20 years ago today – Day 13

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March 16 – Sao Bartholomeu to Sagres, 642 km

It was a day of stiff headwinds. I need to write in the past tense to put it behind me.

The sky was mostly clear, like yesterday, and warmish, but our workout yesterday had both of us feeling sluggish. The roads surfaces today were not good, for the most part. We crept along at a painful pace, wondering all the way how we’d ever make it to Sagres at this rate. Past Silves, between Portimao and Lagos to the south of us, cars zipped by us every few seconds, often several at a time. It was nerve wracking.

It was not the day we had hoped for. We had pushed on beyond the half-way point to Sagres yesterday so that today would be shorter, flatter and more restful. And it was shorter and flatter but the constant headwind made it much worse. I have been in stiff headwinds for hours before, such as the time I rode from Bancroft to Toronto, and they are always the worst. It’s like climbing up a steep hill all day.

In spite of an early start we reached Sagres around 5pm, 95 km from Sao Bartholomeu. Even Mike was too tired to search for a pension so we waited in the main town square until 6 for the youth hostel to open. The wind was cold. I entertained Mike with my chattering teeth until he told me to take a walk.

The hostel is within the walls of the Forteleza, the Fortress of Henry the Navigator who set up his School of Navigation here over five hundred years ago. It is on a headland that juts out into the sea, a plateau with a narrow isthmus. The isthmus facing the land has a high wall but there are only waist-high walls around the perimeter of the headland because the shear cliffs around all sides are 100m high.

The hostel is cheap – 700 esc. It has dorm rooms with many bunk beds, and many restrictions on space and movement that makes staying there a bother. The low price, amazing views and historical significance of the place makes it worth staying in for one night, but we have no intention of staying here longer than that.

I am frustrated with the all the regulations and restrictions and not in the mood to walk far or deal with Michael’s idiosyncrasies. I stay in the hostel and eat what groceries I have with me while he goes out to find a meal on his own.

There is only one other patron of the youth hostel tonight, a Kiwi named Nick Tulloch. He is 27 and has been traveling away from home for three years now. Off and on he returns to his uncle’s place in Scotland to work as a repairman in his automotive garage to pay for his travel expenses. Nick is the most organized traveler I have ever met, with the discipline and attention to detail of a seasoned military man. Everything has its exact place in his backpack and he packs and unpacks his belongings like a sacred ritual. He has even worked out ways to do his laundry while showering. If this was the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, I’d really have to say “This guy’s got his towel together!”

Mike returned after dinner and the three of us spent the rest of the evening talking. Nick has accepted our offer to look for another space to rent together tomorrow, as we plan to rest here for a few days.

PHOTO 1: near the town of Luz
PHOTO 2: entering Vila do Bispo, last town before Sagres
PHOTO 3: in Vila do Bispo
PHOTO 4: entrance to the Fortaleza, Sagres youth hostel
PHOTO 5: me

20 years ago today – Day 12

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March 15 - Mertola to Sao Bartholemeu, 547 km

We begin our journey south to the Algarve today. Our plan is to cross a ridge of hills that separate the Algarve from the Alentejo and proceed west inland away from the major population centers and traffic congestion until we reach Sagres at the south-west point of Portugal. It will take two days, about 200 km.
I want to start early because it will be a harder day than usual, but Mike keeps me waiting until after 9am when the grocer store opens to save 40 escudos on bottle returns, and then at the post office as he mails his postcards. I am visibly impatient but I bite my tongue and say nothing. But when we hit the road I find my muscles are tired and I am very slow. Now it is his turn to be impatient with me.

Our route today takes us south of Mertola on N267 and N122, following the border of the Guadiana Valley Natural Park. The traffic is light. Eight km south we take another side road that serves as a shortcut to N124. There are not many people in this area. We pass through one village and by schoolyard filled with children. They cheer wildly and run towards us. We have become accustomed to people and animals staring, gaping mouths and confused looks, as we pass, but not such a boisterous reception as this.

