March 20, 2025
Day 3: Vila Real to Tavira
Rain shortened ride through orange and lemon groves
London has been enjoying warmer and drier weather than the Iberian peninsula this month. Native Spaniards and Portuguese have never seen anything like the biblical amounts of rain that have fallen. It’s also been challenging to forecast, with the UK met office saying one thing, the Spanish met office a second, and our phone apps a third. Even radar is not a good predictor, as some stuff seems to fall even when nothing is shown. One thing the various services did agree on was that today was going to be wet, 30-40 mm rain predicted.
Dan and I decided to book a hotel in Tavira, hoping to get there early enough so we could drop our bags and then ride a couple hours more with no panniers. Leaving Vila Real, we followed a bike track west, which then continued on a busy road. Neither of us like riding with cars just because of the noise, even though the cycle path would’ve been safe, albeit lumpy with a driveway every 100 meters.
We turned northwest on roads marked white on the Michelin map, enjoying quiet travel through orange and lemon groves. These roads are delightful. One could put together a nice loop.
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About 20 minutes from Tavira, the heavens opened up, so we quickly donned rain gear, arriving a bit mouillées at the Ozadi hotel, located 2.5 km northeast of Tavira centre. We felt gratified at our choice of travel season, despite the challenging weather, as we each got huge rooms, with a couch outdoor porch and breakfast for under 70 euros. The staff were very nice, immediately giving us large towels to dry ourselves off, and arranging to park the bikes in their secure storage area.
We used lunch to solve our respective navigation issues with gps. Despite being able to do so at one time, my Garmin edge 830 refused to download ride with gps. Using the phone is possible, but that’s slow, and uses a lot of data. Dan was having challenges converting the cycle.travel routes to a form that he could use on his gps. So, it was great to have those solved, and now able to count on using our gps to guide us, saving time and just making the day flow better. Tomorrow we plan to ride to Faro, take the train to Lagos to avoid the builtup part of the coast that we already know, and then ride from Lagos to a small house we’ve rented in Salema for two nights. Allegedly, the rain is supposed to decrease and even go away. We shall see.
Today's ride: 28 km (17 miles)
Total: 260 km (161 miles)
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4 days ago