rocks testify to the area's submarine history. So I suppose one could argue for a reverse Atlantis effect, the sunken city being heaved out again into the Algarvean hills. But I have my doubts.

Whatever the history of the area, it is an awesome experience to visit it. I was pleased that Jones had taken me there & we both resolved to go again, perhaps to picnic under a huge oak tree that borders the circle. At ground level, there's a sense of being a thousand miles from anywhere (forgetting the discarded shotgun cartridges). A few metres up, this fiction is exposed as the nearby houses & villages come into view. But this doesn't detract from the experience.

En route to London:
Luxury is to have 3 seats abreast to oneself & I am wallowing in the experience. I was among the last passengers to board & noticed that the back third of the plane was barely inhabited. So I hung back in the hope of claiming an empty row & have been rewarded for my troubles. Behind me & across the aisle, there's hardly a bum on a seat. In front, the masses are squeezed in shoulder to shoulder. One gives thanks for big mercies & small!.

More than this, for only the second time, I have seen the Quinta from the air as we were climbing after take-off. I wanted to tell everybody on the plane "there's my house" but I contained my pleasure. Although we were too far away for me to make out the detail, the place was unmistakeable, perched on its hilltop overlooking a sun-lit Loule. The town lay glowing at the bottom of the hill & looking for all the world like the new Jerusalem. It has, I must tell you, just invested in its second set of traffic lights - and not before time - to control a wicked junction on its southern approach. To the north, the Lisbon exit has been turned into quadruple lanes. These give on to a series of traffic circles & they are lined by the school, the indoor pool & the new health centre. Our once-little town is steadily bursting out its breeches & steadily expanding up the hill towards us as it does. In five to ten years I suspect Cruz da Assumada will become part of the outer suburbs & that will be the time to move on.

For the moment at least we are surrounded by fields on four sides & very grateful for it. Our Dutch tenant, Hannie, says she is thrilled with the place. It is comfortable, it has wonderful views, it gives straight into the hills in which she walks her dogs. She can hardly believe her luck. She feels as though 7th Heaven is her own special house, she says. Now that she's found it, she doesn't intend to lose it. She's fiftyish, mad about her dogs (which are very nice), married to a Dutch businessman who's frantically busy (does it sound familiar) & suffers from rheumatism which is aggravated by the Dutch winters. She's booked to stay to nearly the end of April this year & has asked to come back for the first 4 months of next year. I've got fingers crossed. She seems to be a good and consideraate tenant & there's much to be said for having someone there in the winter months.