(William Shakespeare)
For once, we will start with a quotation, partly because it's going to be a very hard act indeed to follow two such erudite blogs as are Mike's and Lindsey's pieces on days 5 and 6 of the Littlewood Algarve Way marathon, but also to signal immediately our intention of being brief (no videos, for example) in this blog.
Dad's Army has indeed diminished since its first formation, as Rod's report indicates; the Free French had not responded to the call to arms. Even so, on April Fools Day, 5 stalwart DAs ventured out once more from Silves, this time to meet and confront the incoming Eastern Hordes. The DAs did not exactly rush it; they tarried to look at flowers; they paused to listen to cuckoos; they relished the scents of spring to the full; and when, by a miraculous mix of dead reckoning and guesswork on the Leader's part, they did indeed come face to face with the incomers , they were relaxed and found the said EAs to be relatively friendly, much fewer in numbers as a horde than had been expccted, and one that even permitted the DAs to join in their especial masochistic pleasure, i.e. walking at great speed across rough ground. The DAs gentle amble was over.
Our Starters
The Leader ( again);: Rod
Innocents Abroad: Val, Hazel, Hedley, John H
Good dog: Misty.
Our track(as always, click to enlarge)
Statistics: total distance - 17.56 km.
The rest, as Hamlet said, is silence.Well, not quite silence. We walked gently 7.96 km to the Rendezvous point and it is quite possible that, in doing so, we may just conceivably have paused a wee bit more than we walked. But Hedley (pulling rank as he is fully entitled to do as one of AWW's most senior walkers) said to your scribe. " Do NOT , on your life, release those time figures!" So we don't. Be that as it may, Field Marshall Litlewood subsequently led us home from the Rendezvous Point at a consideable rate of knots and in doing so put another 9.60 km under our belts.
To the point, however, brevity being the soul of wit (Hamlet 2.2 .90) , and since particularily as loquacity is contrary to our stated purpose, we'll go straight way and without any more ado into the Leader's report:
"Fools Paradise
"An increasingly modest bunch of Dad’s platoon (more like a section) gathered at Silves cemetery to undertake (!?) a walk designed to coincide with the AW walkers at some point.
So off we set in a northerly direction up a verdant valley north of Silves. There was no particular point in hurrying as the main group were walking further than we were and we wanted to coincide somewhere around lunchtime.
Our track took a winding route, occasionally crossing the AW and the VA routes but generally avoiding the AW one so that we wouldn’t be returning exactly the same way, in the general direction of the Barragem de Arade.
Communication with the AW walkers was somewhat intermittent so, although we knew more or less where they were going to be, we didn’t know when. So gentle was progress that even the suggestion that we should make the traditional but now often-neglected diversion to a trig point (Picões - 203 m.) was met with almost enthusiasm.
We did do a trig point
Picões - 203 m.
"A lengthy stop there to admire the view and to make contact ( semaphore, heliograph, smoke signal, mobile-phone being the devices at our disposal) ensured that we finally made contact with the AW lot and that indeed that we were likely to meet them within an hour. So we then descended back to the valley and opted for our own lunch spot on a peaceful grassy sward beside a well.
A pause for luncheon
"So peaceful that by the time we had finished we had achieved the dubious distinction of having more stopping time than moving time since setting out! Shortly after that, we came across the AW group having their lunch only a few hundred metres further on. For commentary on the return journey, readers, if they are still awake , should refer to the main AW journal!. "
Rendezvous
And it truly was a long, winding trail home
After which, Andrew told his tale. How many clicks had he had to do ?
Final thoughts."The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong..."
(Damon Runyon, who however finished his remark - "...but that's the way to bet." )
"Anyone with vision comes to the decision -
"Don't make up your mind."
(Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill)
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