I made lemonade!

I'm linking up with The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Reviewer.

I know making homemade lemonade is a staple of American childhoods and I've often read of characters doing so or seen it on TV programmes. I'd never thought to try making it myself though. However, this week, a Belgian woman who lives in the hamlet nearest our current Portuguese campsite wandered over to visit friends and brought a bag full of lemons from the tree in her garden. She handed a couple out to everyone she could find, including us! Basically the tree has produced so much fruit that she had no chance of using it all up herself, especially seeing as the lemons are huge!

So I popped online to find a basic recipe and was amazed at how easy lemonade is to make. We only usually see the commercial fizzy stuff in the UK which is far too artificial-tasting for me. Fresh homemade lemonade I now know is delicious - and perfectly refreshing after one of our daily hikes.

We're on the move back into Spain today having spent ten nights in rural Portugal. I'm going to miss hiking out in the hills every afternoon and the gloriously fresh, clean air here. Instead, we're hoping to get onto the motorhome aire at Seville marina which I expect will be quite the culture shock after our current isolated location! Hopefully it won't be too noisy when we are ready to sleep?

I found a couple of photos on my phone from Armacao de Pera. I forgot to share them when we were there. This adorable little hedgehog and the Spring narcissi were at Armacao, all the other photos were taken at Almada de Ouro. The long views are a bit of a challenge for my antiquated phone camera, but I hope you get the idea. I love the mix of trees around here. The hillside pictured below has tall cypress trees which always remind us of ancient Rome, and pretty pines. There are also thousands of orange trees and olive trees, plus the occasional carob and stand of eucalyptus. Despite the climate being so hot and dry over the summer months - and warm and dry through much of the winter - there is miles of beautifully green countryside.

In bookish news, I've just finished reading Chilean novel Seeing Red by Lina Meruane which is about a woman abruptly losing her sight. It's not medically grisly, fortunately for me, and I loved the first-person narration style which I felt suited the novel very well. My full review is up on Literary Flits today.