A walk on the quiet side

EARLY MORNING, WHEN DAYLIGHT IS BREAKING AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU IS CALM AND PEACEFUL BEFORE THE START OF A NEW DAY, IS THE BEST TIME TO TAKE IN YOUR SURROUNDINGS AND BREATHE IN THE FRESH AIR

Words: BURFORD HURRY Images: JAN M TROMP

IN THE ALGARVE, every day should start with an early morning walk down a country road. After all, the simple wooden arrowed posts put up by the Loulé câmara are there to encourage us. Of course, my dog helps. I am up every morning pretty early and on the road by 05:45. It’s a dusty road at the moment as the Loulé câmara is putting in new sewerage pipes. The dog knows that a walk is imminent, even more so when I grab a handful of dog biscuits, and reaches a fever pitch of circles and barking when I slip on my reflective safety vest. Then out onto the road and a gulp of fresh morning air, and above me a sky full of stars and sometimes a moon. I don’t look up for too long as I have always been nervous and anxious about what those stars tell me... or worse, what they don’t. They tend to remind me of the fragility of life.

The road under foot is crunchy and irregular. My dog is far ahead of me, galloping or stopping to lift a leg or two. On my left the Cadoiço river flows in the summer heat silently between its banks. It’s quiet now but when it rains it roars and is red with soil and foam.

At the start of my walk I have a towering cement and earth wall on the right of me. Sadly, this year the grey-leafed and pink-flowered bind weed (Convolu-lus arvensis) that spills down casually from a tiny hole in the wall is not there. It’s been too dry and hot for her. However, in the field above her the 11 symmetrical carob trees ruthlessly pruned back a couple years ago are now green and growing and perfectly well behaved, showing there is still life despite the drought. Further along, there are buildings and

Old walls, still strong. The bee hotel tucked behind an information board a fig tree, which this year was laden with plump and delicious sweet and succulent fruit for me to pick and split open so I could eat their sticky sweet red flesh. Previously, the banks of the river on this side of the ‘Roman’ bridge were grassy and filled with tall and wildly delirious daisies and grasses, but a couple of years ago more serious indigenous trees and bushes were planted by Almargem and are already making a leafy statement.

There is a wooden board explaining the advantages of the river habitat with some of the names of the native trees that have been planted (Fraxinus angustifolia, Salixatro-cinerea, Nerium oleander, Crataegus monogyna, Arbutus unedo) but strangely no mention of the mastic stalwart Pistacia lentiscus or the Tamarisk, which are also looking very good. All worth considering for our own gardens. For some time now there has also been a very smart bee hotel next to the board; however, I haven’t noticed any residents as yet.

In the spring, it’s at the bridge that I catch a glimpse of the resident mallard duck with her excited offspring paddling along together upstream. Later, there is a gallinule with bright red beak and nervous black and white twitching under-carriage, looking nervously over her shoulder with her chicks. Once over the bridge I leave the calçadas behind and there is a smooth tar surface underfoot.

On my left are the rough stone walls of the quinta of the Fonte da Pipa. They stretch for a couple of hundred metres and I think of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall – there is something there that doesn’t love a wall, and the way walls both simplify and complicate our lives.

This wall is hand-built and irregular and is held together partly by earth and clay but with patches of cement at times. I wonder about the builders. How many years or even generations did it take for them to built it? What tools did the builders use or was it just their

Something different with calloused and often bleeding hands that lifted the stones into position and adjusted them?

At times I can see the profiles of the rocks and stones and at other times they are hidden by warm sweeps of polished terracotta plaster and I think of the walls of ancient Pompeian villas. Am I walking on the road used by the Romans a couple of millennia ago?

On the right side of the road there is a wall, too, but this is strictly utilitarian. Built with cement it is uniformly grey, neat and upright, and topped with a strong fence. Years back, I chatted to the owners as they were putting the fence in place and admired their strength and patience as the fence inched its way down the hill.

The wall now has a few graffiti obscenities, a phallus and a couple of signatures as if the painters are determined not be forgotten. Below the wall at one stage there is a large pond and very occasionally there are mallards on it, and only once I saw an iridescent blue kingfisher sitting on a branch overlooking the water.

Ironically, it’s on the tarmac that I become aware that I am in the country. On still mornings an occasional gossamer drifts across my face and if there is some moisture in the air I can smell the curry bush (Helichrysum italicum). There is fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) spilling untidily over the top of the wall into the road and occasionally brushing my face, reminding me of ouzo sipped ice-cold on a Skiathos waterfront.

There are a couple of very old almond trees, one in particular is really lovely but she is pink so her almonds are the poisonous variety. The blossoms of her neighbours are white and their almonds being edible, are collected and eaten, suitable sized stones balanced on the cement wall with a cluster of empty shells next to them testify to this fact. A few sprigs of wild olive cascade over the stone wall. Like a Japanese water colour, their neat symmetrical polished leaves hang in drops of bottle green on their thin ivory sprays.

In the crevice, where the tar meets the wall on both sides of the road, there is a deepening carpet of both carob and almond leaves, deep enough now for a spade to collect. I remember when I first arrived in the Algarve getting good compost for the pot plants on my small terrace from the side of the road. Carob leaves make the best compost.

At the bottom of the hill, following the instructions on the wooden direction pole, my walk swings to the right and there is a sweep of orange trees up to the road that leads to Faro and a neat scatter of white houses along it. Beyond that there are hillsides of distant early morning greens and grey. A solitary giant fennel (Ferula communis) has been left on the edge of the road by a considerate road worker and she towers over me. I nod respectfully as I pass.

Further on there are groves of carobs. The grassy edge of the road has wild orchids in March and further along just past Silva, who has hives and produces treacle-thick carob honey, there is a hillside of wild thyme perfumed when it is hot or wet and a lilac haze in summer when it is in full flower.

Then it is under high tension wires sometimes strung with swallows or martins, particularly when they are together to migrate and over the Cadoiço river and past ETAR. Last year there was a Mirabalis jalapa opposite the gate Mexican coloured with brilliant reds and yellows. Sadly, it is no longer there.

It is along this stretch of my morning walk that I take caper seeds to plant along the tops of the untidy stone wall on either side of me, one side a morning. Hoping like the graffiti painters that one day there will be a living memory of someone who planted them.

The sun is touching the tops of the town buildings when I am finally at my front door again, grateful for having been for a walk in an Algarvian morning.

Why grateful? My daily ritual prepares me for the day ahead. Shouldn’t we all be enriched by something like that?

OKAY, YOU HAVE A MEETING ON ZOOM THIS AFTERNOON, A NUMBER OF EMAILS TO GET OUT TO COLLEAGUES AT HEAD OFFICE A GOOD FEW THOUSAND MILES AWAY, CALLS TO MAKE REGARDING A NEW PROJECT... AND ALL THAT FROM A TABLE ON THE TERRACE BY THE POOL. WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU (APART FROM LUCKY)?

Words: CAROLYN KAIN