AWW 10.01.2007 Morgado de Reguengos

Most of the cast at the Start/End Point of Elaine's Morgado Marathon

The Chief Snapper was still rather flustered by her driver having careered past the meeting point, and having had to turn back to make the rendezvous only 5 minutes before the scheduled time, so failed to take any early/group pix of the start of the walk. In his defence, the description of the RV (about 5km down the Casais road opposite the 'Nicola' café) was inadequate for one so accustomed to the precision of Latitude and Longitude in thousandths of a decimal minute, added to the fact that a Superbock van was obscuring the 'Nicola' sign, the Café's rightful name was 'A Taberna', and a far more user friendly description would have been,"the carpark at the turning to the Strip Club opposite the garage workshop on the Alcalar Road.
All the above is merely to explain why there is a picture of the end of the walk at the start of this Blog. In addition, there were no Trig Points mounted, so T.O.T.P.P. did not materialise. Missing from the photo are: Myriam (Chief Snapper), Jim (changing his trousers - again) and Mike (chatting up the barmaid)

Anyway, the walk started off in perfect conditions, the only excitement at the start being when Hilke lost the 'trekking basket' (if you don't believe that is the name for it then look here) for her shiny new 'Berg' walking pole, and the eagle-eyed Andrew spotted it about 20 metres back down the path.

The track we took (including deviations)is below:(click to enlarge)

From WW Blog Pix

Here in her own words is Elaine's report:

Leader: Elaine (assisted by Caroline and hindered by Stan)
Present: John; Jim; Hilke; Antje;Terry A.; Stan; Caroline; Ian S.; David; Janet; Lindsey; Andrew; Ian W.; Mike; Myriam; Paul;
Oscar; Tiggy


We were 17 plus 2 dogs for the WW around Morgado do Reguengos -

The walk was 21kms and the weather was warm and partly cloudy.

We walked down to the river which borders the Golf Club and crossed it via stepping stones. No rain for about a month so river now low. We then made a large arc around the golf course crossing the barragem and following the edge of the lake then up above the vineyards and down into the eucalyptus forest. We skirted the edge of a reservoir (lunch spot when the walk is done the other way) and followed a valley out to the road to the Golf Course.

After crossing a small water meadow, we picked up an old hunters path to the top of Cabeça Boa and lunched in the courtyard of the ruined villa. We picked our way down the hill and then walked up the side of a very large field which borders the golf course. Our walk then takes us on the road right down through Monte Judeu past the very large villas. Through the large orange grove we arrived at the bridge over the motorway and the river was again passable by stepping stones.

The final part of the walk took us along country tracks between old walled orange groves, just starting to give off perfume from some early blossom. We climbed to the top of the hill ahead to get the last spectacular view of the golf course before crossing an old olive grove to join the little walled path back to Cafe Nicola for a beer in the pm sunshine.

All 17 arrived back with one soaking and one small slip on the hill and a little retracing of steps due recent to bulldozing of paths!