N125: Olhan to Sagres

September 20, 2015

At least this campsite only cost six euros. Much more and I don't think I would want to pay for an evening of screaming children and non-stop loud chatter of their parents.

Its much quieter in the morning when I'm getting ready to leave. The odd early riser goes about their business in silence. Nevertheless it is not that early, yet the campsite majority still sleep when I cycle out the gate around half nine.

It is only eight kilometres more to the city of Faro, which I'm unsure a city is a right description, because I don't see anything much apart from usual continuous village streets along the highway. And I wasn't looking forward to riding along bumpy potholed city streets. But then the N125 turns into dual-carriageway, or motorway with an ample shoulder and I assume this must be a ring-road bypassing Faro. Good, I think. No hassle getting through a city. There are steel framed warehouses in places and other places residential streets, which this motorway is elevated and walled in from.

There are on and off slip-roads with roads bridged overhead; and then an overhead sign with arrow right for the main A22 motorway through the Algarve, with N125 and Faro airport arrowed straight ahead, so I continue. There is still a tailwind today and I'm making fast progress and soon Faro will be behind me, I assume.

But a couple of kilometres further the dual-carriageway terminates at a big roundabout in front of the airport main entrance gate, called Ryanair airport. Well, how am I to know any better, as the Irish low-cost airline has it's name in huge lettering over the way in. Perhaps the company is a major shareholder.

My faithful Michelin map for the whole of the Iberian peninsular is useless at this point. And rather than go round the roundabout and return back along the opposite side, I opt to take a right turn on a road following the airport boundary fence with planes pitching in to land traversing low overhead, perhaps originating from Ireland and the UK, and the roar of jet-engines during take off. I was hoping surely this road going in a westerly direction will eventually lead to the N125. But continuing round the airport boundary with salt marsh on the outside, it leads to a coastal sand-split built-up with holiday-apartments where the road come to a dead-end.

There is nothing to do but double back. I pass the turn for the A22 motorway and retrospectively, I think this is also the turnoff for the N125, after returning east for a kilometre or so more to where I turn off for a village suburb, thinking surely by going left here, I should eventually pick up the right road. And do once I've passed through quite a few streets, coming out upon the N125 westbound with Faro behind me.

The main problem with Portugal like car-centred countries everywhere, unlike France and Holland where cyclists are well looked after, the road-network is only engineered with motor-vehicles in mind. Signage is for major routes, which from my first time experience in Portugal last year, could be okay to cycle on so far, then beyond a roundabout the same road can become a motorway with no-cycling sign. Though all the same I like Portugal and today being on the same road I rode before, I know the alternative way when a section of N125 turns to motorway nearing Lagos.

With tailwind all day, I put a fair distance under my wheels in the afternoon and by six or seven when the sun starts waning, there's no stopping me making Sagres, close to Capo da San Vicente (the most south-western point in mainland Europe) by dusk.

As expected I reach Sagres at sunset, an overgrown coastal village sprawling back along the highway and turn right at a roundabout near the centre for Capo Da San Vicente, which is about five kilometres across a landscape which reminds me of the volcanic lava-fields of Iceland, flat but rugged rock and sands with low bush cover.

Ahead off the road on the right I see some kind of backpack trailer. Then nearer see an upturned touring bike, the rear wheel removed and on the ground with a cyclist crouched over it putting a patch on an inner-tube.

I pull in and say hello, glad to see another touring cyclist. We chat. He tells me he is Leonardo from Brazil and has no fixed timescale for a cycle-tour of Europe, in which he wants to see France, Italy and Germany. He is also going to the campsite, so when he's pumped up his tyres and put the wheel back in place and hitched up the trailer, we cycle on together.

Leonardo wasn't the talking type. I soon bored of keeping the conversation going. Then he says "I don't speak English very well" so I understand, I'm the one being boring. Anyway, I ride on and reach the campsite a good while ahead of him and have checked in, when he pulls up. It is now dark and the campsite is large and I go on and find a spot by myself and never see Leonardo again.

The next morning I check out and ride on to Capo Da San Vicente, where there's a big tour-group of aging Germans outnumbering all the other nationals.

I return to Sagres and check into the Funky Monkey hostel, a hostel run by a surfer. I'm planning on returning back up to Capo Da San Viciente at sunset, to hopefully get better photographs.

This is the starting point of a coastal walking trail linking a series of trails north along the coast of Europe.

I was not the only person taking photographs.

Sitting on the edge of Europe looking over the Atlantic...

...as the sun disappears into sea fog and presently is high in the sky across the ocean in America.

Heading back to Sagres after lighting up time.

Today's ride: 134 km (83 miles)
Total: 10,485 km (6,511 miles)

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