For this tour, the plan is to not plan--at least not to the degree we've planned the last 3 trips (Fibonacci Scribble, Sicilian Circuit, Looping the Pyrenees).  Instead, we will do what we did to Escape the Rain in Spain and on all of our pre-pandemic tours:  we will book accommodation for the first two or three nights and the last two nights in Lisbon, and book as we go in between.  I've made a booking for Setúbal as well, as we will be arriving on a holiday weekend.  I've created some routes which we can follow or not and we will probably ride south along the coast, across the Algarve at the bottom, and then north through the Alentejo, west to Evora, and then back to Lisbon.  Unlike our last few tours, we are thinking of doing short days and a fair bit of relaxing and dawdling.  We'll see how long that ethos lasts!

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Patrick O'HaraLooks amazing!
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4 weeks ago

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In the screenshot above, there are a few options shown, such as getting from Lisbon to Setúbal.  In my spreadsheet (of course there's a spreadsheet, I was an engineer), I note that we could ride from Barreiro (yellow route in the screenshot), follow the EV1 route from Cacilhas (shown in red), or take the train (if the weather's really bad).  And yes, the route from the Tróia ferry south to Vila Nova de Milfontes is rather long, but its 105 km are meant to be split over two days of riding.  We could stop in Vila Nova de Santo André, Sines, or Porto Covo...

Similarly, we haven't yet decided how to get back to Lisbon from Evora.  We could generally follow the Pedal Portugal route through Alcácer do Sal and back up the Tróia peninsula, or we could ride east and north then west, or we could take the train and perhaps visit Coimbra and/or Porto.  Or maybe we'll have dawdled so much that taking the train directly to Lisbon will be the only way.

Certain Cycleblazers may recognize their routes.  Kathleen and Keith Classen and Ann and Steve Maher-Weary made the west coast and Algarve look fabulous; Team Anderson and Susan Carpenter made me want to ride through the Alentejo.  And in an echo of Steve Miller himself, I had forgotten that the Grampies had visited all these areas until I was reminded and took a look.

Unlike our last few tours, we are thinking of doing short days and a fair bit of relaxing and dawdling.  Yes, the route from the Tróia ferry south to Vila Nova de Milfontes is rather long, but its 105 km are meant to be split over two days of riding.