October 3, 2013
Nazare: The sun is out
Today the sky was once again blue but our host at the hotel said things were not back to normal until the wind turned from the south to from the north. I sure wish it would as we have had strong head winds for more than a week now. Perhaps tomorrow? Sao Pedro de Moel is a truly lovely little place, all the houses are painted white with tile roofs. The shutters are either red or blue. Everything is immaculate. It is I think rather an upmarket holiday destination, our hotel was extremely good though only rated as 2 stars and I see on the door that the usual price for a room is 118E – we paid 40E with breakfast included.
This was a very short trip today as we wanted to go to Nazare today and Obidos tomorrow. The route was once again along the dedicated bike track that would take us all the way beside the coast. We were amazed at the number of subdivisions along the way. Some of them very lavish but with lots of apartments for sale. Others had clearly been abandoned when the economy took a nose dive. There are absolutely wonderful looking board walks all along the cliffs as well as the fantastic cycle path. At one stage we followed the wrong cycle track and it took us inland. Not a disaster as the wind was not nearly as fierce . It dropped us at a fairly busy road (again with a good hard shoulder) and this took us all the way to Nazare.
Nazare is a rather extraordinary place as it is a mixture of a tourist resort and an old fishing village with the inhabitants going about their traditional lives. It is another white town set below very steep and overhanging cliffs on a beautiful golden beach. We are in a hotel in the old town whose streets are so narrow that when I stretch out my arms I can touch the buildings on each side. Around lunch time tour buses arrived and dumped off their passengers who flooded into the restaurants. Around 5pm the buses were back picking everyone up.
We walked to the port and saw fishing boats going in and out. The strangest thing however is the fish drying on the beach. The fish, many of them very small, are split then opened up and put on racks to dry. These are looked after by traditional looking elderly ladies. I haven’t seen as many anywhere even in the very rural far North. They are dressed in black with short skirts and a shawl covering their heads.
Our big adventure is beginning to wind down and we probably will only have 2 days more cycling. The plan at the moment is to get to Lisbon on Sunday where I have booked a hotel, we will have 3 days there being tourists in Lisbon and packing up before we face the long flight home on Thursday
Today's ride: 26 km (16 miles)
Total: 3,306 km (2,053 miles)
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