Hiking Makes My Heart Happy

My Portuguese lesson this morning was all about prepositions!!!   My head was so clustered and full that the only way I was going to sort it all out was to take a lovely long walk in Mother Nature’s backyard, which is exactly what I did!

Patricia M, Marc and Diane opted to stay in Estoi and enjoy a tiny sojourn in the square with coffee after lunch.  Laurie and I headed off to connect with Pat K, Gary, Dawn and Joan, who had headed to São Romão for lunch, then onward to the Fonte da Benémola Trail, which I’ve already hiked a few times this year.  It’s close, beautiful and I knew that many of the wildflowers and orchids I wanted to see would be available to me there.  I wasn’t at all disappointed.

This gorgeous hollyhock was near the side of the road and demanded to be photographed.

I love the luminosity of this shot…..it’s almost as if I’ve managed to capture a tiny bit of sunlight.

Here is our happy crew setting off. Joan stayed near the car with a good book to wait for us.

The hills were alive with colour and what should probably have taken us a little over an hour took us closer to two and a half.  Delightful!

A lovely patch of wild gladioli….they are almost done for the year and this patch was much lower than the usual.

I do love this “naked man orchid” and would love to know who named it.

I liked this perspective from the cork tree over the accompanying valley.

I am not certain of the name of these but they dance wildly in the slightest breeze and are a dazzling yellow.

One lone wild peony.

Friendship is a marvelous thing.

The colour of these violets is challenging to capture accurately on camera.

Tall, willowy and delicate looking

Another unidentified beauty.

Fragile and delicate looking.

This is smaller than my little finger nail!

So many orchids today but sadly my camera (which I’ve dropped more times than I care to recall) is not functioning properly and all but a few photos had to be deleted.

This lovely tranquil stream burbles away allows for beautiful opportunities like this one.

I think I heard a turtle plop in the water but didn’t actually see any. Did see a snake!

More orchids.

Liked the colouring very much.

Spectacular colours.

Look at the shades of blue in this one single plant!!!

More orchids.

We came upon a full field of naked man orchids.

The hillside was smattered with countless orchids.

The three graces and the naked man orchids!!

Orchids.

We had hiked down this opposite side of the mountain and it looked quite lovely and inviting from this opposite side.

I had to delete about 15 photos of this type of orchid but I thought I could post this one as it at least gives a tiny impression of the immense beauty.

Gary had walked on ahead to the car and we were stopping every few feet to take photos of flora!

The beautiful Laurie, my sister in law.

My wonderful delightful friend of 43 years……Patricia Anne

And the vivacious and energetic new friend, Dawn.

This is going to be gorgeous in another few days.

And my final orchid of the day.

Wonderful and energizing was my hike.  I’m not further ahead in sorting out my prepositions BUT, my head is less muddled and perhaps when I look at my notes next it will all make more sense to me.

And finally…..every patient and happy to see us………Miss Joannie