3rd November (sunny and warm) 45 km

Camp for the night

Other than street noise and dogs, it was an uneventful night and the sun was shining when we woke. Julia began doing yesterday’s finishing touches to the blog, whilst I got our cuppa on and got breakfast sorted. I did some washing and hung it on the bikes to dry and then washed the breakfast dishes, where I met a Belgian guy, around my age, who is holidaying down here for two months. We are meeting so many long term vacationers, who just rent out the house in England, France or Germany and head south for the winter. The campground we are in give discounts depending on how long you stay. Anything over three months and it’s a pittance.

Tide's in this morning

A beautiful coffee in a lovely setting

Ju had been in touch with Pippa and arranged a coffee meet, so after packing up the tent and taking a few photo ops, we found ourselves down by the sea at a café. It’s been nice finally getting together with the guys on this coast and hopefully one day they can make it out to NZ.  Closing in on midday, we rode inland, just to have a quieter ride to Tavira. The riding in this area was lovely. Lots of citrus farming, so trees aplenty. Portugal for obvious reasons is not lush, but this was a nice change from the scenery that we’ve encountered. We were enjoying the riding and the weather which was perfect. Began our descent from inland to the coast and cycled through a beautiful resort to the seaside.  

The marina at Fuseta

Lovely riding on our way to Tavira

Santa Luzia

Fantastic cycle path

Pippa had told us about a cycle route along the coast and this is where we first stumbled upon it.  Well marked, good seal and a pleasure to cycle on.  This path led us to the beautiful seaside and fishing village of Santa Luzia.  The sun was shining, the temperature perfect with no wind to speak of – it was cycling heaven.

We found our way into Tavira where we got caught up in a traffic jam at a roundabout.  A man had been knocked down or maybe knocked off his motorbike in the middle of the main road and they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive.  We stopped shortly after this to go to the supermarket and then made ourselves some ham buns as we sat in a nearby park.  Upon looking at Maps Me, the coastal route continued, so we followed it from the supermarket, but it soon turned into track with a few muddy patches here and there.  However, we thought it was worth it to be away from the traffic so continued.  Then we came to a bridge which had a decided warp to it and because of this had been fenced off.  It looked like a boat of some description had underestimated its own height and maybe collected the bridge as it tried to sail through.  I can’t see what else would have made the bridge warp like that.

Track not quite so good or quite so scenic

And then we got the wonky bridge.

Artistic license at roadside

Cacti abound in these parts.

So we found ourselves back on the main road, the N125, but at least it had a really good hard shoulder most of the way.  We stopped briefly at an Intermarche to grab some dinner supplies and then turned off to the small town of Monte Gordo for the campground we had picked out.  We got showered and wrote the blog then made some dinner – lentil curry with green beans and corn.  It’s really difficult to find canned vegetables in Portugal – it’s all beans (as in haricot and kidney, shelves and shelves of the stuff, nothing green) and lentils.  We followed that with milky coffee, jam rolls and a chocolate croissant.  All done, dishes washed and it was pitch black and 7.15pm.  The long night loomed before us, so we dressed for the cold and wandered down to the front of the camp where we’d seen some people making use of the free internet.  Loaded the blog and did the wages before retiring to the tent for a cup of tea and jam bun before bedtime.

Ju  here - Our last night in Portugal tonight and the impression it has left me with is that it is quite a poor country.  Nobody really cares about gardening, but with water in such short supply, I suppose that’s not surprising.  However, it leaves the impression that nobody cares much about the outside of their house.  Paint is often peeling off walls and yet if you happen to go inside such a home, it is often very modern inside.  Pippa and Phillip’s rental was a bit like that last night.  Looked nothing from the outside but inside you had a shower with about ten different shower heads and a control panel!  It was nicely decorated with modern furniture.

A nice house we passed today with an actual lawn!

One thing that surprised me about Portugal was the toilet paper issue.  I have never been to a country before where you don’t put the toilet paper down the toilet.  We first saw a sign asking you to put the toilet paper in the bin when we were in our Porto rental.  Fair enough, it was in a very old part of town which I guess is still operating on plumbing from a century ago, maybe longer.  In the various campgrounds we have been in, some have signs asking you to put the paper in the bin, others don’t.  I don’t know if this is because some places have better sewage systems or they just don’t want to scare off the tourists by having something too unfamiliar. 

There are a lot of big dogs in Portugal, often chained up and/or fenced in.  They sound very aggressive as we cycle past and we hope like hell there isn’t a hole in the fence.  It seems they are employed as guard dogs and there is a lot of unattractive barbed wire on top of fences which makes you feel a little bit on guard. 

There are a lot of apartments still being built but we feel it is probably foreign investors who are building and buying them as they are selling for around 300,000 euro on average for a two bedroom place and we doubt many Portuguese would manage to get that sort of money together.  Out of curiosity we googled the average Portuguese income and apparently it is 20,000 euro whereas the European average is 30,000.

We found most Portuguese spoke English, which we were very grateful for and most were quite amiable, once you had started a conversation.  But initially they can be quite stand-offish and you feel like you have to break through first.

In France, Spain and Portugal, the little tabac shops are everywhere.  These are coffee shops for men it appears, and they sell tobacco and alcohol as well.  Older men congregate outside these places from about 7am and it can be quite uncomfortable passing these places with the looks they give you.  In these countries, smoking is as prevalent as it ever was, even with the youngsters and some places still allow smoking inside their establishments.

The campgrounds in general have had very good facilities for a very good price.  The one big thing that is lacking in them is grass.  However, their biggest clients now are the campervans, so I don’t think they are going to worry too much about providing great pitches for tents.

We have been able to get free wifi at some stage nearly every day.  Most campgrounds have it for free and often we will find it available in town squares.  We really haven’t had to search for it in Tourist Info or the local bibliotec like we had to even just two years ago.

So back to Spain tomorrow and our last few days in the tent.