Yesterday morning we set off for a walk through the cork forest that clings to the dry barren hills on the other side of town.
It's an ancient place where development is prohibited and the wildlife flourishes.
For many centuries the cork industry was one of the stable sources of income that fed generations of people here in our little village. They peeled great sheets of bark from the trees on this dusty hillside and dragged them back into town to fashion into a multitude of things: floats for the fishing nets, life vests, elaborate decorative and devotional objects, and of course cork stoppers for wine bottles and oil amphorae.