Day 43: Evora to Brotas

April 13, 2023

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We bust out of Evora through the wall, where they have clearly neglected to maintain any sort of gate or drawbridge.

We spotted some birds right away, which was a good start for the day.

Magpies are tricky. This one in plain sight is still hard to see.

This is surely a Corn Bunting. We found it in birdwatchingalentejo.com

Notwithstanding the good bird start, the day otherwise began a bit rough. The temperature was 10 degrees, with a stiff headwind. And the highway, N114, despite a good shoulder, had a lot of annoying heavy truck traffic. This remained the case even when the road began to parallel the autovia.

The traffic situation remained until we reached Montemo a Novo, where we re-attained the N2 and turned north.

Here was the turnoff to the monolith site that Classens had visited and been non-wowed by. Also the town of Guadalupe may have been named with reference to the famous Virgin, but as far as we know has no related churches or monuments. So in summary, we blasted on straight.

Something we had not seen before was an owl guard, apparently meant to make owls fly higher and not get hit by cars.

It's an EU program with a lot of local organizations involved.

Oh, oh there are also frogs about. (Good for storks!) There is also an EU program for them. We should be able to get an EU program for Grampies!

The town of Montemor had a castle and historic old centre. But we were eager to get onto N2, so we did not take the short detour.

Darn, just sort of missed this Bee Eater.

Now, on the N2, we entered a region of much cork forest, and cattle grazing.

The cows are still the sort with the really sharp horns!

N2. Now that's more like it- a quiet country road with relatively few cars.

We have been noticing some political posters, so maybe a national election is coming. The one below, outside Sao Geraldo, caught my attention for sporting the hammer and sickle. Yes, it is from the Portuguese Communist Party. With 6 of 230 seats in the national assembly, they must rate as a fringe party. Now with Russia's political stock internationally taking a dive, I would assume the PCP is doomed. The poster message, by the way, is an innocuous one like "With the backing of workers, an end to insecurity".

We stopped in a bus shelter in Geraldo for lunch, and admired their blue and white church. Blue and white seems to be a popular church colour in this section.

We did some more cow watching, before switching to burros. They attracted my attention with their funny hairdos.

The burros shared a field with this nice white horse. It looks qute noble in the shot but seconds earlier was rolling foolishly on the ground.

There was some uncertainty about the tree that has been strewing our path with purple flowers. We had thought from Scott that is Jacaranda, but now he says no. Here is another shot of one, and its flowers. So what is it, anyway?

Here begins a really quite remarkable experience. Dodie had found a place for us to stay in Brotas, which was a neat feat since there really are not a lot 00 of towns or places around. But Brotas turned out to be a generally 600 year old town, in that the current buildings are 600 years old (no doubt it was inhabited before that). Among the buildings is the 600 year old church, and on the narrow street leading to the church, 600 year old houses that we later learned often housed pilgrims who came to the church. Our place is one of those houses. It is a complete little house, with a sitting room and kitchen down and two bedrooms up. It's little front door is about 5 1/2 feet high.

Our hostess, Maria, lives in the part of the village which is high above the church. We phoned when we arrived, and she came down to give us the key. She also explained that there is one restaurant in the town, in the upper section. Everyone in the town has an interest in keeping the thing open, because as she says, it is the only one. Maria took me out into the little street and together we sighted up (up) to where the coveted restaurant can be found.

Someone had hung cages with budgies, a cockatiel, and a love bird. To my camera, birds are birds!

They have cats here too. A lot are black and white - must be cousins.

The church - Sanctuary of Nossa Senhra de Brotas. Our door is the little one just to the left of Dodie and Maria.

The bedroom in our little house. It may be a little house, but it has quite large rooms.

Here are some scenes from the church. The tile is 16th and 18th century. Devotion to the saint of this church dates from that 16th century and spread throughout Portugal, and even to the first church the Portuguese built in India, and the name can also be found in Brazil.

Maria and Dodie. Maria says she welcomes many people off the N2, and if they are walkers they find Brotas a much needed stop. She remembers many of them and vice versa. I took this shot so we could remember her, because chances are we will be back!

After rolling our bikes into the house, we set off to find the restaurant. This was a really special experience, because we were walking up a roughly cobbled lane in an immensely old place. We were observed in this by some cats, one of whom you can see, had many fallen lemons on his patio. It's a mystery to us how people let so many lemons and oranges just fall to the ground (instead of making lemonade and orange juice, as they should!).

Too bad about the tail end of that car, because it would otherwise have looked just like this had we been walking up hundreds of years ago.

Another sight on the walk was a planting of Amaryllis. Amaryllis are nice enough, but you need to understand, where we are from Amaryliis are sold as potted bulbs in Fall, and with care they will bloom around Christmas. That is typically one bulb, which costs about $15. So two dozen of them as shown here, just going crazy, is amazing to us!

With a bit of scouting around, we found the restaurant, which had "Fechado" (closed) on a sign hanging in the door. But I pushed on the door, and we were in! The lady, after some sign language about eating, conceded that supper was possible. She was so sweet! She went away for for some time and returned with a hand written sheet on which she had translated some of the zippier offerings from the Portuguese menu. We chose the breaded asparagus with pork, but somehow were led to understand that fresh asparagus was no longer in the fields. We hung in there, and got a substitute asparagus product. Maybe we would call it asparagus polenta. It was good. The pork too was excellent, flavourful and tender.

The restaurant lady correlates her translation (under her left hand) with the official entries in the Portuguese menu.

We set off back down, this time finding a set of stairs, that did not necessarily make the descent easier! From above, we could see our church. When we arrived we encountered maybe the priest or organist, who opened the building for us. He is the one that explained about the pilgrims and the houses like ours. He also said that the part of the village nearest the church was the original bit, and that the stuff up the hill had come later. We could see that. For example the watering trough/ fountain near the road was dated 1699. Cheap modern stuff, clearly.

We retired to our snug 600 year old village.

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 1,897 km (1,178 miles)

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