That is the last town we see for some time. We reach N124 and follow it west as it climbs and climbs, and then falls off quickly. But not too quickly because the road surface is very rough and patchy here. Some of the corners are coated with gravel, making them dangerous when we are doing downhill at any speed. The Portuguese don’t know how to make roads, Mike tells me. He says I will see the difference when we cross into Spain in a few days because they do know how to make them.

The road continues to rise and drop over several valleys that have been carved deeply by their inhabiting streams. It takes us until mid-afternoon to reach the highest and final crest of the ridge of hills. We meet a British couple cycling north who tells us it will be mostly downhill from here. We get our first view of
the Algarve to the south, but it’s not much of one – a feeble reward for such hard work – but at least from this point there is more falling than climbing. The road surface improves too, on the south side.

N124 leads us west until we finally reach the major highway that runs from Faro to Lisbon. We have a brief break, our first break of the day with food. I feel like I am done for the day but there is no place to stay here. We push on a few more km to Sao Bartholomeu de Messines.

We’ve been chased by storm clouds for the past 20 km but we make it to the town without getting rained on. It is shortly after 5pm and the light is rapidly fading. There is only one pension in town so we take what we can get and be grateful. The town is ugly. The buildings look run down, their lower halves splashed with the red clay of the area, looking like filthy children. I buy groceries and then we walk to a restaurant we saw coming into town. There’s not much choice in restaurants either.

We retire early. Even though today’s ride is 15 km shorter than the one from Setubal to Evora, it has been harder with all its many climbs. My mattress feels as hilly as the terrain we have just crossed.

PHOTO 1: fields of lavender
PHOTO 2: sod house north of Algarve
PHOTO 3: hills north of Algarve
PHOTO 4: rough roads
PHOTO 5: entering the Algarve

20 years ago today – Day 11

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March 14 – Beja to Mertola, 439 km



We spend the first two and a half hours of the morning visiting Beja Castle and the former monastery, which is now a museum. It was almost noon before we are on the road again.


For the past three days we have been crossing the Alentejo, a plain that makes up most of south-central Portugal, but now we are moving inland. Our destination is Mertola, south-east of Beja about 85 km, but first we head east to the town of Serpa. There is a headwind which, according to Mike, explains our beautiful morning, our first cloudless day.

Serpa looks great from a distance. It has both a castle and an aqueduct, but we only have time to ride around the town and take a few pictures, before stopping for beer and a snack. We find the restaurant that the American couple in Evora had recommended but it wasn’t open for lunch. I apply my first sun screen of the trip and we’re back on the road at 2pm.

The rest of the route is scenic and peaceful. A kilometer outside of Serpa we take a small, unnumbered road south to the village of Salvador and from that point there is hardly any traffic. We are entering the broad valley of the Guadiana River which forms the border with Spain. We can see Spain in the distance though we quite a ways from the river itself.

A couple passing in a car stop to talk to us when they see Mike’s “Captain Canada” cycling jersey. They tell us they spend half the year in Hamilton, Ontario, and the other half in Loule in the Algarve just south of here. Loule is where the Americans we met in Evora love too. We’ll have to check it out when we get there.

We have definitely beyond the Alentejo plain. The hills around us are partially wooded and sparsely populated. There are many rocky outcroppings. Mertola sits on a particularly large outcropping, rather majestically on the far side of a river as we approach it from the east. The setting is spectacular and makes the town look much larger than it is, with its castle at the crest and the rest of the town cascading down the hillside beneath it.

There are only two main streets, one twisting and turning through the town with several short sides streets connecting to it. The other forms a T-intersection with it at the newer end of the town. There are only two pensions in town. We find a room in the one near the T-intersection.

