Amendoeira da Serra

It happens infrequently, but just as I stumbled ankle deep into a newly formed puddle, after a 40 minute downpour from 10am as I felt the wind change and the temperature drop and put my deteriorating Páramo Halkon to cover me a little from the onslaught along the tarmaced road I'd followed from the turn off along the main Mértola/Beja route(single lane and plenty of articulated lorries), I deleted all of this morning. Which was just the usual. The café supplied me with two empanada and a good café grande. I am using the cost as a cape so it dries and I dry. I've somewhere ahead to stay this evening. And the proprietor of the café promised me nice food in 9 kilometres.

Suddenly I am out of The Algarve and into the plains of Alentejo where oak trees dominate and sheep bleet in the pastures all around me. There are still a few Rock Roses but much fewer. Before that village Corto Gafo de Cima on my right I saw the plains pop into existence.

Slowly, very slowly, I am beginning to understand some of what I am being asked or told. I've definitely got from one to ten and 80(oi-ten-ta) as I was forced to repeat in the village after Castro Marim after I'd called into the sports club to use the toilet and have a pequeno café.

The coat is dry, but I think the rains about to reappear? Wearing it as a cape appears to dry it quicker? Plenty of sunny intervals. Not so far to go to this church which is away from the direct route towards today's promise of a bed and food: Mosteiro. Then it's a little further through more puddles where I need to watch my size 10.5 steps? Amendoeira da Serra.

A gale is blowing from the west and I have it behind me pushing me on, but also drying me nicely as the clouds race across the sky and the blue breaks continue amongst the clean whites and moody greys. Left foot a little sore this day. Back in the monotony of Alentejo Baixa.

Wearily the path goes up and down through the dale and I am slipping off the feelings of bliss into a condition of pain and misery, but the sudden appearance of telegraph poles tells me that over the brow of any one of these hills a church awaits and a break ensued - or I hitch the remaining 3/4 kilometres to get back into bliss?

A hare flees from one tussock on the left, where the sheep recommence bleeting, to the right where the poles suggesting civilization is ahead?

Back on the road between Mértola and Beja one of the two guys who ran the hostel back in Alcoutim passed me in his Suzuki Jeep, he reversed and offered me a lift to Beja which I graciously refused...

To my left sits a triangulation tower overlooking the valley below and with jolts of pain dogs begin to bark as I reach the end of part two.

Another bath! This in the twin room of the vast cultural centre/albergue. Finally an albergue. And it was earned through the relentlessness of the two stages. And now I am horizontal once more. I am unlikely to move before 5. Maria who has the key closes at 6. But I just ate a massive dish of seasonal mushrooms and beans! Wonderful. And the best cheese: a cow/sheep cheese hmm. Special. 26 kilometres through wild weather and foot pain... But it's cured - I am about the siesta.

No Multibanco. No way to pay. António, the guy who you go to when you are in trouble: the vet, doctor, mechanic, builder, farmer and taxi driver let me transfer to his IBAN and now I paid Maria. €25 for the albergue. A little expensive, but I did have a bath! Then 4 * 20cl of awful Sagres Preta and António is a good person to have as you're preambulating through Baixa Alentejo on a wild February day. His loyal companion is called 'rivet' (Rebite) as he's glued to daddy - even getting the same shower which I can't imagine Lola ever doing willingly? I definitely think, although today was pretty dull, and eventually torture, it was worth bumping into António as he was coming out of the Centro Recreativo e Cultural de Mosteiro as fate would have it. He used to host pilgrims, but can't do so anymore. Shame really as he's such a good soul. Maria agreed to me having breakfast at 7am as long as I bang on her door and António is going to deposit me on the other bank of the stream, which is flooded due to the rains, after 8am then it's another long day to Beja.