September 17, 2016

Phew, what a day!  We’re exhausted, but mentally rather than physically.

It all started so well.  The 10 kilometre run from Oia to A Guarda was a nice, easy warm up.  In A Guarda we catch a ferry across the estuary of the river Minho which takes us across the Spanish/Portuguese border to the town of Caminha.  Here we start the offical Eurovelo route.  Once off the ferry we cannot find a single sign for the cycle route.  We know where it should be but after trying several different tracks, none of which seem right, we decide to use the road heading to the first town on the route in the hope of picking the cycle track up there.

We spot signs for a long distance footpath several times and decide to see if this also doubles up as the cycle track, but no joy.  It dwindles away to a rocky footpath which we can’t ride the bikes along.  I try to get the website up on the phone with the detailed maps and description of the route.  The domain has expired according to the message on the sceen.  So, back to the road again.  Fortunately, it is wide with plenty of room at the edge for bikes.  We seem to have spent ages messing about and not getting very far.   So much for my hopes of good signposting.

We do come across some cycle tracks as we travel along, but the surfaces are usually granite cobbles which are just about the most uncomfortable surface imaginable to ride a bike on.  It feels like everything on the bike is about to shake to pieces, me included.  So much for my other hope of nice, smooth surfaces.

After a restorative lunch, we give up and just keep to the road for a while, but now it is much narrower and the tarmac surface is breaking up.  Every so often along the road there are little lanes going off into the woods and at each one a prostitute sits and waits for customers.  We’re clearly seeing all that Portugal has to offer!

Feeling a little jaded we stop at a beach bar in a seaside town for an ice cream, but find that they don’t actually sell ice cream despite having huge, great ice cream banners everywhere, including sticking out of the sea.  We’re out of sync with everything today.

The rest of the day sees us make a few more futile attempts to find the bike track, before deciding to call it a day.  The first hotel we try is full, the second hotel we try is full, the third hotel we try is full….you see where this going.  Thank goodness for Booking.com – we locate an apartment a few kilometres up the road – enormous and very upmarket with three double bedrooms (but with WiFi too feeble to upload photos). We self-cater after a mad dash up the road to fetch supplies.  Over dinner we mull over the day; it hadn’t been all bad, the scenery was lovely (except in the woods), the weather perfect and we chatted to several friendly cyclists as we went along.  I’m confident the route finding will improve, Ken is pretty sure it won’t – we’ll see.