Being much smaller than either Evora or Beja, I expect it to be quiet but it’s not. There are gangs of noisy youths shouting and carrying on outside. At 8:30, after dinner, I take a walk alone to check out the town. I encounter one group of youths, about 15 to 17 years old. They lock eyes with me as I walk past. We passed the same group as we rolled into town on our bicycles. They are probably as curious about me as I am about them, but there is a language barrier, no way to talk to them. I stopped at a patisserie for a snack before returning to my room.

PHOTO 1: tower on Beja Castle
PHOTO 2: Mike at Beja Castle
PHOTO 3: Beja, from Beja Castle
PHOTO 4: the Alentejo
PHOTO 5: Serpa
PHOTO 6: aqueduct in Serpa
PHOTO 6: Mike ahead, riding through Sapres
PHOTO 7: road south of Sapres
PHOTO 8: valley of the Guardiana River
PHOTO 9: Mertola

20 years ago today – Day 10

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March 13– Evora to Beja, 352 km

It rained last night but this morning it is cool and pleasant. There is broken cloud cover, a perfect day for riding. Mike is fast off the starting block again, with his new freewheel.It is 80 km to Beja, a much shorter ride than two days ago. We take N254 south. It is very flat and straight. We make excellent time and I am keeping up with him. But then he begins to slow because, due to his fast pace the past couple days, his knees are hurting while mine are fine.

My twirly-whirlies are still going fine. I suspect Mike tires to ride ahead of me so no one suspects we are together. He says I am too obviously gay. He has his own toy that clips to his handlebars. It has four buttons which make different sounds when he pushes them – a rat-a-tat-tat machine gun fire, the ding ding ding of a trolley bell, an oscillating siren sound and a yelping sound. He loves to surprise innocent bystanders with them as we approach.

He also says my faded pink helmet makes me too obviously gay, but who is he to talk with his hot pink bicycle shorts and sunglasses? Although the frames are pink, his lenses are orange. He says my helmet look like a pumpkin when he wears them and he amuses himself by calling me ‘pumpkin head’.

Once we reach the village of Viana, just over a third of the way, we take even smaller, unnumbered roads, through the rolling plain of the Alentejo. These country roads shorten our distance and make the day even more pleasant. There is not much in the way of scenery, just rolling farmland and cork, orange, lemon and olive trees. As we reach the village of Cuba, there is a sign that says, in Portuguese, “Welcome to Cuba, a nuclear weapons free zone.”


An hour later, Beja appears on the horizon on top of a small hill, an understated version of the Emerald City. Like Evora, it’s a walled city. The turret of the Beja castle rises above the rest of the town. Mike finds a cheap pension for 2000 escudos and a restaurant downstairs serves us dinner. Before dinner we walk around the town to see the outside of the castle and some of the older houses with their interesting ceramic tiles. It is less touristy and cheaper, but that is because there is much less to see than in Evora.

PHOTO 1: cork oak trees
PHOTO 2: a cork crop
PHOTO 3: gypsies passing
PHOTO 4: Mike, lunch stop in olive grove
PHOTO 5: "Welcome to Cuba, a nuclear weapons free zone"
PHOTO 6: Beja at night

20 years ago today – Day 9

March 12 - exploring Evora

Breakfast is over and we’ve just come from the Evora Tourism Office. We picked up maps and found out where the only bicycle repair shop is in town.

“What are you going to do if the shop can’t repair the freewheel and they don’t have a replacement that fits?” I ask Mike. “The Portuguese never throw anything out,” he replies. “They are masters at repairing anything. Besides, all I need are some new ball bearings.” I’m not sure as he is, but I hope he’s right.

