A rebel without a clue.

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 un...

At 8:30am Thursday I left to join The Way after calling back to the youth hostel to drop off my keys and pick up the picnic bag. It's not there! Oh I was meant to collect at 6pm the previous night? I was snoring around then (12 hours kip as the wind chopped through the valley). So I stopped for a yogurt and a short longo and to make a sandwich, pilfer some Madeleine and collect another piece of fruit but now my backpack is weighing me down once more... ... As I am followed by all the dogs a man hollers me: stop. He comes off his plot with six fresh tangerines and three fresh lemons. So I stopped at the exit to the village, Monte Vascão, schooed away another Black and sat eat the final navel orange which I have carried in the disintegrating 40l Lacuma since just on the edge of Tavira. Now I am weighing more on my back, but just about to repeat the frontier crossing into Alentejo further along the Vascão from back in January? Every river has to be crossed... And every snake held off ...