We left Peniche on the 31st of May for Spain. The ride was uphill and against the wind all the way to our first campground, or at least it felt that way. Our first night of the trip was lovely, we slept through a hard rain and woke to brilliant blue skies. Somewhat familiar with this route from other rides we knew we’d have to wild camp during this section so we explored some backroads through the countryside until we found a wonderful pitch on a river full of frogs. We fell asleep to the river’s gentle murmur and a symphony of croaking. Woke in the night to a small moon and a sky full of stars. Then it rained.
We spent the morning ride getting clacked at by storks hunting in rice fields, baby storks peaking at us over the top of their nests and swallows flying from the condo complexes that they’d built on the bottom of the stork nests. We stumbled upon two fox pups playing on the quiet gravel track – they looked up at us and ran – obviously as surprised and amazed as we were. It was a great ride day, beautiful weather, roads, flowers, and smells.
We then landed in the Portuguese savannah, it truly reminded us of Kenya, of being on the Masai Mara but without the elephants and giraffes. We were in the middle of nowhere, NO ambient light, no outside noise. The stars were so dense it was hard to find the constellations and the milky way was so thick we thought of getting a straw to drink from it. The peacefulness was nearly overwhelming.
After two nights of camping the savannah, we rode to a camp north of Elvas, past aqueducts, ancient walled towns, graves carved into solid rock, castles and more light and noise. We could no longer drink from the Milky Way. Elvas has a four-story aqueduct and a star-shaped fort – perhaps it was a model for the Pentagon. It was there that we heard that a heatwave was imminent. We were planning on going into Spain, we were kilometers from the border, we could almost see it, here the rolled rrr’s, taste the tapas, but we felt thwarted, the weather prediction for that area was that temps would be above 39 (100 F) degrees for the next week. We decided to stay in Portugal and ride north to the mountain rivers as quick as we could.
We’re old and not that quick and the hills of Portugal are steep and high. We stayed in some cute towns before we made it to the foot of Marvao. We found a friendly, small campground near a small village, next to a walking trail that led seven kilometers up to the castle. We spent the next day hiking the ancient trail to the walled city of Marvao which proved to be far less exciting than we’d imagined (perhaps we’re getting jaded?) and a mediocre lunch in a Michelon mentioned restaurant. The high point of the day turned out to be a visit with a herd of goats and their herder.
We were planning on leaving Marvao and continuing north but learned that the heat was waving out of Spain and coming our way. If we followed our planned route, we’d be trapped between two high mountain ridges for days with no easy way out – we changed plans again.
In the morning we packed as the sun was just rubbing its eyes to wake up and started riding the 81 kilometers and 750 meters of up and down to a nice cool river, and then, unfortunately, a really really up up to a castle and then a down down to another river under a full sun. We started the day at 16 (60 F) degrees and ended the day at 44 (110 F), the heat wave had caught us.
We started riding shorter days, moving only from river camp to river camp, and buying a bag of ice every evening so we could have ice water, iced wine and mildly chilled everything. We stopped putting the fly on the tent. We woke early and tried to ride only from 7am until 11 and then we’d set up camp and call it a day and soak in the rivers. River beaches here are called fluvials, they’re designed to be family friendly places to cool off so the currents are mild. They kept us alive. We fluved, we drank liters of water that we collected from the village spickets, we sought shadow, and made sure that when we set up the tent we’d be shaded until morning. After four days of starting our morning rides in the low 20’s (70’s) under the full sun and ending them in the upper 30’s (90’s) and having lunch at 39 (100) degrees we decided we were too old to be that stupid and got an airconditioned room for two days. Our room wasn’t much, but it had aircon and the town was cute it had river parks, ancient bridges, cafes in the shade and the groceries weren’t far.
When we left our airconditioned paradise it was predicted that the temps would only reach 37 (98), we figured we were recovered enough. We still kept the days short and again went from river camp to river camp. We stopped in Tomar, camped under two dams and a fluv and visited the Xisto region on our way to Gois.
Gois is a beautiful town surrounded by mountains and history. We arrived during the celebration of Corpus Christi. All of the town’s people were laying a trail of flowers that a procession of the clergy and congregation would walk down. It was explained to us that the people were honoring the lord for providing the bounty of the earth that kept them sustained. It was quite competitive as each block tried to arrange their flowers more beautifully than the other blocks. Curt and I watched the building of the floral arrangements; the procession was touching and made us teary eyed. Their dedication and the beauty from their efforts and their solemn walk was inspiring. We decided to stay another day and ride an unloaded tandem to see some Xisto villages. We rode, pushed and sweated 29 kilometers up 16 to 23% grades with 750 meters of altitude gain under a full sun, much of it on gravel, all for a few photos and a good laugh, the much hyped Xisto villages weren’t really all that impressive, but now we know.
Gois was our deciding point as the weather was going from heat wave to cool and wet. We could go north for no particularly good reason, or over the mountains to visit Castelo Branco or head home. We voted for home. The next morning, we rode to Coimbra and chose to stay at the municipal campground – dumb decision, as it’s sort of in the middle of nowhere – next time we’ll get a room in downtown Coimbra and have a fun, romantic night.
From the noisy campground to hippy garden campground to the sea and a long, straight, flat, paved bike path along the coast to our friend’s backyard.
We had a great time with our friends Lisa and Greg, great food, fun conversations and a cool, rainy evening. In the morning our friend Ken met us at their gate and together we rode a pretty fast 48K with 400 meters to lunch. It was a perfect end to our 3-week tour, friends, food, beer and home.
Ride off the Earth 