Day 9: Ovar to Aveiro

March 10, 2023

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Morning brought another chance for a look at the Vintage Balcony Guesthouse. In the light of this day it looked as good as yesterday, and we got to step across the street and get the outside view. We admire the owner, Bruno, for the quality of the work done here. Later we learned that famous Cycleblaze blogger, Brent Irvine, also stayed here and met Bruno. Cool.

The kitchen, with tile backsplash and granite counter top.

Back now through Ovar, returning to our track, we noticed a nice park, with abundant Rosemary, which we see also at home, but not with such abundance! And there was yet another small, tile covered church. They must have a lot of them. Tile covering is really common here.

Portugal ranks highly with me for having a lot of bakeries - almost as much as France. Dodie noticed the one below for its sign about Pao de Lo, which she had seen in the online guide to EV1. Pao de Lo is a specialty cake of Ovar.

We naturally stopped in, but found that the thing is quite a large cake. When Dodie asked for "two" the baker was correctly skeptical. We could, of course, not carry even one cake. But the baker said we could sit and eat a piece each. If we could sit and eat two pieces, we could buy and walk away with two pieces, or so I thought. But no. So we just settled for a photo of the whole thing.

Cycle path by a sort of normal road, in forest.

The Eucalyptus can be smelled from afar.

This sign illustrates that the Portuguese are serious about cycling routes. We took the red route, which we thought would be "rapido", but from this point we seemed to be casually wandering.

The "red" route looked pretty fast, at first.

Soon we found that we were snaking through a variety of tiny villages. This was great, because we saw the buildings, and also a lot of flowers and semi-tropical foliage. Most notable were the orange trees, and soon lemon trees, some with really giant lemons.

At first we would photograph every orange tree, but soon we realized they were everywhere!

Dodie spotted this guy while we were stopped to look at an orange tree.

I like the black headed gulls - they are new to me.

Every river entering the estuary is noted, and its bird and other life described on trailside signs.

It's impossible to document it all, but I have focused on the occasional bird description!

This tree is common in gardens here. It is something like the Monkey Puzzle that we have at home. We are told it is a Norfolk Pine.

Yet another small town. It was really fun going from one to another.

The churches here are very vaguely reminiscent of Spanish ones in Mexico.

In southern France we used to talk of "juice" coloured houses. Here they are fruity too, but more intense. These are clearly raspberry and mango.

These are some of the boats that have become symbolic of Portugal,

These were farm geese that lived just beside an estuary. It provided them with water to swim in.

The track took us between swampy areas and farm yards.

The mother pig was very opposed to me coming any closer!

This route was not very 'rapido". But we ended up here by a wrong turn and it was not the route's fault.

I thought this might be a baby stork, but the telephoto reveals it is a nesting mother.

Many little birds were sharing the stork's nest.

Especially not being the one with the GPS to look at, I found the varied landscape confusing. I photographed this map not to put things straight but to show how varied things were. This was way different from yesterday, when almost the entire route was one type of path, straight south beside the ocean.

At last the route resolved itself into a straight run. This was along the N327, beside the Ria Aveiro, which is a huge lagoon.

Again, all along this route there were bird observation stops, with signs describing what should be there.

There were so many wading birds described! This was one of them.

The bike path became this - completely protected!

The path came to an abrupt (really abrupt!) end. But no matter, the road had a shoulder and low traffic.

These giant plants are something like Aloe Vera.

We even had some flamingos, spotted by Dodie, of course. I then complained that they were not pink enough.

This shot of fishers with their nets and boats is typical for Portugal.

Dodie knew from the GPS, but had spared me the anxiety by revealing, that we had been going down a long spit and that our only hope of getting over to our hotel in Aveiro was a hypothetical ferry. Fortunately the ferry existed, but was it running, and when? We were glad to see another touring cyclist there, and he had an idea of these answers!

The cyclist was David Cain, an experienced world traveller, and he had a good idea about when the ferry would go. Hooray! The time was in about half and hour - long enough to exchange lots of stories. Language was no problem, because David is from Ontario!

Dodie and David kibbitz with the ferry ticket taker. The cost was only 2 euros each.

To get from the ferry to Aveiro involved negotiating some quite big and fast roads. But for one thing, the traffic and drivers somehow never gave the feeling of being dangerous, and for another there always turned out to be a bike path way to go! David and us arrived in Aveiro all in one piece.

Aveiro is known as the Venice of Portugal. It does have canals, but oh, does it ever have its own style, and it's gorgeous.

The Venice of Portugal - but those boats are not gondolas but rather were used to gather seaweed. They do convey tourists these days.

The streets with the black and white patterns are called calcadas - they are are a special thing in Aveiro.

The street with our hotel. The hotel is ok, but I am typing this in the bathroom - the only place with adequate light!

Update on Dodie's ribs: she is definitely wincing a lot, but with pain pills is going along well. She says the pain is less than yesterday, but then again she has taken a lot of pain pills. She can breathe well and get on and off the bike, but coughing really hurts. The hotel clerk says another cyclist was in here last week with the same problem. Misery enjoys that company!

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 119 km (74 miles)

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