Cycling Europe

We started the day at 6am in Porto, about 300Kms north of Lisbon. Fernando generously gave us a lift to the station. I didn’t realise people could drive that fast over cobble-stone streets. It was much appreciated as we were running a little late for the train to Lisbon. Once in Lisbon Rui kindly picked us up from the local metro station and drove us around town to pickup the last items for our ride.

We headed to the airline cargo bay to pickup our bike only to find them closed for a long lunch. We had lunch ourselves, got a lift back said our farewells to Rui and finally tried to pickup the bikes at 3pm. We then had three other pieces of paperwork to sign off, pay €30, then wait half an hour for the cargo men to bring us the bikes. Darkness had well and truely set in before we had finished putting the bikes together. We started our tour at 7pm.

To get out of the city quickly and safely we caught a train from central Lisbon to Sebtula, a town with a ferry crossing. This took us across to a spot about 16Kms from Comporta. We left the ferry terminal at about 10:30 and arrived to an empty town. We got some dinner from a local club and had a chat to a fisherman who suggested we sleep on the beach. And that we did. We setup camp next to an empty beachside restaurant and slept until the sun woke us in the morning.

After a late night we were both late rising. On just 6 hrs sleep (after 4 hours the night before) we awoke to a foggy beach-side view to the Atlantic ocean. The fog was so intense that our visibility was only about 30 metres and as we were riding my arms were getting wet!

We stopped at a small petrol station were we got breakfast and a new companion. A dog, that we gave a pat, decided to run with us for about 3Kms. In that time he almost got hit by either us or cars on numerous occasions. I hope he got home alright.
We had lunch which included a sleep in the warm sun on a hill over-looking a the bay in Sines. From there we travelled along a beautiful stretch of beach during the red-orange Atlantic sunset. We were a bit short of reaching Vila Nova as it was pitch black on a thin road with many cars speeding past. But we found a camp ground with some basic amenities to get us through.
I was impressed with Sam, sticking it out through the pain and soreness, he’s doing well for no training! Hopefully tomorrow will be warm and sunny again.

Waking a little earlier than the day before we left the camping ground just north of Vila Nova de Monfontes and rode towards the town. We past through only to pickup some supplies to have a brekky looking over the wide river with large cliffs.
We headed for Odeceixa, a coastal town tucked in behind some tall ranges. A little slip-up with garmi (Gamin GPS) meant we took an extra four kilometres getting there. Luckily most of the way we had a tail-wind, which we remarked to a couple of American cyclist, to their disliking, heading in the other direction.
At this stage we were hoping to possibly make it all the way to the southern tip of Portugal, Sagres, but we had to rethink our plans just out of Odeceixa. Steep hills followed by steeper hills meant we were slowed down a bit. By the time we got to Aljezur (a quaint little town) we were pretty puffed and decided that Carrapateira would be more a more suitable location to camp for the evening.
 
We found the town just on sunset and stocked up on some food. We found a good spot to camp almost out of a strong wind but it happened to be in the front yard of a vila-cum-apartment building. We knocked on the door of the only house with a light on to find a little old lady, who by the smell of it was making a delicious pasta dish. We asked if we could camp in her front yard and she said yes, but around the back would be more out of the wind (from what we could understand). She showed us a ground level patio that was half under-cover. It was completely out of the wind and also came with a hot outdoor shower!
We set-up camp, had dinner and a couple of beers at the local club and hit the hay. It was only 9:30.