King of the hill!
The trip can be dissected into 3 parts. The first was south with Dave. The second was on my own back up to a farm near Tábua/Coimbra. Then the third part was the 1 day push back home.
First day: we got on our bikes and the rain decided to piss on us. Towards the end of the day it cleared up and we made it to a campsite, nice dinner, nice shower, mmm bed and BAM, from midnight onwards a festival next door blasted out a continuous stream of hardcore electro beats! Sleep was futile. The electro gods were determined to punish our souls until the morning. When we got up (the music was still going), it was a great relief to cycle away from what I could only describe as ear rape, the throbbing sound fading as we made haste. Lesson learnt. ALWAYS CARRY A PAIR OF EARBUDS!
On the second day we started to meet some pilgrims on the road, heading the same way as us (towards Fatima). It was pope week and the pope was going to mark his royal popely presence in the most pope friendly city of our pope loving country. We ended up in a village where the army was setting camp for the pilgrims to sleepover and we bummed our tents next to their site. Popetastic!
Fatima
The third day was a nice day (no rain!). We got past Fatima but we still saw a lot of pilgrims, this time heading the opposite way to us. There were a few shout-outs to us like "It's that way!" or "You're going the wrong way!"... To which we replied - "Pope off!" We met some fellow touring maniacs (Hernani and Gonçalo) from Lisbon who I met on a cycling forum and we wild camped somewhere near Santarém. They were awesome company and that night cooked an equally awesome "feijoada" with wine and even expresso at the end! (Hernani has a portable expresso machine that looks a bit like a bike pump and is perhaps the coolest thing EVAR!)
Camper's "feijoada" with Hernani and Gonçalo
Fourth day was an "uh-oh" day... The four musketeers decided to stopover a café to have some commemorative beers (big uh-oh here) and snails (big yum yum here)! They realised they couldn't catch their train connection further south due to a strike so me and Dave had to go "duo" again and cycle another 90km after those beers... never ever ever cycle 90km on a hot sunny day after you drank enough beer to make you light headed. Not nice! We finally made it to the camping site at the end of the day but were so exhausted we had to go out for dinner, what a shame... ! :)
Fifth day was an "oh shit... ahh" day! The day before we had a look at Hernani's altitude plot for our route on his netbook (yes, netbook AND coffee machine! oh the good life..). It seemed like taking the IC1 to the algarve was the less hilly option, However, this is a very busy, fast road and we no likey busy fast roads so as soon as we realised the bugger we got ourselves into we took a detour. And thank pope (ok last pope reference promise!) we took it! The detour took us to the N2 road which is the longest road in Portugal and perhaps the nicest stretch of road I've been on to cycle in Portugal. Most of it is flat in the Alentejo region, no cars, and beautiful landscape. One big downside (quite big in my opinion) is that the landlords of the vast expanses of land in this region have decided to fence of every square inch (millimetres if you prefer) and it feels like you are riding in a big long corridor. I'm talking a 150km long corridor where you can either go forwards or backwards, except for when you hit the towns/villages... This makes it very hard to wild camp (I suppose it is the point of it), but mostly it feels a bit claustrophobic. Anyway we cycled and got to Castro Verde, the best camping site we went to that cost us next to nothing.
Day 6
More rolling plains and the heat creeping in. We hit the mountain range "Serra do Caldeirão" which was absolutely stunning, I loved cycling through this bit. Despite de nearly 500m climb (lots of up and downs) it was worth the effort. This is where I felt people were the nicest, the road was perfect, the scenery was spectacular and the countless natural water fountains invited us to stop and take an exploring detour into the dirt tracks (which we kindly rejected). This was the opposite of what I thought the Algarve would be and I was really impressed! Having said that we weren't far from the crowded beaches :/ We found a restaurant that let us camp in their backyard and we took the opportunity to have a lovely meal with our hosts! What a shame...! ;)
camping behind a restaurant
Day 7
Arrived in Quarteira, Algarve. The first thing that went through my mind when we hit the shore was "Yay we made it!". Quickly followed by "Oh dear what a shithole!". Quarteira is not nice, a tourist shanty town with a few run down buildings along the seafront near the market. I think we chose the worst spot to arrive because soon after we headed east a bit to find some grub and it got a bit better (relative to context!!). I had a quick celebration by diving in the water and then we settled for lunch. We met Carolina at her place where we were going to stay for a few days... It was so good to have a bed to sleep on!!
And so that was the way down. The next day we went for a road trip to Sagres, which is the furthest south-western tip of Portugal. Really beautiful, windy place on top of a cliff. Proudly holding a fort-museum type precinct which aimed to take you back to the era of the "descobrimentos" and transport you into the mindset of the people who thought that was it. The end of Europe. The end of the world.
"ships ahoy captain!"