The repair shop is a grotty, mess-strewn workshop at the rear end of another store. It is strange how such a décor anywhere else would make you turn around and walk away, but in a bike repair shop it instills consumer confidence. The grizzled repairman turns the damaged freewheel over in his hands a couple times and, without even looking at Mike, tosses it into a pile of rubbish in the corner. “Lixo!” he proclaims – the Portuguese word for ‘garbage’. Mike reclaims the freewheel from the pile of junk. He is looking crestfallen and confused. “Do you have another one like this?” he asks him in Spanish. The old man takes it from him and looks at it again. He curls his lip up in disapproval and simply says “No”, but he comes up with a cheap freewheel that he is able to make fit to the bike with some heavy-handed coercion.

Mike seems pleased enough. “I guess this will last until I get to a better bike shop,” he says hopefully. He has other errands to do so I leave him and walk around the town on my own.

The town is ancient and has loads of character. The medieval walls are worn and mossy. The streets are generally cobblestone. Many of the houses have the renowned Portuguese blue-white ceramic tiling around the windows and flowers in the window boxes. Many statuettes of the Virgin Mary decorate the gardens and porticoes. “Protestants worship Jesus and Catholics worship the Virgin Mary,” Mike would say.


I toured around the many sights, the cathedral started in the 13th century, the university from the 16th century, the palace of Vasco da Gama and ruins of a 1st century Roman temple. I paid to get into the castle. It is a modest size but still exciting because it is the first one I’ve visited on this trip. I meet Mike inside, reading his guide book and soaking in history. He has regained his composure and looks quite peaceful.

After half an hour in the castle, we search out the second largest church in the town, Saint Francis, which has the most interesting attraction of all the town, at least to me. If it doesn’t turn you off religion, nothing will. It is the 15th century “Capela dos Ossos”, the Chapel of Bones, decorated entirely with the bones of monks and pious parishioners. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few witches and fags cemented into the walls too. Above the door a sign in Latin reads (translated) “We bones that are here, for your bones we wait”. Kind of makes one all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it, doesn’t it?

Back at the Pensao Giroldo, we meet an American couple who have been cycling around for some time. We had discussed going diagonally south-west across the Alentejo to Sagres after we leave Evora, but the Americans highly recommend taking the inland route, following the Spanish border south to the Algarve. It seems like a plan.

Mike and I received several responses to our ad in Gai Pied, the French gay magazine, looking for hosts on our trip through France. I made a list of their names, addresses and phone numbers before I left Toronto. I take some time tonight to write to a couple of them who wrote back in English. The others I give to Mike as he is fluent in French and I am not.

PHOTO 1: Place Giraldo
PHOTO 2: Roman temple to goddess Diana
PHOTO 3: Evora street
PHOTO 4: Evora Cathedral
PHOTO 5: drainage gargoyle at castle
PHOTO 6: ceramic tiling around local windows
PHOTO 7: "We bones that are here, for your bones we wait."
PHOTO 8: Chapel of Bones detail, skulls
PHOTO 9: Chapel of Bones detail, hanging out
PHOTO 1O: Chapel of Bones, Catholic Gothic

20 years ago today – Day 8

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March 11 – Setubal to Evora, 272 km

For our second day of loaded touring in a row, our day begins with a ferry ride, this time from Setubal across the mouth of the Sado River to Troia. Troia looked so grand with its white towers gleaming in the sunset across the harbour as we glided into Setubal last evening. I was really looking forward to seeing it up closely. Now we see it for what it is – a trashy condo/convention centre – not a town at all. We circle around looking for a supermarket but nothing is open. We decide to get what we need later, but first I need to find a washroom. The fish burger I had for dinner last night is struggling to escape and find its way back to the sea. We find an upbeat hotel with a restroom just inside the door so I don’t need ask permission from the desk clerk. It is 9:20 by the time we are finally on the road.

Troia sits at the north tip of a long sand spit peninsula that separates the Sado River from the sea. The road is very straight and rises and falls as a gentle reflection of the much higher dunes to the west. Scrub bush and patches of flowers dots the dunes. There is hardly any traffic. Mike is leading at a break-neck pace. I am overheating in my sweater, jacket and tights which I donned on the ferry to keep off the early morning chill. I want to complain about the pace but he already thinks I am a wimp who needs to be whipped into shape, whether or not my knees are ready for it. Besides, he wants to make it to Alcacer do Sal before the banks and supermarkets close for lunch.

