October 9, 2015
Tale of The Un-expected (Motorway): Maize field camp to Eucalyptus camp.
I don't know if anybody else feels this way when waking up snug and comfortable and fully rested in a tent, but I do. Looking at the dome roof and walls of inner-tent enclosing me, I feel so at home. And I can judge the time by the position of the sun; though usually, there's only greying light of dawn at first. Then the sun's rays start breaking low down, lighting up the tent and urging me to rise.
This morning I've taken down the tent and having fully packed and just about loaded the bike ready to leave, when through the corner of my eye, I see a man in a yellow hi-vis vest approach upon the track along the side of the field. Could he be the landowner. I remain cool and continue looking down, fixing the rack-top bag on the bike and pretend I haven't seen him.
Moments later, the bag secure on the bike-rack, he hasn't reached me as I turn and start wheeling the bike, I see him still in the same spot as before, bent over as if lifting a stone off the ground.
As I wheel the bike towards him, he, about forty-something with straggly grey hair and face like bacon straightens up, standing aside to attention like a soldier on parade. I smile and nod. He gives a confused sky smile while holding his right-hand up by his temple and nods back.
I wheel down the slope to the cutting below which the road passes through. There I see his yellow vest colleagues unload and lay out cones from the back of a yellow van.
It's a chill Autumn morning with Fog having moved in, though visibility is a good two hundred metres. I put on my rear flashing lights all the same for a while until it clears.
Passing through Chamusca, I stop for coffee with two custard tarts in a pasteleria. Then shop at Lidl for the day on the edge of town.
The way on has a sign: Abrantes 40 km: and, this N118 road continues to the border with Spain, but I still have time not to ride directly to Madrid. I would like to experience riding the hilly country north of here, toward Serra Louse, where I was last year. So a few kilometres further I take a left turn for a place signposted Tomar.
The road immediately crosses the Tagus river by a narrow iron-girder bridge with stanchion ties overhead completing the box I and a convoy of vehicles led by a truck behind me pass through, with the same convoy coming the other way, there's no overtaking.
On the other side with a narrow shoulder again, the road meanders across much the same floodplain, dead flat though with a wooded hill on the horizon now. Most of the traffic has dispersed at a roundabout, I believe to take the motorway, and this place called Tomar, I should reach soon.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
But then I come to a junction with Tomar arrowed straight on. The road on fans out to become a dual-carriageway with a big sign: no pedestrians, no livestock or horse drawn carriages etc: and of coarse, no cycling, its a motorway, so I've to cycle up the slip-road to the right and after a few minutes confusion, decide to go right; road N3, which soon takes me back along the river where the hill seen earlier rears up this side, causing the road to rise and fall.
Going east when I want to keep north for a bit, I've to wait until a left turn, which when it come, climbs to a point where this road become motorway too.
Its straight as both this road and the previous road are shown as a single parallel lines yellow road in my Michelin map.
Anyway, at this point, there's a small road turnoff left climbing further uphill. It is unsure where it's going for a while, but eventually I see a sign for Tomar, which I reach after a lot of climbing and descending, near four in the afternoon, stopping for a late lunch in a shaded chapel porch on the way in.
It is a much bigger town than expected with well manicure central gardens and square.
On the way on I'm lost on small roads until I descend to a tee-junction and join N150 northbound, which I continue on until the sun starts to wane, when I turn off on a little road for "Figuero Dos Vinhos" that climbs steeply for a couple of kilometres.
Then at the summit I stop for a bit and notice a track on the right into forest, to where I wheel the bike and find a level spot for the tent about a hundred metres in.
Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 10,984 km (6,821 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |