17 Jan 1989 - Troia again

Having taken the van into the VW garage to get the clutch fixed at last, we take ourselves to Troia again in the company of the Swedish couple. We have quite a pleasant walk along the beach seeing common sandpipers and turnstones, cuttlefish bones and jellyfish washed up on the sand, white broom and bermuda buttercup in flower and a thorny plant with fruit that none of us had seen before: bitter apple, a poisonous member of the gourd family.

Antti suggests we go on ahead as he wants to rest, we think his arthritis might be giving him problems. They never catch up with us and we find their tracks heading back to the ferry. (They tell us later that Antti had felt ill, so they turned for home - for the next few days he was very sick with fever and diarrhoea).

The tide is quite high and there is too much water in the inlet to find many birds there, so we walk along the beach round Troia towards the Atlantic. A long sandspit lies at the mouth the estuary with a deep channel on the Setubal side and a shallower one near Troia. Several hundred gulls roost there with a dozen sandwich terns. A few sanderling race back and forth along the water's edge.

There are a number of people on the beach in snorkelling gear. Each carries an inflated inner tube with a net and rope attached, and some have a small spear gun too. They go out, some in boats, about a hundred metres offshore, and begin diving. The inner tubes act as marker buoys and also keep the keep‑nets afloat. We later learn that they are diving for 'flatfish' and that this is the only legal way to hunt them.

The camper is not ready when we call back at the garage, so we take the tent and sleeping bags to the campsite, and have to explain to curious fellow campers that our vehicle is sick ‑ I'm sure some of them think we have crashed it.

Not having our own cooking facilities avail­able, we take the opportunity to eat out. We want a Portuguese style meal ‑ whatever that might mean. The waiter, who speeks excellent eng­lish, serves us with bread and sheep's cheese, followed by vege­table soup. Jim chooses prawn omelette for his main course, while I take pot luck on whatever fish they recommended. It is sea bream, which tasted superb, but is probably one of the more expensive kinds. The whole meal, including a bottle of wine, costs us 2,000 escudos ‑ about £8.