September 29, 2013
Praia de Miro: Another short day in wind and rain
Breakfast was at 7.30am and we lingered a bit too long over it and the credit card machine was down so that took a while therfore we left at 8.30am rather later than we intended The ferry left at 9.30am and the next not for another two hours. We had 15km to go and once again there was a howling head wind. Off we went as fast as we could go in the circumstances, there were fishermen out braving the wind and over all it was a nice ride to Sao Jacinto, we were pretty sure that we would miss the boat. At 9.29am we reached it and the gang plank was still down, we felt proud of ourselves. It is rather a rickety old boat, the cars had already loaded, the man gave us the thumbs up and on we went and for 2E were transported to the other side of the Ria. It had been threatening to rain but now it started, we had shelter on the boat. It was still raining when we got off and sat in a bus shelter for a while until it eased off a bit. There was one problem we had no idea where the boat had landed so the map wasn’t particularly useful. We found a bar, had a coffee and asked directions. It is a bit difficult when you have no common language. Much wild pointing and we set off, by now the rain was lashing down. We began to come to one dead end after another and the rain didn’t let up. Then a miracle happened. I said lets use the GPS (we had vowed never to use it again). It gave us a perfect track, exactly the one we wanted and I don’t know if it was the GPS but something turned off the worst of the rain.
It was a fantastic route, we really felt that we were in the real Portugal. There was one row of houses lining almost the whole route and behind them small farming. Once again people were out in this rather foul weather selling their wares. We bought delicious fresh figs and apples. Again the houses and often the fences were tiled and as well as the patterned tiles they often had a tiled picture above the door and this was almost always religious. I find the tiling rather much, the individual tiles are lovely but the clash of patterns doesn’t really suit my eye.
Praia de Miro when we reached it is a mixture of lots of local people and a beach resort. The Atlantic Coast here is really beautiful and there are lots of cafes, restaurants and even a 4 star hotel. In this rather awful weather most of the cafes along the beach front are closed but it was great to walk along the boardwalk and we watched a lone, brave man kite surfing in the wild sea and wind. The real action today is in the polling booth across the road. Today is election day (I think it is local body elections) . Since we came into Portugal we have been bombarded by extremely loud electioneering and now it has all come to a head. Everyone has braved the weather and it looks to me as if there will be a 100% turn out
Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 3,142 km (1,951 miles)
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