22nd October (sunny and warm) 55 km

Chased by a rabid corgi this morning and bitten by a scorpion in the late afternoon – what a day!

Spent the end of last night trying to get our bikes booked on a flight from Seville to Barcelona. We paid for the flight, but we couldn’t tell them that we had two bikes to take. That, of course needs to be confirmed because we will turn up at check in and they won’t allow them on the flight. It’s such a pain as we have so many things to do with very limited wifi.

The air conditioning wasn’t working in our room, so we opened the only window a couple of inches. Had the usual train tracks behind us….we never travel without them…but we got lucky last night as neither of us heard a train all night….not that I expect Julia to anyway. Getting the ferry this morning for a short hop across the harbour before cycling down the coast toward Faro, where we may catch Julia’s cousin Pippa as they will be holidaying down there.

Thought about the amount of rubbish we saw yesterday. The whole country needs to do a mass clean up like we do in NZ, but on a huge scale. People should be designated areas and they should be out there tidying it up. No wonder so many people we speak to want to come to New Zealand.

Julia here - Enjoyed our free breakfast courtesy of the Hotel Arangues (don’t expect them to still be offering that service after our visit), and cycled out of the hotel car park at 9am.  It was a beautiful cloudless sky with not a breath of wind and an easy ride down to the ferry.  We were feeling very relaxed after a great sleep and good breakfast but hadn’t been riding long when a gleeful corgi saw us approaching and started running alongside yapping.  That wasn’t good enough for him though and today I was the target as he made a beeline for my leg.  I yelled and hissed at him and kicked out at him with my foot, just a warning shot but I would have kicked him in the head if he’d kept coming. We made it just in time to buy tickets for the 9.30am ferry which we boarded with 18 cars and a few pedestrians for the half hour ride across to Troia, for the cost of 7 euros.

Old church in Setubal

Got off the ferry after all the cars and enjoyed very pleasant flat riding on smooth roads with hardly any traffic on our way south.  The bikes felt good and so did we and we hummed along at a good pace.  

This is more like it!

After about 15 km we felt the need for a swim so detoured off the main road to Praia de Comporta, which judging from the amount of carparks is a very popular beach in summertime.  Even though it was 24C today, there were hardly any people there and we were the only people in the water aside from three kids.

Park up the bikes, time for a dip

Hit the road south again and it was just great riding – what a total turnaround from yesterday.  Even the rubbish had diminished.  There was none when we got off the ferry, but that was right by a resort and we noticed it creeping back into the landscape the further we got from the resort.  It also got worse the closer we got to towns – very sad to see and I hope this part doesn’t end up like the stuff we cycled through yesterday.

As we cycled through the village of Torre, we noticed a couple of nesting storks on top of a power pole.  As we got closer we noticed several power poles with stork nests on top and indeed it looked like the village had put platforms on top of their poles to encourage the giant birds to come and nest there.  It had obviously worked as we saw about a dozen storks nesting and flying around this village.  They are a magnificent bird and I would love to have a good camera to capture some images of them in flight.

Marble seems to be quite prevalent around here.  At Meides where we stopped for lunch, this
was a sculpture in the middle of town.  These are all blocks of marble, carved into books.

Sitting in the shade of the church for lunch

When you get sick of sardines, there's always ratatouille

On previous tours I have found it annoying how Pete will start singing a song repeatedly until it gets stuck in my head for weeks on end.  Well I have the same problem but I can’t blame Pete this time.  It was when we had the rental car and I believe it was somewhere around Leon, Spain, where they played on the radio Status Quo’s “You’re in the Army Now”.  Other songs were played too, many of them while we had the rental car, but for some reason this song has stuck in my head.  I think it’s something to do with the cadence we cycle at, because I can be completely ‘army-free’ and jump on my bike and it pops straight back into my head.  And the worst bit is I only know four lines and three of them are the same!  So I’m on a mission to obliterate that song from my head and as soon as it pops up, I start singing Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so Vain’ in an effort to banish the Quo from my brain.

We were on the lookout for a shady place to stop for lunch but didn’t find anywhere until 2pm, when we stopped at Miedes in the shade of their church.  Good old sardines and tomatoes followed by a melofloton, or peach for the uninitiated.  Man I love that word – it’s almost as good as pamplemousse which is French for grapefruit.  I wished I liked grapefruit so I could ask for “un pamplemousse sil vous plait.”

Another endless beach but a pounding shorebreak nixed the swimming option

We arrived at our campground for the night on the coast by a lake which had white flamingos on it.  After putting up the tent and chatting to an English couple with a Pyrenese Mountain dog, we cycled down to the beach for a swim.  However, the swell was quite big and coupled with the shorebreak, we thought it looked a bit dodgy.  Plus by now it was 4.30 and not quite so warm so we contented ourselves with a walk to see the flamingos.  It was on this walk I was bitten by the scorpion between my big toe and the next one.  I didn’t know Portugal had scorpions and I always thought a bite from one was lethal.  But I’ve had bee stings hurt more than that, so after I pulled him off my foot and threw him in Pete’s general direction, we decided a drink was in order and went to the beachside bar – 5 euros for a beer and a wine.  Made friends with the dog of a Dutch couple next to us and threw the ball for him several times.  Took our empty glasses up to the bar and made friends with Ralph the barman who is Polish and Mariana, his Portuguese girlfriend.  Had a nice chat to them and then cycled back to the camp where Pete got a shower and I typed up the blog.

There was a marble monument by the beach and with our limited understanding of Portuguese, we surmised that 17 fishermen had died there on 9^th January 1963, due to a gigantic wave? Storm?  We weren’t sure.  After our chat with Ralph and Mariana, we realised we knew more Portuguese than we thought and that is exactly what had happened.  It had been due to a freak wave while they were fishing in the lagoon – it must have been some wave because the edge of the lagoon would have to be about 100 metres from the high tide line. 

Have thoroughly enjoyed today, despite the varied attacks from the wildlife.  I should stress here that the scorpion was only a baby and pale in colour – did not look very vicious at all and there is no lingering pain in my foot whatsoever.

Pete here: No..nothing to worry about after the scorpion bite. It hasn’t affected the twitch she has and the seizures are usually occurring about twice per day, so no change there either. I have sucked out the sting, but that has more to do with my foot fetish than the bite.

As Julia has relayed, the cycling today under beautiful skies, with a warm sun, was ideal and the road surface was excellent the entire ride here. Trying to find somewhere to sit for lunch took some time and I thought that after yesterday’s episode, if I’d sat Julia down at the side of the road, she’d have been picked up for sure. Although I did get a beep and a wave from two girls in a convertible this afternoon. Nice big waves too…..with their white sticks….

I have to say I am a bit concerned about Julia on this trip. She is always the one to want to get in the water and trying to get her out always takes forever….but not on this tour. She’ll tell you it’s because there are no waves, but she always gives a little shudder and a squeal, whenever we go in, wherever we’ve been. I think she’s getting soft in her old age.

Ralph gave us the name of a hot water beach just 20km from here and we’re heading that way tomorrow, so we may test it out depending on weather conditions. Julia has just gotten out of the shower and is washing some clothes, so I’ll get some dinner cooking.