Fungi 20081206_0550, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Y’know some of the things you see in the woods are stunning; this fungi I can’t find in any of my books – any suggestions?
Fungi 20081206_0550, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Y’know some of the things you see in the woods are stunning; this fungi I can’t find in any of my books – any suggestions?
20081206_2018, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Getting down to the Meaning of Life on the walk
Fungi 20081206_0552, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Went for a walk today, fine mushrooming weather but I think someone had been there before us as most of the Chanterelles were gone apart from these small ones, and of course the Wood Blewits which nobody around here knows are edible ….
Our North American guests usually travel in on either US Air or North West airlines. The flights come into Faro, Lisbon or Oporto.
Delta also fly to Lisbon.
American Airlines will take you to Madrid or Barcelona for a local flight onwards.
Flying into Portugal
Most of our non Portugese guests fly into Faro Airport.
There are plenty of commercial flights, most of the routes are listed here.
For the UK
Easyjet
Belfast-International, Bristol, East Midlands, Glasgow-International, Liverpool, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, London-Stansted, Newcastle
Flybe
Exeter, Southampton
BMI baby
Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands
Flyglobespan
Aberdeen, Durham Tees Valley, Edinburgh, Glasgow-International
Jet2.com
Blackpool, Leeds/Bradford, Manchester
Monarch
Birmingham, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, Manchester
Ryanair
Dublin, East Midlands, Glasgow-Prestwick, Liverpool, London-Stansted, Shannon
Thomsonfly
Bournemouth, Cardiff, Doncaster/Sheffield, London-Gatwick, Manchester
If you are coming from Germany then there are also plenty of local airports, for instance Airberlin fly from…
Basel, Berlin-Tegel, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig/Halle, Münster/Osnabrück, Munich, Nuremberg, Paderborn/Lippstadt, Palma de Mallorca, Zurich
To see a full list check out this page on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_Airport_(Portugal)
Image of fao airport attributed to “babynuke” and taken from wikicommons. Full GNU free documentation licence acknowledged
Been ruminating about how the lake has evolved over the years. You see , its only just under 40 years old and in that time its gone through distinct phases.
For instance in the early years we had a lot of tall water weed along the shores. Then came the drought in the mid 90’s, the water levels dropped and the weed died back. It has never really re-established itself.
Then there was the time when the lake supported a massive population of crayfish. They’re still here but their ascendance in the lake’s ecological hierarchy lasted only until a fierce storm washed so much silt into the lake that they had difficulty breeding.
Now it seems as if it’s the turn of the Carp – a couple of years ago I pulled one out of the water that measured 92 cms tip to tail; maybe they’re the ones keeping the crayfish in check!
More to come later….but just a gentle reminder that sometimes the things around you, well they might work to a different time scale but they are alive and growing all the same.
I wanted to write a little about the cork trees which surround the Quinta. These are the trees which have their bark harvested every 10 years or so – never less than 9 and you can see the year of the future harvest for any tree from the large white number painted onto it.
These forests are really a long term investment. The first harvest is at approx 25 years of age. At this age the cork is suitable for floor tiles and not much else. At 34 years old the second harvest is still too poor for cork stoppers for wine. It’s not until they are 43 years old that the cork can really be used for the wine industry.
The cork oak forests of the Alentejo supply 70% of the world’s cork, including 15 billion corks a year for wine bottles. An average tree will live for between 170 and 200 years, go through 17 harvests and produce around 4,000 corks a harvest.
Stripping the cork is a skilled manual job. It has never been successfully mechanised and the trees actually benefit from the stripping.
So why should we care? Well back in the 80’s EU subsidies were encouraging maize growing and the abandonment of Cork forests. When this combined with the growth in wine consumption, standards deteriorated to meet demand and TCA (trichloroanisol) started to appear. This causes the wines to be “corked”. The lowering of quality in turn encouraged the emergence of plastic corks as competition.
However stringent quality control standards have lowered the incidence of TCA and the industry is fighting back.
But why should we care? Well if the farmers switch from cork to maize then the habitat which supports an amazing variety of wild life , from the Iberian Lynx, (the world’s most endangered big cat), through to birds like the Bee Eater will be lost, probably for ever.The end result could well be desert and scrub land across the beautiful Alentejo.
So please…if you have a choice go for a wine with a proper cork in it 🙂
Fungi, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
A lovely walk and now let’s have a slap-up Mushroom Meal!
Fungi, originally uploaded by Paradise in portugal.
A great day out fungi hunting ….will post more about our finds.
dogs-medium-quality, originally uploaded by Paradise in portugal.
Top of the season, really hot and what to do with the dogs other than swim in the lake. Just look at that clear , beautiful water!