Fruits of the forest

 We have been doing lots of walking, mainly to the south of the port, because when we move to our apartment it will be easier to access the south side so we will leave exploration of that side until after Christmas. One of our favourite walks takes us past a forest where trees are being bled for resin to use in the paint making industry.

It is a beautiful walk which takes us up on to the ridge and then down into the next valley,

At one point we noticed some trees, known locally as strawberry trees, which were full of fruit. Having heard that they were good for jam making (something I have been doing a lot of lately due to the abundance of cheap fruit) I decided to pick some and try my hand at a small batch.

I made a small jar for us and one for Dody but, whilst it was all eaten the unanimous verdict was that it was too seedy. Not one to try again. I will stick with plum and cinamon or pineapple and ginger for now.

A few weeks ago we decided to walk to the east of Nazare towards the high point known as Sao Bras. Our route took us through the area near the cemetery at the top of the ridge. What an attractive area it is: an older part of town with a lovely square and old style buildings and a great view of the lower part of town..

We walked down the hill and crossed the motorway and set off to climb up to the fire lookout on the top of the hill.

The last part of the ascent was via some old stone steps with a single handrail and a clear view of the steep drop. Heights are not my thing when you can see the drop. I sat down twice and willed myself to continue and Scruffbag was very supportive but about 30 feet from the top I could go no further. On the way down we passed two young men carrying heavy batteries up to the lookout. They told us the batteries weighed 18 kilos. Despite our failure to reach the summit, however, it was a great walk and the views were superb and an added bonus was that we found an underpass beneath the motorway which would give us much easier access to this vast area of woodland.

The next time we walked this way we spotted a woman with a basket collecting something which we thought might be fungi .We had seen people with baskets in these woods on our last walk and I was curious so I went over to talk with her and she was happy to chat and to show me her hoard as well as showing me pictures on her phone of other fungi that she was looking for. I said that we loved mushrooms and were very disappointed that in Nazare, unlike Leixoes, we could only get bland , white or chestnut ones. She then happily gave me the phone number of her friend who collected mushrooms for the Lisbon market. She said he lived in Nazare and had been out collecting that day and she was sure he would sell us some.

When we got back to the boat I asked Dody if she would phone him as my Portuguese is very limited and, although she had said he spoke some English I thought it might be a challenging subject linguistically. As luck would have it, he said he would be driving past the port in 5 minutes time so Dody and I met up with him and he sold each of  us a boxed selection of fungi for 10 euros and told us we should wash them then dip in boiled water for 2 minutes and then we could keep them for up to 5 days. I recognised the chanterelles but the rest were all new to me.

They were delicious. Thank you Julia.