Our second unloaded day of riding. I am sneezing with a runny nose and sore throat, but I am not going to let that keep me in my room. I seem to have more energy than yesterday, but I’m afraid I am going to need it. Our plan is to cycle north and west to the hills of Sintra, where the kings and nobles of Portugal built their summer palaces to escape the heat of Lisbon. From there I want to follow the scenic
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route further west around the cluster of hills that stretch out to Cabo da Roca, and then back to join the coast route at Cascais that leads back east to Lisbon past the Torre de Belem that we visited yesterday. In Cascais, there is a chasm in the walls of the sea cliffs where the waves break through and churn violently, earning it the name la Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). The round trip should be about 75 km.
The day isn’t too promising, but at least it is dry as we start out. I have learned that it is better to get wet coming home than not to see anything at all, especially when I may never get a chance to see it again.
Our first site is the famous Lisbon aqueduct built in the mid 1700s, just west of the Parque de Monsanto. We pass under its Gothic-styled arches in the Alcantara Valley not more than four km from our hotel. There is no reason to stop. Our route bends around the north end of the park and winds its way west.
Although Sintra is a small town visited mostly by tourists, there is basically only one direct route heading west. It is narrow and congested with buses and trucks belching carbon monoxide and smoke. This isn’t an enjoyable ride. The traffic is so close I must pay constant attention. We have climbed maybe seventy metres so far but there isn’t much to see anyway. As Lisbon thins out into patchy suburbs, all its quaintness evaporates. Grungy high rise slums on unlandscaped lots are scattered over the rolling fields. Garbage and abandoned debris litter the scenery.
It gets less congested and more agricultural the further west we go. It is still dry where we are but ahead, as the road climbs approaches the hills of Sintra, it disappears into a bank of dark, foreboding clouds. We press on, Mike several hundred metres in front of me. Sure enough, as we crank steadily up the hill, it begins to rain. I hopes for seeing Capo da Roca and la Boca do Inferno fade.
By the time we reach Sintra it is raining heavily. The cloud ceiling is less than 50m above us. It seems like the place nobles went to avoid the sunshine of Lisbon. None of the castles or palaces higher in the hills are visible. We lock our bikes together and go into am inviting tea house for something warm to drink – a tea perhaps. It’s a zoo inside, packed with bus loads of blue-rinse tourists, queued up at a cafeteria-styled service bar and ready to claw our eyes out if we get in the way of their bus schedule. Nothing relaxing about this place. The windows are fogged from the crush of humanity, but I suspect the bus tourists are used to this type of “break”.
I thought I’d have a chore convincing Mike to continue further on if it was wet, but by this point even I have given up. We have only done 36 km of our planned route. For a moderate price, we buy a ticket back to Lisbon and throw our bikes in the storage hold of a bus. As soon as we leave the hills the rain stops. I just pray my head cold doesn’t turn into pneumonia.
A hot shower and dry clothes can do wonders. I feel somewhat refreshed. We arrive at the Elevador de Santa Justa five minutes late. The Australians aren’t there. I worry that we’ve missed them but it seems unlikely they would not have waited five minutes. We linger another half hour, marveling over the dramatically lit elevator, built 90 years ago by a French architect named Ponsard, a student of Gustave Eiffel’s, that lifts one up to the top of the hill above where Sao Jorge Castle is. We use the time to discuss our departure from Lisbon tomorrow. Weather reports show a wall of rain north of Lisbon so south seems to be the direction to go. If the weather is fine in Setubal, the next district south of Lisbon, then we’ll head east across the broad plain of southern Portugal, the Alentego.
After another half hour, Terry and Darren have not shown up. I am more disappointed than Mike as I enjoy meeting travelers. We eat at a downtown Chinese restaurant recommended in Michelin’s Let’s Go Guide, and afterwards return to Bar 106 to see if the Australians have gone there. They haven’t. It’s fairly quiet when we arrive but it gradually fills up with the Saturday night crowd. We leave by 10 and walk back to our room. We meet Johnny Solbratten in the lobby and talk with him a while. He’s a real sweetheart when he’s sober.
PHOTO 1: Lisbon aqueduct
PHOTO 2: Sintra, in the rain
PHOTO 3: Elevador de Santa Justa
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