No wind today, blue skies hung with fluffy white cumulus clouds moving very slowly, sunshine and not too hot, pleasant for walking. After breakfast, I recorded and edited my sermon for Sunday, and then cooked lunch for Anthony and I - salmon with fresh veg and rice. I invented a sauce with some stewed apricots and a lemon, which I was very pleased with, also an apricot pudding with a creamy texture, without cream. Apricots are in season, and so we have plenty to cook with as well as enjoy on their own.
I had a long chat with Roy in Alicante afterwards. He's decided to settle there and work remotely in collaboration with a partner in Cardiff on public relations advocacy matters which he cares about most, and which will shape the post-covid19 future. He's become so disillusion with Britain under the Boris Johnson regime, he doesn't feel he can stay in a brexit Britain. A sad state of affairs.
Later in the afternoon I drove to Sant Antoni to rendezvous with Solveig at Lidl's and then drive out to the country hamlet of Forada in the Buscastell district. From there we drove in her car another kilometer and turned off the road into a wooded valley known as Es Broll. We walked up the valley and back down, using another route for the last kilometer and a half to return to Forada, altogether a hike of eight kilometres.
It's a very beautiful place, with the valley floor and terraced sides up to the edge of the woodland well cultivated with vegetable patches, vineyards and orchards of fruit and nut trees. The distinctive coloured reddish/pinkish soil is rich and productive. There's a Torrent running down the valley and its bed is dry and choked with vegetation at the moment, though normally farmers work together to keep it clear. The distinctive feature of the valley however is the fact that it has water running down its length in artificial channels, delivered to ponds and cisterns on its descent.
There's a spring in the woods up at the end of the valley, indicating that the water table is unusually high. Below it on the highest farm, is a well head and a small pump house drawing the water up and delivering it into a half metre wide channel that runs down the valley. The construction materials in use are concrete and stone, but what's really interesting is that the design and layout of the channels is said to date back centuries before the Christian era when Ibiza was a Phoenician trading colony. Due to their relationship with North African Carthaginians, Punic farmers came to the island. They settled in the interior and developed it as an agricultural environment, making use of irrigation is technology from back home This valley's irrigation system has been maintained and not allowed to become ruinous, as in other places. Two farms in the valley enjoy the sound of fresh running water all the year round as a result, perhaps unique in an island where water can be a scarce commodity. My photos are here.
Disturbing news from UK, with the revised coronavirus death toll now said to exceed 50,000 on closer inspection of all mortality figures. It exposes the inability of this government to get to grips with the crisis, exacerbated by a decade of debilitating cuts to all health and social care services. How badly the British electorate has been duped into voting a succession of governments into office whose policies have not served the greatest good for the majority of people.
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