The dune road ends at a small village named Comporta. There are sidewalks but no paved streets. We find a grocery store and buy juice, bread, cheese and fruit. After our mid-morning snack, I shed my sweater and jacket and we’re back on the road, this time headed east on N253 15 km to Alcacer. The route is flat and Mike sets a fast pace again. I keep up with him for the first 10 km but then fall back. He eases up somewhat to accommodate me.

There is more vegetation the further inland we go, but we are still beside the estuary of the Sado. Wherever the ground is eroded I see sand below the soil. Gradually farms begin to appear as we approach Alcacer.

We arrive in Alcacer just before noon. I go into a bank to buy some Portuguese escudos and the teller gets alarmed when he sees that I have forgotten to sign my travelers cheques. He asks me where I got them and why I didn’t have to sign them at the time. He calls the bank manager who advised him not to cash them. For a minute I am afraid I will lose them but the teller advises me to leave, sign them and then take them to another bank. Mike, who works in international banking, is not at all impressed.

The hills are green immediately beyond Alcacer as we follow N5 and the north side of the Sado River valley deeper into the rolling, rising plain called the Alentejo. In a couple months it will be a dry, gold-brown, Mike tells me, but now it is green with the winter rains. We climb 200m and have broad vistas of a variety of farmlands. It is much more pleasant and more interesting than yesterday.

Mike has pulled ahead out of sight again, but I catch up with him past the bottom of a long downhill and partly up the next hill. He is off his bike at the side of the road picking something out of the dirt. “Mechanical problems” is all he says when I ask him what is up. His freewheel has come apart and when he took the rear wheel off the ball bearings inside spilled onto the ground.

Now it’s my turn to be unimpressed, but I am not as silent about it as he usually is. How can your freewheel fall apart on the second day of a year-long trip? Didn’t your take your bike it for an overhaul before we left, I asked him. It wasn’t necessary, he argues. It’s been problem-free for months. Obviously it was necessary, I retort, but you just didn’t do it.

I am sure the freewheel will never work again but he insists on finding all the spilled bearings and patching the freewheel together the best he can, so I am on my hands and knees helping him look for them. He manages to get it back together but not before he realizes that all the larger bearings on the outer part of the freewheel had fallen out before this. We are still 50 km from our day’s destination, the walled city of Evora.

N5 becomes N2, and then N380 as we limp on towards Evora. Mike is unable to coast. He must keep him pedals rotating at all times which is tiring for him. Serves him right, I say under my breath. He has to go slower now so it is easy to keep up with him. I don’t let him out of my sight in case the situation gets worse. Grocer boys in a village named Apeadeiro de Alcacovas run out to greet us and check out our bikes. At another point we are lost and a stranger, seeing us reading our maps, saves us from taking a wrong route.

The last ten km of highway before Evora are paved with uneven brick that act as a full-body vibrator. That slows us right down. We ride for short stretches on the shoulder where we can to avoid the rattling. Any ball bearings we repacked into Mike’s freewheel were gone by the time we got to the gates of Evora.

The youth hostel in Evora is closed. We rent a room on the third floor of a pension named Giraldo’s for 2400 esc and dine at a restaurant beneath a different pension that we declined because of the cost. We are grateful to have made it to Evora before dark and we’re able to laugh at the day’s misadventures now that they are behind us. We covered 123 km today. We’re dead tired and have earned a good night’s sleep.

