Walking the banana : Balurcos – Furnazinhas

I once saw a TV program in which an psychologist got a teenager who was a little too concerned about what others thought of her, to tie a banana to a piece of string and walk it down her local high street.
I have to say I felt a little like that as I walked through some of the villages. I decided to tame down my act a bit and gently push the ball left to right in front of me, in my head, I called this walking the banana.
This days trek was shorter, but considerably hillier, which has its ups and downs. Nothing flushes the mind like a panting up a worthy hill. The good news is that the signposting has started to appear, two small reassuring lines in red and white. Even marking when you should turn left or right (useful).
It seems spring hits the Algarve a little bit early, plenty of plants flowering, lambs in the fields, birdsong, the works.
It’s all very much the same as Ireland, until you look a bit closer, the occasional host of cacti where you would expect to see daffodils, harder wooded trees, darker greens and fewer of them. I sat down for a sandwich about half way through, by a quiet river. I finished it off with half a bar of chocolate, it’s great, that feeling of out there, when the half bar of chocolate is the only bit of chocolate in the world, and you stow it away in your bag thinking it might be VERY useful in an emergency.
I was very glad to arrive at Furnazinhas by early evening and found John, a retired technician from the ministry of agriculture, who ran the guest house in the town, very glad to see me. He also seemed to be the only man in the northern Algarve who didn’t own a dog, which endeared him to me greatly. He’s as decent a sort as you would meet; inside to greet me, there was fruit, cakes, a flask of tea, water and a couple of beers in the fridge. When I asked about a restaurant, he drove me about 5 miles to one, waited chatting with his mates while I ate, then drove me home.
The hospitality was raised a notch when I woke for breakfast the next morning, I found a fine spread prepared for me by Olivia, a beautiful barrel of a woman in her sixties who lived up the road, who sang every word she spoke with the pride of a cockerel. She then managed to convince me in Portuguese (I didn’t understand her at first, so she spoke louder, and that got the message through) that I should take a sandwich with me.
There was much shaking of hands, cheek kissing and waving on the street as I left. It seemed half the village was out at their doors to see me off in the morning, all bemused by my hurling. Who would have thought it, everyone wanted to see my banana.