April 3, 2012
Lamego
along route 226
The tables in the hotel's dining room are all laid with crisp white cloths and it's nice to see some crunchy cereal for a change among the buffet offerings, something which I've missed since leaving home.
While it's neat and clean in the modern Turismo de Trancoso hotel, it all looks gloomy outside. A mist hovers over the fir trees beside my room's window and when I walk out after 10:30, I soon put two jackets on - my blue fleece and the yellow lightweight windproof. It's hard to gauge what the temperature is, but it feels pretty chilly in my SPD sandals. And that wooly hat that people say looks like a teacosy and which I gave to a Berber guy in Morocco for helping me out of a fix: I wish I still had it.
Trancoso, a medieval place enclosed behind high stone walls, doesn't grab me. It's too really cold to enjoy; without the sun, all the colours are muted, so as soon as I get my bearings, find a sign pointing north it a matter of just hitting the road.
The N 226 veering north from Trancoso has been allocated a green border to say that it's considered scenic and is therefore a route I've looked forward to riding along, but the Michelin guys must have seen something I can't. Or maybe I've just had too much of Portugal's rolling landscape. The road isn't that different from all the ones I've ridden during the previous 10 days. In sunshine, perhaps the landscape looks better, however, in the drab weather there's nothing to make me want to stop and take a photo.
My body never does warm up and each one of the 40-odd kilometers to Moimenta de Beira is counted down. Along the way to the small town, all the roadside cafes have been locked up, as though it's Sunday, so at the bottom edge of the village I pull into a snack bar that's open and order lunch. It's almost one-thirty and my shirt and jacket have got damp from riding up the long inclines and when I leave they're not much drier.
Lamego is about 30 more kilometers to go and the road continues to rise and fall in long gradual slopes and it actually feels colder now, with the views still underwhelming and the traffic, as it has since leaving Trancoso, whizzing past, having me keep my front wheel as close as possible to the white line beside the edge of the tarmac. It doesn't make for an enjoyable ride and I'm looking forward to a change.
Back in Guarda, the forecast had been for rain for the whole week, while Porto, a little to the north, has much better weather expected. That's been one reason for me making a beeline there, in the hope of not getting wet, as all I need to make the trip worse is that. It'd make it very cold indeed.
A few times it seems as though I'll have to find shelter, with clouds appearing to be shedding water nearby, but luckily it stays away. In fact, lo and behold, the sun starts to come through as I pedal into Britiande, perhaps just 10 minutes from Lamego. A large swathe of blue sky opens up and becomes bigger by the minute.
Once at the edge of town, I pull up at a corner café, have a chocolate cake and a fizzy orange, sit in the warm sunshine and wonder about carrying on north, riding to the riverside town of Peso da Regua. It's just a dozen kilometers away.
My mind soon changes when a residencial sign catches my eye near the entrance to the old part of Lamego and when the woman at the reception desk of Solar da Se says a single room is 24 euros, I opt to call it a day there and then.
It's almost 5:00 and eighty kilometers have really been enough for me - hauling a fully loaded bike on the undulating N 226.
Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 1,379 km (856 miles)
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