"That Don't Impress Me Much"

(Shania Twain)





Frankly my first impressions of a Portuguese camp site were not encouraging….poor showers, gravel on the hard mud pitches and local dogs barking all night. Leaving Fundão, I continued going south in the Beira Baixa region, but this involved climbing for an hour on what used to be the main road before they put in the motorway. The climb was fabulous…windy with hairpins but never too steep and in the early morning cool  air then rising up through the coniferous trees was one of the reasons I made the trip. Being Sunday some other cyclists were out and greeted me happily as I sped along. The destination was Portalegre and in the heat I made good progress, again I was loving the scenery and roads. The map showed the road I was on taking a long way round to get to a place that I could get to directly by following another lesser road. My current Michelin map didn’t have the detail that the French ones did to indicate steepness or altitude but I reckoned that I had time and why cycle through Portugal on the main roads?…what would I see? So I immediately descended 200 metres to Vila Velha de Rodão, which was lovely and where the River Grande swelled into a lake. I had a Coca Cola stop and then was taken up 220 metres to 420 metres altitude on a road that could be described as demanding, I then fell to 200 metres before being taken up to 380 metres, all this in about 10 miles. (My cycle computer tells me these altitudes). Nisa arrived and I staggered into a bar where my non-existent Portuguese and his non-existent English came up with fried egg and chips and rice! Lovely people however and the chef filled up my water bottle with cool agua and ice…a nice touch, although the heat would soon melt it. The ride after this was straight forward to Portalegre but Portalegre couldn’t make its campsite available to little old me! There were a couple of signs and I stopped to ask several locals who couldn’t help me or said it was up steep hills. Portalegre itself was on a hill (up and then down) that reminded me of Sleights. In addition was the fact that Portuguese town centres are cobbled. The cobbles are rough blocks of stone badly set in sand…a positive hazard for a bicycle, and not the best surface to allow me to take my eyes off the road to read the signs. As time elapsed with traipsing around the town I decided to stop in a hotel…it was 7 pm by now but the only one I found was shut down. Very frustrated I decided to buy some water and just crack on down the road, which judging by the map didn’t offer much encouragement of a campsite or hotel. At this point I received a text from Anna saying that the kids and Bill were sitting down to Beef Wellington….I know where I would have preferred to be. Anyway as the heat seeped out of the day I did another 25 kilometres to clock up over 161 for the day i.e. over 100 miles when I came to Montforte that offered up a relatively expensive hotel (€50) for what it was…but who was I to negotiate at 8.30 pm in the middle of nowhere! I thanked my luck that I found somewhere. Anyway everything was fine until the next morning when I was checking out and they said they had a technical problem and couldn’t take plastic so could I pay by cash? Well I wasn’t carrying a lot and so we looked at each other and he advised that there was a cash point in the town centre. Fair enough (to a point) but it was a little way a way and …..guess….up another precipitous hill and on cobbles! I said that if he drove me there and back then I could get the cash….he agreed! As all this malarkey was going on then Shania was singing “That Don’t Impress Me much” on the hotel PA which was quite appropriate!

The river at Vila Velha

....we're cookin'