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November 23 Wednesday Bicycle touring Portugal from Lisbon Portugal to Carro de Sapo Portugal After a steamy hot intoxicating shower this morning an announcement in five languages came over the PA: "Attention all campers. Due to heavy consumption of water there will be a water shutoff from 2-4 PM today." How about that? It took me three days, but I ran them out of water. Time to leave. To leave the campground we loaded up our touring bicycles and climbed a steep hill out of the park. Susan loses all color in her face and turns a ghostly white. I see her face and I think to myself that this is going to be a very long trip. Portugal is not easy cycle touring. Susan tells me that she was so busy at work that even though we had warned her that the hills in Portugal are brutal, she hadn't done a lick of training. Not even deep knee bends while at the office. At a fork in the road, we pull our loaded touring bicycles to a stop by a primary school. "I need a washroom," says a pukey-looking Susan with a face the color of ash. She heads off towards the school. But she can't get in. A locked high fence encloses the structure. Sharon goes to help. They encounter three women.Sharon and Susan ask to use the washroom. The three women -- with straight faces -- tell them there is no washroom here. Right. Two hundred kids inside and no washroom. At this point, one road goes up, and another down. The Tejo River -- we have to cross it anyway and it is down -- so we choose down. The cobblestones on a bicycle zooming downhill are beautiful this time of year. Extremely slippery when wet and we have a lot of fog. It gets even better. To top it off, there is a tram line. Somehow, I end up between the rails with a pair of rim-eating rails on either side of me. I pilot down holding steady to my brakes, enough to go slowly, but not enough to skid my front wheel, which is a distinct possibility on this slick cobblestone stuff. My heart is thudding. I begin to pray that I don't meet a streetcar coming up. A stop sign greets me at the bottom. I stop and gingerly move my bike across the rim bender. Hit at the wrong angle would severely test my helmet and remove wanted surface coverings from my body. In a short time we cycle to the river and arrive across from the Belem Ferry Terminal -- just like we knew where we were going. I hit a washroom. One rule in life: Never pass up a chance to use a washroom. Three guys are standing at the three urinals. They all look back at me when I come in. I wait. They are certainly taking their time. One guy finishes, taking an inordinately long time to knock it off and zip. I walk over to his spot. I'm taking a leak. The guy at the middle urinal makes some weird noises and motions his head in my direction. Barf. I finish. While I wash my hands, I notice that the guy that was there before goes and stands there again. While eating waxy chocolate, we try to decide which terminal to cross to. We decide on Port Brandao. Once across, we jump on our fully loaded touring bicycles and cycle up a series of narrow twisting hills. Susan's face nearly becomes one with the rear of a bus that passes her, then quickly cuts in front of her before it is all the way past her. We stop and buy two metal tire irons at a bike shop we pass ... I had broken one of our two remaining plastic ones this morning when I took Susan's tire off to fix a flat front tire on her bike before we could leave Monsanta Campismo Park on our Portugal bicycle tour. We cycle over to Coina, as it is named in a bike tour book that we want to follow. As dusk approaches we try to find bread. We already have pasta and fixings left from Sharon's foray into Jumbo a couple of days ago. I also saw a camping sign. We try to get directions to each. The first store we try has no bread. A pasteleria has no bread either. As I exit empty-handed, a man tells me the fourth house down sells bread. What a novel concept. I go to the fourth house down. There is a guy in the yard. He comes over to a high fence that surrounds his property. I ask if he has bread. "Si." I ask what the price is. He picks up a red stone from his driveway and with the pointy end, he writes 125/10 on his white plaster gate column. I buy the buns. We cycle off and stop when we see a super mercado. I buy their last remaining loaf of bread, after the woman serving bread dropped the second to last one on the floor. The bread resembles a crusty brown cow pie. Sharon and Susan have met a man who says to follow him and he will lead us to a campground. We jump on our fully loaded touring bicycles and follow him 15 km (!) over hill and dale to a campground which is back past a town we were in a couple of hours ago. Super. As we left Carro de Sapo the first time we had passed some lovely white igloo-looking structures that must be some type of oven. When I saw them I thought to myself, If I lived in Portugal, I would have one of those to bake my fresh bread in. I picked out which one it would be as we pass in the opposite direction two hours later. Along this road were a dozen hookers standing or sitting by the roadside. Each were wearing short black skirts and red sweaters. Each girl stood about 100 metres from the next. I love cycle touring in Portugal. Very interesting scenery in Portugal. The fellow in the car wound around some more streets and back lanes. Not once have we seen a sign for a campground. I was sure he was either taking us to his house for the night or out into the woods to rob and shoot us. I decided there were too many houses around for the latter, this is, until we turned onto a dirt road leading along a forest. Hmmm. He seemed nice enough in his business suit. Just as we were becoming severely distressed, campground lights appeared and our kind business man stopped his car and ceremoniously deposited us at the entrance to the Parque Verde campground. How this huge facility with swimming pool and tennis courts can be located in the middle of nowhere with no signs indicating its presence is beyond my comprehension. We pull our fully loaded touring bicycles into the compound. The entire place is surround by a high metal fence. A security guard relieves Susan of her passport (the same procedure as the Lisbon campground), and then he led us to a treed area next to the washrooms. We find a level spot and set up camp. After that, we walk across to the vacant neighbour's spot, who leave their trailer here year round and avail ourselves to their white plastic table and three chairs. We use automotive fuel for the first time in our tiny Whisperlite cycle stove and manage to not quite light a forest fire with the exploding fireball. A little gas goes a long way! The showers have a button located on the outside of the stall. Once it is pressed, a timer starts for a few minutes before it clicks off without a hint of a warning. If one presses this button again ... magic. Nothing happens until a ten minute reset time has elapsed. How water conservation friendly is that? Very. I use three different shower stalls to complete my shower. When I step out of the third shower, the first shower I had been in magically turns on. Ten minutes had expired and now the water was running wastefully down the drain without anyone in the shower. Susan and Sharon report the buttons worked the same in their shower. They each used three showers too. There are lots of stars. Barking dogs talk to one another across the fields nonstop. Sheep are baaing and roosters are crowing as we snuggle into our clean flannel sheets. As I drift off to slumberland I hear Susan mumble that the roosters must be on Victoria time back in Canada. |
