Day 14: Nazare to Foz do Arelho

March 15, 2023

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After a nice breakfast in the large and comfortable restaurant of our Hotel Oceano, we cruised along the remainder of the amazing Nazaré beach. We passed a display of restored fishing boats, the kind that have come to symbolize Portugal. These were built around 1900 and restored around 2000.

That was where, so to speak, the music stopped and today's ride began to reveal its true nature. The French cyclists. Clement and Louise had warning us that the carefree flat ride from Porto was going to end at Nazaré, so it was no surprise when the bike path ended and the on-road portion began and tilted upward, at the end of the beach.

Although some might point to the fact that we have e-bikes to handle hills, it's not that simple. We deliberately chose the weakest e-bikes available, to get a little bit of a push, not to blast up mountainsides. Dodie is also not that strong, especially when sick and injured, and can not push her bike to its limit. Since we also deliberately chose a torque sensing setup, the bike is not going to do the work if you are not also putting in a lot. I, on the other hand, have found that I can push my bike to its limit. It then responds by overheating and shutting down. In summary - hills mean something to us.

When the beach ended, the road up the next headland was pretty darn steep (and long).

We quickly gained enough height for a good look back at Nazaré. The massive long beach looks small and tame from here. It is interesting to see how almost organically the town spills from the heights and on down.

We found it necessary to implement a strategy that we first did in the Hill Country of Texas. I would zoom ahead, until mostly out of sight, and park my bike. Then I would walk back down and collect Dodie's bike, riding it up to mine. When Dodie walked up to me and the two bikes, I would zoom off again. This allowed me to cover the ground three times, making for a good exercise regime, I guess.

At the top of one pitch there was a little chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of "Bon Voyage". At this stage I was pleased to encounter her, thinking she could be a good patron for our Portuguese trip.

She's my Lady! Needs to be holding a bike, not a ship though. I do like the "walking stick".

From up by the Lady we could look out at the sea. It's so beautiful. Even though we theoretically live by the sea, it never has this kind of impact at home.

There was lots of time as we slowly climbed to admire plants. This bottle brush one must be well known, but not to us.

As you can see on the track, at km 10, the first hill ended and the second one immediately began. This was not as steep, but it had a special trick -rough, often deep gravel. We knew that Dodie had already used up her 1 cat life as far as falls went. One more would be curtains. So we did not careen along this gravel - almost at all!

You can just imagine those tires skittering.

The track seemed to acknowledge that we were not going to be fooled by gravel, so it moved to dirt, and then rougher dirt!

In time the dirt smoothed out a bit, and there was a reward in terms of view.

One good thing about hills is that they have to end, else they would be plateaus, or we would never have valleys, or something. So reasonably quickly we were looking down at yet another Nazaré style cove and wide beach, lined with restaurants and shops. I take this to have been Sao Martinho do Porto.

Nice buildings. The name of this place is Hotel Storytellers Palace. There must be a story behind that!

We came to a stop, and looked over to see two touring cyclists, on a tandem. This turned out to be Gerard Roudergues and his wife, from Rouen. They had driven their caravan to Porto and headed down here, with the objective of basically Lisbon. But they had found the going too rough beyond here, and were returning to Porto. They had some tips for us, basically recommending not to faithfully follow EV 1, but to look for small roads, to shortcut rough and steep coastal sections. We will take heed of this, but it's hard to know when to follow and when to bail. We wish the EV1 planners had been more trustworthy, or at least more forthcoming about what they were putting on the route and why. We also have Brent Irvine's blog to follow, but we have seen him soon waxing poetic about the joys of going up and down and up and down along the coast, so .. dunno.

Here is a view back to Sao Martinho, as we prepare to climb yet again.

Somewhere along the climb we stopped to eat our sandwiches, sitting on a rock. We were in pine forest, which we love, and I also noticed that the ground was carpeted not with grass but with ice plants. That was really something. Later we saw other large areas of these plants, often with their scattered flowers. It was somehow one of the more enjoyable lunch stops that I remember.

As we sat on our rock, a walker with backpack came along. We had already seen a couple during the day, as this is one of the routes to Santiago. This walker was a German lady, not very young, and panting a bit from the climb. The lady explained that she was on the road (with us) because she had gotten fed up with the up and downing involved with following the coast. She talked about having to climb to find places to cross streams, and then descending again to carry on. This does not seem to be something that will affect our way, but we listened to it in conjunction with the various French cyclists, and Brent Irvine, and are approaching the coming days with caution, if not trepidation.

We continued the last climb before Foz do Arelho. By the way, "Foz" means "mouth" in Portuguese. This Foz is at the mouth of the Obidos Lagoon, a large body of water that we will skirt tomorrow.

Near the top of the last climb before Foz, I noted this rectangular white concrete house. We have seen quite a few of these recently, and billboards seem to tout them as the ultimate in modern Portuguese housing. Even when they have large areas of glass, they still feel like living in a concrete box. Yuccch.

The more common local housing can be seen from this shot looking down to Foz. All houses have red tile roofs and while walls. No sign here of tile facing, nor the tall, narrow, balconied buildings of Porto.

We saw a sign for our "Agua d'Alma" hotel, and followed that. Of course as often happens, the signs dropped and we had to check the GPS and/or scout around to find the place. It is a nondescript but scrupulously clean, almost sterile, building, but the welcome was warm and the bikes have an indoor storage room. The wifi also works, making for an unbeatable combo (together with breakfast included). They also gave us a map of town, but we have a different plan - a nap!

Dodie really benefitted from her nap. She is feeling stronger, and the evidence is that she is sitting with her mapping apps, saying "Oh, this is not so bad, we can make it to Peniche", and "Yeah, these may be hills over here, but so what". I think I will go for a bath now. I need to rest my muscles. It can be a challenge following Dodie when she is not (or less) sick!

Today's ride: 28 km (17 miles)
Total: 366 km (227 miles)

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Tricia GrahamI hope you don’t miss Obidos. It is about the most magical little town we saw on Portugal. About 12 km from where you are no hope Dodie is feeling better
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1 year ago

Brent IrvineTo Tricia GrahamI agree. Obidos is magical and especially once the day crowds are gone.
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1 year ago

Keith ClassenGreat to follow you guys along your route from Porto as this was a portion of Portugal we had considered but in the end decided to go south from Lisbon. But nice to see what we missed. Yeah the EV route in Portugal from our experience is much what you had today in terms of road surface … not really knowing what might to thrown your way. We bailed onto small roads when things looked sketchy in terms of surface. Glad to see that Dodie is able carry on with her sore rib(s) and not feeling well …. a tough lady she is! Take it easy guys and safe riding.
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1 year ago