Francine had found what sounded like an idiosyncratic campsite for just ten units at Perelhal. There was no reception, as such; we were to ring a number on arrival and the owner would turn up to let us in through the keypad-controlled gate.
Idiosyncratic was right. the site was run by a Portuguese who had lived a lot of his life in German-speaking Switzerland. We later learned that our host had been born in Angola, a former Portuguese colony. His parents had moved to Switzerland just before Angola’s independence. He said he disliked Switzerland for its money-grabbing, materialistic culture so had moved to his current home in Portugal. He has six children, three of each. Yikes!
The field was grassy but quite sloping. I couldn’t get anywhere near level on our first attempted pitch but moved to another, backing on to the surrounding woodland, with more success. It felt like a sort of CL [Certificated Location] but with the capacity for twice as many units [CL’s are limited to five]. In common with many CLs, here the grey water and black water went down a ground-level drain cover.
Being in a country location, I did have some insect entertainment in the grass around Frodo. We were particularly interested in a yellow and black beastie dipping its abdomen in the soil. It was very fast but more by luck than judgement, I managed to snag a reasonable shot as it lifted into the air again. It’s a so-called Tiger Cranefly (Nephrotoma scalaris).
There were also some small, blue butterflies flitting about the grass. It took me a while to track one down on pixels but I managed to identify it as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue (Leptotes pirithous). We’ve seen them before but it’s always a welcome sight.
Enjoying the afternoon in our country location I was feeling very relaxed and began preparing dinner. It was all going swimmingly until, at 19:30, some buggers turned up in a Portuguese-registered motorhome and shoe-horned themselves in next door to us. Being a foreign-sided van, our doors were facing each other not that many feet apart. Rather than sit outside eating as originally planned, potentially under the watchful gaze of our new neighbours, we retired inside to eat. Grump!
We thought we’d investigate the local village of Perelhal but frankly, it was quite bland. It had a supermarket which we used to supplement our supplies, and a café, where we sat outside with a coffee, but that was pretty much it. A German couple from our campsite, who were now moving along, also happened by the café and we compared notes with them; the man luckily had reasonable broken English. They hailed from an area very close to our hosts former home Small world.
On a later afternoon walk we went in search of a nearby river. En route we happened across a smaller vegetated stream which gave me my first opportunity on this trip to watch some dragonfly action. Keeled Skimmers (Orhtetrum coerulescens) were there buzzing about, accompanied by Small Red Damselflies (Ceriagrion tenellum). Not being present in my local patch, I was glad to see them but was particularly pleased to see one female which happened to be the black form melanogastrum.
We continued in search of the main river but somehow Google managed to lose us and we didn’t get there. The walk had not been a complete waste of time, though.
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