Weekly? trip to Lidl. Huge up and down hills that might well, but don’t, have the gradient posted. Hills like this, when we have no car, make me think of the bit from Isaiah, most memorable in Handel’s Messiah, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain”. Passes almost unremarked probably, to the average modern reader or listener, as general apocalyptic enthusiasm, but it was written in the days of walkers, for whom a sudden levelling and straightening of the road would have been a very welcome miracle.
The chief consideration coming back from Lidl is weight, ruling out anything easily obtainable nearer home for a similar price and anything very heavy. Well aged cheese, chocolate, and coffee are the main items on the list, but of course the list expands a bit once we’re here. Lidl’s own brand of gin €6 ($9 CAD, £5.22) for 70cl. The notable thing about Castelgy gin is that it’s won blind taste test awards in competition with significantly more expensive brand names, selling here, at least, for more than twice the price. Which leads to my two tins of tonic. I’m prepared to plead that I’d rather have them than the much heavier whole chicken, but the chicken, apparently, exists only in the flyer and not in the coolers, so no need to embarrass myself.
The other interesting find is a small box labelled gin botanicals. Portuguese info only partly helpful, but happily a previous customer has already opened one of the boxes. Inside are four plastic pouches with writing in English - red pepper berries, black pepper berries, juniper berries, and cardamom seeds. Aha. This is almost the same as a small selection we found in the flat when we moved in. Three out of four overlap amd minor mystery solved.