Festa & Chestnuts in the Alentejo

This week has flown by and it has all been about the Village Festa. The build up all week with bunting and a marquee and all that goes with a village ‘do’ finally led to 3 days of music, food, games, village activities and of course, drinking and socialising. We are exhausted!
 
After two nights drinking the local red wine, we were unable to get ourselves out of bed on Sunday morning to head to a car-boot market as promised, with our neighbours. They – much to our shame – then turned up bright and breezy on Sunday evening tooting the horn asking if we were going to join the party for the last evening, which, with very little persuasion, of course we duly did.
 
It was a great event and lovely to be part of it. We were introduced to all the locals and are feeling inspired to keep going with our Portuguese because there is nothing worse than being at the village do and not being able to converse easily. However, there are also a small handful of English-speaking people here and you simply can’t escape the pull of a few drinks and laughs in the comfort of your own language. We were glad for it and a lot of fun was had, even though on each evening we were back home and tucked up in bed before the real party even started (the music doesn’t even begin until 10/11pm!).
 
One thing I did that was part of the weekend’s activities was a guided walk in the surrounding mountains. It was sold to me by my neighbour as: ‘a 1½ hour leisurely stroll to a little chapel built into a rock face’. Given that I had to get up early for the walk after an evening of the aforementioned red wine, this sounded quite lovely… I did start to worry however when I arrived at the meeting point to see 20+ Portuguese clad in serious walking gear with poles, but hey, I am partial to a good walk. 2½ hours later beneath pure blue skies and an unrelenting golden sun heating up the dusty hill tracks, I was thinking ‘what am I doing here!?’ Rather embarrassingly a very portly and much-older-than-me fellow who puffed constantly on a cigar, raced past me several times! After 3 hours, which included a rather good – and much-needed – halfway refreshment of roll, lemonade and fruit (or beer, of course) being driven up to us, we made it back to the village for a well-deserved coffee at a friend’s house. It was a lot of fun, but let me tell you – Portuguese walking groups are something else…
 
Other happenings this week have been Scott getting his tools out to whittle a few things from the branches of some of the trees I have pruned. He has tried olive, cherry, pear, pine and eucalyptus and even Isabella has got in on the fun, whittling her own knife, which she was particularly proud of. Olive seems to be the favourite right now. It’s also been horse-chestnut time, which is divine. On another neighbour’s land there is the most beautiful chestnut tree and as he told us to go and help ourselves, so we did. We have been feasting on them, often having them as part of our dinner as an alternative to potatoes or rice. Delicious! Free! Local!