September 25, 2013
Porto: A day of mixed fortunes
I knew when we left this morning that Ken had it in his mind to get all the way to Porto – the agreed stop was about 17km short of it so the next day we would have an easy time finding our way to Porto. Last night Ken had met a Spanish cyclists from Porto doing what we are doing but in the opposite direction. He said just follow the walkers route it is easy just follow the blue arrows and it is beautiful.. He was a mountain biker and was very lightly laden. Ken was very enthusiastic so we started off and we followed ‘the blue arrows’ and it was lovely. I haven’t mentioned that the Portugese love cobbles and any town or other area they consider ‘cute’ is cobbled or they are tearing up the smooth road and replacing it with cobbles. This was all cobbled and up and down , it was lovely through little stone villages and small scale agriculture. After an hour we stopped for breakfast at a bar, we had only done 6km. Maybe a new approach was needed if we weren’t going to be in Portugal for the rest of our lives. So using our inadequate maps (they only seem to show churches and crosses and not the useful stuff like town names) we took a mixed approach and less cobbles though we did have one particular trying section on a rather long and muddy track (yes it had been raining). Around about it was lovely though and we thought that we were back many centuries. The older ladies in Portugal somehow change ( some kind of metamorphis) at what age I don’t know and become square, I have been told that once their husbands die they dress in black for the rest of their lives. We saw a lot of black square ladies always ready to be of help if they could understand anything of what we needed.
We have seen no grazing animals but this is clearly dairying country. There are now only a few grapes at the edge of the fields and the fields are devoted largely to corn. There is a mass of activity with the corn being cut for silage and huge tractors with great trailers of corn are careering down the road. There are buildings which are clearly the barns the cows are housed in and Ken managed to peep in one and see them munching on this nutricious mixture. He also saw in one small milking shed in action.
We had been warned that getting into Porto was not pleasant and as we got nearer everything began to hot up. We had some lunch then saw the N13 which was what we seemed to need ,it said Porto 13km (that was a lie)– not to bad and what is more it had a wide hard shoulder so off we went. It was pretty good for quite a while and then the road from the airport met it and it became a four lane highway and the hard shoulder all but disappeared. The safest thing to do was to get off and walk. Our salvation was when we saw a sign to a motel. We had no intention of staying there but we might find another road. Fantastic we felt safe again and wound our way along with lots of help from locals, though rather a shock when one told us we were 20km from Porto ( actually she was wrong it was more like 10km). One guy was particularly helpful he pointed to a road and said just go straight and we did. About this time the rain started in earnest ( we can’t complain though as this is only the third lot of rain we have had in 2 months) Eventually again after consulting lots of helfful locals we found the Tourist Information and have an excellent room for 2 nights in a small pension. Tomorrow we explore Porto and the bikes sleep.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 3,038 km (1,887 miles)
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