There are no Goths in Lisbon

At least none that I have seen. As always, I have a theory, but I'll save that for later. I'm several days behind on recording stuff, so I'll jump straight to this morning, and hope to go backwards later. I've claimed a mediterranean right to a siesta and have escaped further strenuous touristing about for the rest of the afternoon.

We survived our interesting but scarey accommodation in the oldest part of Lisbon and are now in a proper hotel in Évora with fire plans and extinguishers.

Anyway, back to this morning. This morning we went on a tour of several megalithic and a Roman site. If you've been to Stonehenge and been disappointed by the crouds and the site all fenced off, Almendres Cromlech is the place for you. It's just sitting there, beside the dirt track, and we were the only people there, wandering in and out amongst the stones, listening to the birds, taking pictures, trying to capture the place and imagine back 7000 years to when someone had the bright idea to make an architectural statement there. The stones aren't as big as stonehenge, I say that so you will not be disappointed, but it's a powerful site. There are not many places around that speak across so many years. Bit hard to work out what's being said, but being in a country where I do not have the language, I'm getting used to that.


When we stopped off to look at the Almendres Menhir, a large standing stone at some distance, but associated with the henge, we met a friendly tortoiseshell cat with a stumpy tail just like Bluey's.

 

For any readers not familiar with my family, Bluey is my brother Bill's very devoted stumpy tail heeler. I think I got a photo. Like the rest of the photos, it will be uploaded once we get home, maybe.

The countryside around here is green and damp now, with many olive trees and cork oaks. The trees are fairly well spaced with cattle grazing underneath. The cattle are mainly big beef cattle, Limousin coloured, ranging from a reddish buff to quite strong reddish brown. I did see a few that were patched with white, but they just looked like a colour variant of the others we had seen. The only dairy cattle seen were a few Fresian Holsteins at the agricultural college. We saw quite a lot of gum trees in our travels this morning. They seem to be being grown for firewood. They had all been coppiced