"Oye Como Va"

(Santana)

Small town en route

A gloomy but dry start as I hit the road out of the Alto region and into the Alentjo region. The bike had run brilliantly for all the trip but a few strange clicks had developed and I spent many an hour contemplating and sometime when stopped tightening and scrutinising all the componentry hoping it was nothing important rather than a failing bottom bracket. I got to Évora easily and this originally had been an overnight stop but after having ‘over-achieved’ yesterday I decided to push on and continue down my friend the IP2. However my ‘friend’ let me fly in a south east direction with a tailwind and a downward slope until advising me that donkey carts, pedestrians, tractors and bicycles couldn’t proceed any further….so back up the road, into the teeth of a gale, for 8 kilometres to find another route south. This took me into the wilds and cars were a rarity, they were no loss but they do give re-assurance that there is life in the vicinity! I trundled into Torre de Coelheiros thinking that some food would be nice but expected that this outpost would just have tumbleweed and abandoned farmyards. Anyway I found a café/bar and when I put my head around the door there was “Luther” playing on the bar TV in English with Portuguese subtitles, I can confirm that he does say “Não” a lot while clutching blood stained corpses. Language barriers were overcome when the barman, using the handle of a teaspoon, traced my route into Beja. Along the route then cork trees were a serious farming business and many stripped trees were evident with artics carrying the booty away. On my journey light rain was falling….which became serious rain. By the time I found Beja I was truly wet although my spirits were lifted by a set of signs for “Campismo” and a route that avoided the dreaded cobbles through the town. When I got there, a truly miserable little site surrounded by 10 foot high walls, it really did rain and I set up camp in the sanitary block until I could pitch the tent. For reasons that were not the milk of human kindness the camp manager told me to take all my stuff out of the block! I said I would after finishing my evening meal that I was cooking on the draining boards. It was important to warm up with something hot as they were repairing the showers and there was no hot water that night, the joys of a cold shower (not). My dinner was ravioli with a tomato based sauce, a staple that has propelled me down Europe but one I won’t be partaking for several months after getting back to Blighty.

...in the dry before eviction