They were speaking Portuguese, so I couldn’t be 100 per cent sure they were laughing at me. But as I had just done my finest impression of a drunken 90-year-old descending a steep slope (while, er, descending a steep slope), there was a good chance I was the group’s prime source of mirth.
They carried on tittering as I wobbled pathetically past. Finally one of them gave into the abject sight, announced she was a “therapist” and offered help. The type of therapy she specialised in was lost in translation. But as she didn’t start asking searching questions about my childhood,
I assumed she was a physiotherapist. She did a weird but welcome stretching thing on my inner quad, which enabled me to shuffle on. Thank you Portuguese therapist! Not that it made much difference in the end.