Capes and crazy horses

So here's a strange thing.  We set off from Obidos and Nona had a bit of a cough and a strange light came on the dashboard.  Fortunately we were quite near a largeish town Caldos da Rainha and we found a great Fiat/BMW garage who ran diagnostics and said it was just a hiccup and reset the onboard computer and gave us a bill.  Nona behaved after that but the roads in Portugal didn't.  We kept getting lost and daddy kept getting grumpy.  We eventually pulled off at the side of the road to do some sighing so I got my toys out and started playing on the pavement.  Then I saw a boy coming with his daddy and invited him to come and play with me.  His daddy started chatting to me and they invited us to their village festival.

Anyway there was a band and a load of drunk men on horses.  They had to race as fast as they could towards a rope at about neck level and pick off a tiny disc of paper.

The band

My friend Alexandra

The more they messed up.  The more the band and the crowd jeered.  There was a particuarly lairy horse which kept charging the crowd and Mama tried to climb a tree at one point.

 We then drove to Cabo Espichel and watched the sun go down.

 There was a church there and a hermitage.

And Mama said she had never slept in a more beautiful place.

It was just us and the Atlantic.

She also said that every cloud had a silver lining.

Although these clouds were pink.

And they were black in the morning it rained so hard we nearly got washed out to sea.  But that's another story.