Setubal, Marvao, Cercal (Sept ’22)

Sunset on the Atlantic Ocean bay at Cascais, Lisbon

Before we walk over the hill to the next farm, let’s make a brief sojourn to the sea and the mountains.

Futures Tournament in Setubal, Lisbon

I went with Benoit and Arthur to two tennis tournaments in the Lisbon area, near the ocean. One was in Setubal, a town to the south and the other was in Sintra, just west of Lisbon. To get between the two they rented a fun little car…

It was fun to drive. Yay, convertible!
And required some planning to get all of us plus all of our stuff in… Tetris anyone? :)
We ate dinner in Cascais one evening. Lots of activity on this beautiful bay.
Street Art
Evora, a walled town in central Portugal.

We also drove back to Marvao, next door to Juliette, our residential home in Portugal to see her and do some admin.

In Evora, we saw the largest wine bottle cork in all of Portugal… I can only imagine the size of the bottle this fits in!
At Juliette’s, Phillipe continuing his work on the kitchen and bathroom of the little spring house.
Detail of the straw bale wall construction.
Portagem, a cool refuge near Marvao. This beautiful section of the Sever River is filled with swimmers on afternoons and weekends.
I’m standing on a bridge swimmers jump off of, taking photos of down river and now up river.
And here we are back in Cercal, over the hill at the neighbor’s farm.

Here we stayed in a lovely little two bedroom house on the far edge of the property that they rent out for luxury stays. It was on top of a little hill, completely surrounded by trees and fields and horses… beautiful.

We were there about 10 days and every morning we all had breakfast on the large terrace of the main house. Very nice moments. The woman on the right is a body worker and she gave me a very healing session for my shoulder. That was wonderful! We all enjoyed the friendly, relaxed atmosphere.

This was the extent of my shoulder flexion at that point in my healing.
Antje has 6 horses, many pigs and cats and a lovely dog.

On the left, the mare, you may notice, is missing an eye. Antje rescued her and her two offspring, the baby and his older brother next to him, from some other neighbors who didn’t treat their horses very well.

Antje with happy healthy mom and baby.

Antje gave me a couple of horse training lessons. This was about connecting with the horse and asking the horse to move his body by showing the movements with my body. Nice, soft, subtle work.

For part of the training, you actually walk backwards in a circle. That was a new one! First, I practiced just walking backwards in a circle maintaining a steady rhythm. Then we added in the horse… Luckily, the horses knew what I was doing.

Another day, with the mare.

Ideally, there’s no tension on the rope between my hand and her nose. We endeavor to move together, synchronizing direction and rhythm with every step. It takes a lot of concentration and presence. I loved it.

One day we did a photo shoot for Antje’s website as a horse assisted coach.

Benoit making friends.
That’ the spot!

A lovely time. I learned a bit of Antje’s horse training style, increase mobility in my shoulder, and we all had fun being together at Antje’s beautiful farm.