November 25, 2014
Days Like These: Makeshift Fog Camp into Spain.
One thing not unusual there's good campsite possibilities early afternoon, but approaching dusk you find yourself in an urban area, so your campsite is bad. Then riding on next morning you see loads of excellent places to camp. You think if only I had had a shorter lunch stop yesterday, I would've been this far before dark.
Same with supermarkets. Some days there's never one just when you need one. You pass them when you already have all the ingredients for the day. Though this was hardly the case when I passed a Leclerc hypermarket on the way into Chaves this morning. At that moment I'm really looking forward to a coffee in town. Chaves is a turnoff, bypassed by the road I'm on and assuming I would pass it on the way out of town, decided to stop when finished in town returning to the highway. But it helps if you've a good memory, which I'm afraid I haven't. But more on that later.
This is my last half day in Portugal and from my unsatisfactory muddy campsite on a triangle of wasteland, which I resorted to the evening before because of fog and the resulting danger on the road due to low visibility, it's all downhill on shoulderless busy road. And with recent rain combined with all the descending, there's no response when I apply the front brake. Only the rear brake is working.
At a roundabout I go left, pass a big Leclerc on the corner and it is a couple of kilometres to the town centre with a castle on a hill and a historic cobblestone street old town. It seems to be well on the tourist map as there are lots of places selling postcards. And there are lots of "Camino de Santiago" signs, being as it is on the Portuguese route. The place does have charm. It straddles a river with a nice old bridge connecting two halves of the town. Also pause to look along from the bridge parapet today in weak November sunshine at gold and yellows of trees on the embankment mirror in the river's slow flowing water.
There are also too many pastelarias to choose from and I spend quite a while determent to find a good one. Some of these establishments tend to cater more to serving alcoholic drinks and have a poor selection of bake-ware. I look for a place half bakery, half café. After being across the bridge and back across, I end up in the main plaza, finding one with a long glass display with a good selection of pastries. I have two pork filled bread things and a custard tart with my coffee. In the plaza afterwards I see the front brake-pads still have loads of ware. The thing is I run dropped handlebars brake-levers coupled to vee-brakes and there is no adjuster barrel like on mountain bike levers to screw the pads closer to the rim. Nevertheless, by loosening the clamp-bolt holding the brake cable in place on the caliber-arm, pulling the cable through so that the brake-pads are closer to the rim, then retightening the clamp-bolt, I've a working front brake again.
Things get a little confusing when I'm leaving town. Going back the way I've rode in, I can't find the same cobblestone street I'd been on below the castle rampart on the hill. I return back into the old town and across the bridge and follow the street along to a mini roundabout which looks familar from the way in. I follow the street on from it and think soon I'll be coming to Leclerc. but this street goes on and become road through the town's outskirts and eventually I turn back onto the highway without passing the hypermarket, supposedly on another link road further north.
The nine kilometres north to Spain is a straight road through a wide valley with a range of mountains on the horizon where threating dark rain clouds are fast closing in and it'll likely be an afternoon of downpours.
Having missed Leclerc and now anxious to see any type of supermarket in a border village, I pass none. Then when it looks like the rain will soon be on I pull into a small roadside café. They've inviting pictures of the dishes served on the wall outside, also two of the five tables inside are taken by people eating and the food looks fine, so I order a hamburger complete with chips and a jug of wine. My last food in Portugal and it comes to a modest seven euros.
The rain seems to be holding off as I descend a little and pass a European Union flag sign with Espania in the middle, then a large sign with speed limits. The village on this side has a Dia, but it is shut for the afternoon and the street is deserted of life, resembling a ghost town in early afternoon.
Still the rain holds off even though it is extremely dull on the fourteen kilometre stretch to Verin, a busy town by the look of it with lots of people and shops open along it's narrow commercial street, though a micro Dia is shut.
At a street corner I turn left onto N525 and on the way out of town there's another Dia supermercado which has just opened up from the afternoon shutdown.
I ride on for another fifteen kilometres, first along flat valley, then up a long climb, riding to near six when I find a reasonably good place to camp off a section of old road.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 8,669 km (5,383 miles)
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