PHOTO 1: Alcacer do Sal
PHOTO 2: Mike at Alcacer do Sal
PHOTO 3: cork oak tree on the Alentejo
PHOTO 4: Mike, nearing Evora with busted freewheel

20 Years ago today – Day 7

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March 10 - Lisbon to Setubal - 149 km

This is it, the big day. The last two days have been practice runs. Today is our first day of loaded touring. It is a wonderful feeling to load my bags on the bike, throw my legs over the top of my saddle and push off knowing that I am leaving town on my own steam, and that tonight and for most days afterwards I will be in a new city I have never seen.

It would have been dramatic to leave Lisbon by cycling over the great bridge that spans the harbour, Ponte 25e de Abril, but instead we ride only about 400m to the dock in the harbour where a ferry takes us across to the community of Almada on the south side. A more subtle crossing, but perhaps safer.

It is a gentle beginning to a year of cycle touring. It won’t always be this easy, I am sure. On the far side I make one final touch to my cycling ensemble. I have kept this a secret from Mike until now, and I am quite sure at the moment he wishes that I had kept it a secret for another 12 months. At the dock on the far side I pulled two plastic ‘windmills’ (you know, those children’s toys that twirl on a stick when the wind hits them) and set them up so that they jut out from the tops of my front panniers like two crazy, whirling headlights when I am moving into the wind. Mike doesn’t like them, or that him not liking them makes he laugh with delight.

From the docks in Almada, we find our way to N10, Av. 25e de Abril, and follow it south east. By now you must be wondering why so many places have this name – the pension, the bridge, the street. That was the date of the Carnation Revolution – which doesn’t mean that the Portuguese find carnations to be revolting. The Carnation Revolution, which began on the 25th of April 1974, was when a left-leaning military coup overthrew the long-ruling repressive (some say ‘Fascist’) dictatorship of General Salazar and paved the way for Portugal’s first democratic election in 1976. The big bridge used to be called the Salazar Bridge until shortly after the coup. That election was won by Mario Soares, leader of the Portuguese Socialist Party. It was Soares who convinced the Portuguese to join the European Union, in part to prevent any future dictatorships from taking hold of the country. On January 13, Soares was re-elected President with 70% of the vote on the first ballot. I can still see some campaign signs here and there left over from the election.



About 10 km along N10, we turned south on Av. Padre Cruz, N378, which leads 20 km south to the resort town of Sesimbra. The last few km, we encounter sizeable hills and the south side, facing the sea, is covered in low cloud and fog. I had hoped this would be an interesting town, being off the beaten track at the west end of the Arrabida Natural Park, but it isn’t. A forest of new condominiums ruins the natural beauty of its setting. It is probably a weekend seaside get-away and a bedroom community for Lisbon. Along the boardwalk that follows the beach, also named 25e de Abril, the smell of barbequed fish on outdoor grills is strong.

We climb the painfully steep hill back out of Sesimbra. It was a struggle partly because of my cold and partly because I am out of shape after a long Toronto winter. Mike is worried about our pace (my pace) as I have been trying to take it easy on my knees this first day. He wants to take the busier truck route north of the national park into Setubal because it would be faster. I want go through the hills in the park to see the rugged coastline and I feel I am being punished because he wants to arrive earlier. He agrees to go through the park when I promise that we’ll arrive by 6pm. I am worried about my knees but I am determined to keep my word.

The route through the park led back up over the hills to the slopes above the coast. Then it plummets steeply until it is almost at sea level. My odometer tells me I surpass 45 km/hr at points. It is slow after this though, as the road climbs again to about 300m right into the clouds. Damn it is chilly in the clouds. The road falls back down to sea level and remains mostly level until we arrive in the city of Setubal.

Setubal is a regional capital, but is unspectacular as we coast along around the bay on roads parallel to the beach. We check out a couple hotels and settle for a modest one at 3000 esc/night. We have covered 83 km today and did three major hills. Not a bad start.

PHOTO 1: hills before Sesimbra
PHOTO 2: Sesimbra
PHOTO 3: north of Arribida National Park
PHOTO 4: coast, Arribida National Park
PHOTO 5: castle outside of Setubal