Country Life

Saw this gypsy with a couple of his horses today in our local market town ...

 

LOL ...that reminds me.... a few years ago we toured part of the interior of Portugal in our motor home ..we stayed at one stage in Evora opposite a 'Gypsy camp'. Watching their daily routine was fascinating, we did this surreptitiously, from a distance,not wanting to offend them. They lived in tepee type tents, cooking on the open fires, the most fascinating aspect was last thing at night, they closed up the tepee and the smoke filtered out of the hole at the top ....it was many nights before I completely relaxed with this, fearing for their safety ...but obviously they were used to this.... most interesting, we felt quite coddled !!!!! M-L

 

great to see LoL looks a lovely place more pics of your area please, love to see were others live and especially would love to see more of portugal as i have never been there, have friends that have apartments out there near faro airport

 

This fellow is a horse trader but no less a gypsy. The horses in tow are beautiful, always .. glossy, no bad marks, some Palominos (oooh) and blondes. Lovely. We've seen groups of up to twenty horses for sale, babes trotting alongside ... yes!

I know exactly what you're talking about M-L ... see it all the time here and I love it. They live the life they choose, like the old Romany gypsies.

 

I was once (quite recently) comming home from Pickering and found myself in a traffic jam - absolutely unheard of up here, anyway when I got to the front of the que I found the hold up caused by a local farmer driving his tractor with one hand and leading his horse with the other through the open window of his tractor!

I mean this is England!!!

 

M-L, we know Evora well, but it's not horse country like here, but a beautiful part of Portugal, about 2-3 hours from us.

Wonderful, Waco!!! You, being a horse person, you would love it here. This is always a donkey in front and the horses behind. Sometimes you'll see two / three front people (don't know what they call them) then all the beaut horses trotting alongside, always well kept where you go "ooooh, lovely"

 

My sister lived for a long time in Galicia (Spain) my nieces and nephews are still out there, I do know where you are comming from, however I am far too much of an English rose to be uprooted!

 

It was a lovely day today so decided to go up in the Serra de Monchique. We live in the foothills between the mountains and the sea.

We went in search of pinecones for the fire but found very little on the ground yet, probably in the new year it will be better. We stopped and hiked up to the Ruins of Alferce Castle and stopped on the way back down and ate some fruit from the Arbutus unedo (Strawberry Tree) which had blackberry bushes growing under it. I managed to get the root of a small Arbutus, about a foot tall and have potted it up already. We had one in the UK and it fruited for us every year, but was not as sweet as these today.

It's very remote in the Serras and there are such memorable sights to see ... donkey's ploughing fields, old folk harvesting by hand ... a very hard life as they have no electricity up there and rely on rainwater. Naturally, I didn't have the camera with me!

This will give you an idea of the area we were in ... although we approached from the East (Sao Marcus da Serra rather than from Monchique on the left.

http://www.visitalgarve.pt/visitalgarve/vEN/DescubraARegiao/Roteiros/PelaSerraDoMonchique/

[ 18. December 2006, 06:46 PM: Message edited by: Lady of Leisure ]

 

you paint a lovely picture LOL,may you continue to do so

 

Having had another jaunt into the Serras today in search of a working watermill for sale, I took a few photos to share with you, but I'll have to do it in two sessions as I've lots of photos.

First we'll go through the the country lifestyle ...

Donkey with his mate ...



... horse with his mate ...





... way off in the distance a farmer ploughing his field ...



... and as he gets closer you can see how he and his two helpers work ...





[ 20. December 2006, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Lady of Leisure ]

 

Then we went down a dirt track to enter this area, called Azinhal, which is about 20 minutes from us ....



... and crossed this river, which would be rather worrying in our rainy season ...



... with this beautiful weir to the side which I believe is below the watermill for sale ...



... to encounter this lovely area ...





... and stopped by the weir as we departed to take this lovely photo ...

 

Fantastic photos LOL - I love to see this when I travel abroad - I once had a wonderful conversation with an old lady in Corfu about her beautiful donkey - dont think either of us knew what the other was on about, but it didnt matter Thanks for sharing pics

 

LOL just what we need over here at the moment,it warmed me just looking at them ,thanks

 

Thank you, marge. Am well aware of those conversations as my neighbour came over this afternoon with a Christmas present beautifully wrapped and told me it was several bottles of vinho verde because she didn't think we'd want port???

They are going to the youngest daughters near Lisbon from Saturday to Monday so we'll invite them here for snacks and drinks between Christmas and New Year ... always interesting as neither of them speak any English! :eek: :eek: :eek:

macleaf ... you can come and enjoy it anytime you like, my love, and warm the cockles of your heart ..

Beautiful, isn't it?

 

Our firewood was delivered this evening, three tonnes of lovely cork oak from the Alentejo region.

This is what we had left ...



:eek: not much, but this is what was delivered (sorry, light was bad as t'other half had a spotlight on and somehow it didn't work with my flash) ...



... and t'other half stacked some in our Sandbar ...





We'll certainly be warm for Christmas, New Year and the coming months (we don't have central heating).