September 23, 2013
Ponte de Lima: The last stage begins - our first day in Portugal
After my bad showing towards the end of yesterday’s ride I was a bit worried about today. Although the distance wasn’t great we had two significant hills to climb adding up to a total gain of 600m before we lost it all coming down, the weather forecast predicted a high of 35degrees. There were no possible stops on the way
We left at first light and were soon over the border and into Portugal at the lovely looking little town of Valenca, we felt however we must press on and so did not explore it at all. Again things were semi rural for a lot of the way and I imagined everything looked a lot neater than in Spain (amazing sweeping statement made from half a day in the country!) Coffee is cheaper here (less than 1E) and I now have one Portugese word – it sounds like obligarto and means thank you – it produces much mirth when I use it. As we climbed higher we got into forest, a lot of it consisted of gum trees so with the high temperatures and the wind (head of course) which was up high these were ideal conditions for forest fires. The air was really very smokey, we saw helicopters dropping monsoon buckets of water and in one place where the fire was reasonably close to the road there were teams of firefighters. All pretty minor but it certainly points to how things could get out of the control.
Coming down into Ponte de Lima is an amazing downhill of about 15km, a fantastic reward for the previous hours of toil. The hills around here must be solid granite as there are a huge number of granite mines, enough to make granite kitchen benches for most of the world.
Ponte de Lima is a delightful market town with narrow cobbled streets and historic buildings. Today however the massive fortnightly market was in action, this spreads itself along the river and rather ruins what would otherwise be a sleepy medieval atmosphere. Most of the market stalls seem to be devoted to cheap tatty looking clothes and there would be enough of them to clothe most of Portugal.
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 2,941 km (1,826 miles)
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