Dave and I parted ways the following day, a sad moment for me because I hate to say goodbye to someone with whom you share a voyage, journey, trip or whatever you want to call it. From now on I was on my own (except Carolina was actually right there next to me)
dave, carolina and me
--------- Part 2 + 3 ---------
I stayed another full day before leaving. This time heading up on my own.
The days were starting to get hotter and there was a heat-wave that week which made the cycling particularly tough on certain days. Cycling on your own is an interesting experience. If you're the type of person who has to be around someone all the time, or if you can't bare spending too much time without hanging out with your friends. Then I don't recommend it to you. Also if you get bored easily then also forget it. I found a variety of ways to entertain myself. By this point I was paying a lot of attention to the plants and trees around me (Dave said I was going nuts), I took my survival book with me which has a section on plants and I was constantly trying to identify them, with the purpose of eating them! When riding I would sing a lot as well, although mostly on downhills. Speaking of which they were amazing (always are), and incredible how the downhills brought so much cheer to me. In contrast the uphills could be quite hard and demotivating, I found myself saying to myself"don't stop, don't stop, don't stop..." a lot of times. On 2 occasions I had to get off my bike and push, some of the hills, combined with the heat just took it out of me. On the hottest days, around 11/12 pretty much every 2km I would have to get off and scurry under the shade of an olive, pine, oak, cork or eucalyptus tree.
Sheltering under a tiny bit of shade...
I didn't wild camp by myself, mainly because it was really hard to do so on the roads I was on, but also because at the end of a day of lonely cycling I could really do with a nice warm shower to cheer me up. On one occasion, when I arrived at a campsite in Tomar, I rode around the site looking for a decent spot to set my tent when all of the sudden this German couple who were sat outside their caravan started to clap and cheer for me. Pretty random I thought, I figured they must've seen me on the road. Later as I was setting my tent the guy came over to me with a chilled fink brau (beer). It tasted like heaven in a can, and I interrupted my tent setting to sit and enjoy the moment. I thought he would at least strike up a conversation about where I was coming from, or at least enthusiastically retort at my attempts to strike up such conversation. To my surprise, he didn't. He literally just cheered, came over, offered me a beer (given the situation, not just any beer) and went back to his caravan. That right there is an example of how to earn some serious life points...!
Beeeeeer!
But anyway I eventually made it to Retiro no Rio (not before getting lost). And there I spent 2 amazing weeks, working and enjoying the life in the very remote riverside. I met some amazing people, failed miserably at fishing, and fell more in love with nature.
River Mondego and Retiro no Rio, seen from a vantage point
It's been exactly two weeks since I got back from my bike trip around Portugal. I'm sitting in my often adopted awkward crossed-leg position in front of my two monitors, there's a buzz in the background from my computer to which I've grown accustomed to and occasional tip tap toes on my keyboard, then click click clicks...
Tonight I am not in the graceful company of nature's symphony of sounds. Croak, chirp, hum, buzz, mew, squeak, hoot and maybe Brita's and Xisto's occasional bark... Or maybe one of the cats poking at my tent!
I remember the first night I arrived at Retiro no Rio it took a considerable amount of time for me to fall asleep because of the noises around me. Despite the exhaustion from 6 days of continuous cycling (13 since the start of the trip). The area where I camped was about 15 meters from the river bank, there was a minuscule bay where the water became slack. Truly a beautiful sight by day, and by night an earful treat. An army of frogs cloaked amongst the vegetation would present themselves at night with what I guess is the equivalent of a human moan with the aim of seduction. That, was very loud! Now I miss it.
River Mondego by sunrise
I also remember the night I returned home, to my bed, and again it took me a while to fall asleep. It was the silent vacuum. Audible nothingness which filtered through my ears. I was back.-------------- The End -----------
If you've bothered to read this until the end give yourself a tap on the back. I've sped through some parts of the trip because it is simply too long to write it all down. I like to think of this as a complement to the bits I wrote on my diary through the trip, so someday I can read this and, for a moment, live it all again in my head. Hopefully it will inspire you in some way!
One thing I did do this time was to write statistics of the cycling at the end of each day. So here are a few of them...
--------- STATISTICS ----------
Longest distance travelled in a day: 147.13km (Tábua to V.N.Gaia), 10 hours
Total Distance covered: 1391km
Total Time cycled: 89 hours and 53 minutes
Total days cycled: 14
Max Speed: 57.18km/h
Items lost: 1 t-shirt, 1 towel (hand towel, it was a good one), 2 elastic ropes
Damaged goods:
Tent ripped by dog, food stolen by cat, Tent mosquito net chewed by I don't know what (ants?), chain needed replacement, 2 punctures, saddle slight rip (fixed by sewing), front handlebar bag elastic ripped by dog, 1 bike computer dead, 2 elastic ropes ripped, flip-flops nearly dead.
Other: Bike guitar rack survived!!!! (and so did guitar!)
-----------------------------------
Much love,
jc
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