Day 13: Pedrogao to Nazare

March 14, 2023

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The Guesthouse only seemed to have one other customer, and that was a slightly built 70 year lady from Switzerland. The slight build and age are significant, because she was walking, Lisbon to Santiago de Compostella. Her destination for today was Figueroa, where we had cycled from yesterday! We showed her our blog, that gives that distance as 67 km. We know from our experience on the Camino that 30 km walking is about the max. But she pointed out that she is not on the roads, but rather the beach. She showed us her Google Maps for walking, and claimed she would be fine. Wow!

The Swiss walker shows how she will achieve the distance today.

From the Guesthouse we pedalled to the end of the street for a look at the ocean. The open expanse of the beach, the huge waves, and the smooth, fine sand combine for a high impact scene. I suppose we have seen the same on the Oregon coast, but there is an undefinable different feel to this.

There is boardwalk along and to the beach.

The main feature of the day was not so much the ocean or beach but the dune lands that we mainly travelled through, and along perfect bike path almost all the way.

When you are in the middle of something it is great when you can take a mental step back and appreciate what it really all is. This happened for me as we pedaled along in the first few kilometers. Hey, I thought, this sort of looks like desert, but it's not Arizona, and it looks like coastal central California, but no, and it looks like alpine meadow, but there are no Alps. So this must be some sort of super special unique ecosystem. Time to document it a bit more closely!

Not exactly a desert, or Mediterranean plant.

There were all sorts of relatively short flowers.

A look back to Pedrogao also gave perspective on that place. Not a fishing village, no apparent people, no shops, one restaurant... dunno.

Welcome to the next mystery town. They have an interesting choice of symbols - Coquille St Jacques makes sense, but Fleur de Lys, and a caulking gun?

Vieira de Leiria looked much like Pedrogao from the distance. The Portuguese seems to use so many vowels in their names. I dare you to take a quick look at the name Vieira de Leiria and write it correctly on a piece of paper!

We continued through the quite wondrous landscape, trying to observe and understand it. For example, we observed pine cones in areas of no mature pine trees. Had there been a fire or a clear cut, to eliminate the trees? We concluded that wood chips had been spread to stabilize the sands, and those contained pine cones. And now we could see pine saplings, perhaps from those cones.

These flowers had a unique feature - some sort of beetles, which I at first thought might be bees.

Usually smaller birds want to fly away before you can photograph them, and also it is often hard to spot a singing bird. But this guy was a real performer who just stuck to his branch and sung to us.

Our day continued like that, with a straight and totally safe, not to mention deserted, path through an interesting landscape.

Oh now, here is something new - a herd of wild goats, holding up traffic! Also, see how the road rises in the background. We will now climb up onto a headland.

You could smell this guy from a great distance.

On top of the headland we were rewarded with another ocean view. The rest bench is of a style scattered all along this route.

As we took a break to look at the view, along came two touring cyclists. They were Clement and Louise, from France. They had started from Toulouse, and come by Barcelona and Malaga. They were now on their way to Santiago, from which they would follow the "French" route to St Jean Pied de Port, and then back to Paris, to attend a wedding. We told them that the route was great, all the way to Porto, anyway. But they reported that after Nazare we would be much more either on road or in the sand. Oh well!

In the town below our scenic lookout, which was Sao Pedro de Moel, we came upon an historical statue. It seemed out of place, because since the Porto cathedral, all the structures we have seen have been relatively new. Historical churches and such are not a thing in this region. Also, the personas portrayed in the statues looked more like Hollywood than something authentic. Anyway, here they are.

We continued out of town, and with our survey of the landscape. The dunes showed tire tracks of heavy machines, and there were a lot of lines that could have been dug by a scarifier or plow. What have people been up to out here?

Look, a yellow, not red, ice plant flower.

A bit of map study revealed that we could go to Nazare along the coast, or we could cut over to the highway near Pataias and head on in that way. Dodie's intuition was that the coast was going to be trouble, and boy was she right, as we would later see. Besides, the highway had an Intermarche, and I had been whining for chocolate for a while.

The highway, N242, had a separate bike lane for a while, and later just a wide shoulder. It was all fine. In addition, in the Intermarche, Dodie found a solution to another Steve whining subject - hot water for coffee. As mentioned in a previous page, the kettle we brought inadvertently was one specified for 120 volts. With European 240 volts, it became amazing, boiling a litre of water violently in 30 seconds. But we guessed we would blow a hotel fuse with it pretty soon, and so were avoiding using it. Hence the whining. Dodie found a proper 1 litre European kettle at Intermarche. Hooray! Sadly, we will now have to ditch the brand new 120 v kettle, which would be really useful next time in Mexico. Oh well.

We rolled into the outskirts of Nazare, finding it looked much like the other beach towns. But that impression would soon change. First though, there was the matter of some construction blocking out way. Dodie had a discussion with a nearby policeman, and they came up with a good way around the obstruction and toward our hotel.

Clearly, the way to our hotel is not all that obvious.

From this point we could look up and see the headland that we would have climbed and descended had we not taken the highway. Good call!

And here is the way down to the beach and our beach hotel. Amazing architecture!

Down at water level, we again looked up at where we presumed EV 1 had run. Ugh.

The beach front hotels and condos are facing a wide expanse of sand. Beyond that, huge waves are rolling in!

Each street leading away from the beach is an interesting jumble to explore.

We found our beach facing hotel. The entrance is here along the side.

After dropping our stuff in the hotel room, and our bikes deep in a storage and cooler room, we went out for a bit of a closer look at the beach and the street. The beach was composed of deep, fine sand, which showed signs of having been groomed by tractor. surf was really impressive, and I had to stay back to keep from spray from the camera.

A panorama shows the surf, the sand, the headland, and the beach condos.

We see now there is a funicular up to where we would have been.

On our walk we spotted a display of shoes made from cork. They looked really good. Also for some reason there were a lot of grannies, sporting traditional shawls and socks. Could be a good cycling outfit, granny!

There were also souvenir shops, with a slightly variant take on what is Portugal, compared to those in Porto. Not as many tile pattern references, perhaps. But there were these...

Our hotel had a good feel, with the active restaurant very accessible to the reception and elevator area. There was of course lots of seafood on offer, including those weird barnacles. It did not take just the 45 euro price tag to guide us to a different choice. We went for soup and salad plus mushroom pork medallions. We thought it was great. Dodie was proud of a tip she had learned from a Rick Steves guide. The waiter automatically brings an assortment of appetizers, including bread, but none of it is free. You need to not touch it and send it back, if, for example, you do not want octopus tidbits today!

Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 338 km (210 miles)

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david alstonA day for Dodie, sunshine and smooth riding. We hope it helped with the cold and the rib. Our best to you both.

David and Maun Alston
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1 year ago

Gregory GarceauI think you pulled off the impossible: you got your photos to look better than the real thing. I mean, that HAS to be the case because no beaches and towns could be so attractive in real life.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo david alstonThanks David and Maun, I am writing this one day later and Dodie is markedly improving. We thought about giving her a full day in bed, but likely that is not needed now.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Gregory GarceauI think they really are this nice. To boot, we have only run in to friendly and helpful people, and there are other pluses, like drinkable water and quality croissants!
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1 year ago