St Martin's Fair

Vineyards, the oldest dog in the world, and roast chestnuts

This week in my Unique Property site members section I have listed two vineyards for sale in Portugal.

Why bother to buy a small house or crummy apartment in a tourist ghetto for an absurd amount of money when you could spread yourself out with a nice house, lots of ground, and a good business income for roughly the same price?

Become a member and see what you think. Here are a couple of pics of the properties:

They are in what I consider to be a rather good wine growing area. Most of the wines I buy for my everyday drinking come from the Lisbon, Setubal areas. Here is a selection from my cellar:

And here is a link to my property site: https://www.property.org.uk/unique/index.shtml

The Algarve has certainly plunged into autumn. Temperatures still reach into the twenties most days, but the nights are a lot cooler, and the leaves have started falling. We have also had some early rain. Usually I can swim until the last week in october, but not this year. The pool water was still warm enough, but winds and showers made swimming more of a chore than a pleasure.

Usually we dont get any rain until november, but this year we started having showers and the odd storm half way through october. Last year the stream at the bottom of my garden didn’t start running until this january, but last week there was a rush of brown water carrying run-off mud down to the estuary, although the flow was short-lived.

Maybe things have started to change, but at the moment southern Europe is suffering from severe drought conditions. Even with the heavy rains across the country in recent days, the Algarve remains in a severe drought and the situation in reservoirs and other water reserves in the region has not noticeably improved. Apparently if it does not rain abundantly in the coming months, the Algarve will only have enough piped water until April. It therefore seems irresponsible that there are no restrictions in place. The car washes are still functioning, and the golf courses are still being liberally watered.

Apparently the six reservoirs in the region only contain 24% of their capacity.

There was some odd news in the local press this week. Apparently the oldest dog ever recorded on the planet who was born on May 11th 1992 has died in the Algarve at the age of 31.

I dont usually pay much attention to saints days. And I’m not sure that Saint Martin has much going for him in terms of annual celebrations. But November brings us to St Martins day, when it is traditional to start roasting those chestnuts.

Julie and I used used to go across into Spain during the end of october. Around the hill town of Aracena there are several stands of chestnut trees, and if you pack some plastic bags, you can fill them with the nuts that have fallen onto the edge of the roads that cross the woodlands.

On or close to St Martin’s day (November 11) there is a fair at Ferragudo where they usually roast chestnuts which are distributed free in the village square.

Next door in Portimao the day is celebrated in an annual fair dating back to the seventeenth century. This lasts for about ten days, and I shall probably totter along to join in the fun. I’ll try and do some filming and put up a video on Youtube for those of you who cant make it.