We planned to go into the ATN office in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo today. It’s a 15 km ride from the campsite, and we wanted to visit the castle on the hill above the town, so we decided to head off early and avoid the heat. I fell off the bike again on the gravel track from the campsite to Algodres, which I was delighted with. Luckily nothing was damaged except pride. I’m very proud though so it was pretty bad.

It was better once we got on the road and started making distance towards Figueira. There were some gentle hills, but it was easy with the bikes unloaded, and we sped along enjoying the cool bright morning. We saw a couple of hawks drifting on the wind, presumably looking for breakfast. We had already had breakfast, but when we went past an actual working bakery with a man outside loading the fresh bread into a van for delivery it was too much to resist. Lack of sleep and a crash had robbed me of the wee bit of Portuguese I have, so I communicated by speaking English and pointing. I’m not proud of this but there we go, it worked.

Back on the road with a warm loaf and a couple of natas in the pannier it was just a few more km to Figueira. We got into town and went straight through to get to the castle. They built it in a good place, the hill was really steep! I was glad that we weren’t fully loaded as we cranked out way up. The view from the top was pretty cool though!

The castle is a ruin really, but some of the remaining walls are pretty high and you can get a good idea of the structure. The walls must be 8 ft thick in places, it was really impressive. It was closed when we arrived, but luckily the base of the walls is built into sloping rock, so we were able to climb up and get a look inside. Presumably it was a bit harder when the walls were full height and there were people shooting at you.

The ground outside the castle walls was covered in poppies enjoying the morning sunshine. Very poignant.

We went round the village, but it was early in the morning so nothing was open really. Can’t say much except it was pretty!

After that we tested our mettle going back down the hill as fast as possible and got into the office around 9.30. One of the good things about not getting paid or actually being employed is that no-one complains if you arrive late.

We haven’t had much proper work to do today. I proof read a sampling protocol for Tiago, but apart from that it’s been route planning and blogging. However, we did find out that we should be pretty busy for the next few days. There is a group of school kids visiting the reserve this week, and we are going to help the interns show them around the reserve, as well as doing some invasive algae removal and helping Tiago set up his  sampling sites. Should be a fun week!

– Dave

We slept pretty well in the end last night! This morning we had breakfast with Neik and Johanna, then we went to meet Pedro. Johanna decided to go to see the ruins near Figuera de Castelo de Rodrigo, which meant me and Anna could get back to Algodres in the van, hurrah! Still haven’t heard from Johanna, hope she hitchhiked ok…..

Once we got back to Algodres we dropped the van keys at Johanna’s got our bikes and headed back to the reserve. Our plan of doing a long hike today was scuppered by the late start, so instead we decided to just have a chilled out day near the campsite. We did some washing, Anna did yoga on the groundsheet of the tent (so dedicated), and I went for a short walk to the river to see if I could see some vultures. I did see some, but they nest on the opposite side of the valley, so they’re very hard to make out!

We’ve come back to Algodres this evening to shop for tomorrow’s food. We decided we will DEFINITELY go for that long walk tomorrow so we need everything sorted out tonight so we can get an early, cool start!

– Dave

Today we woke up in the peaceful Faia Brava reserve campsite. No road noise, no light pollution, just the birds and the breeze! And the stars in the night were spectacular – there was no moon so we could see the whole milky way.

We rode down the 3km dirt track into the village of Algodres to meet Pedro, who was giving us and Johanna a lift into town, to save us the 3 hour walk. We all squeezed into his great little Renault 4 GTI and puttered along to the office.

The office has a little room for the interns and Dave, Johanna and I joined Niek and Tiago in there for the day. Niek is working on finding the best way of reforesting the reserve and Tiago is developing a monitoring strategy for the regrowth of Cork Oak and Holm Oak. They both told us about their projects and Dave helped Tiago with some mapping work whilst I did some research for Neik. Neik has some tree seedlings growing in the nursery at the campsite, so we’ve been given the task of keeping them watered for the next few days! It’s nice to be able to lend a hand whilst we’re here.

Dave and I also tried to sort out the next stage of our travels to Switzerland. We need to get trains there to arrive in time but there are lots of trains that don’t allow bikes and it’s proving difficult!

In the evening, Pedro came back to the office and we thought it was time to go home, but he was staying out for dinner, so we all went to Neik and Tiago’s house near the office to cook and eat tortilla and salad and have nice chats about nature and culture. Around 11pm we went back to meet Pedro but they were still on their bird course, just about to go out to listen to night birds! He lent the three of us his van to drive back to Algodres, but it only had two seats and after going about 500 yards, we got stopped by the police for taking a passenger in the back! They were really nice about it and we didn’t have to pay the €120 fine, but that was the end of the journey, so we had to skulk back to Neik and Tiago’s house and ask to stay over! Thankfully they had a room spare with three beds in it, so we collapsed into bed around 1am. Perhaps we’ll cycle the 15km to the office on Monday.

– Anna

We got up before the sunrise! That meant I could faff around taking pictures of the sunrise. Even so, we left camp in record time, on the road by 7.45. Yeah, still room for improvement.

We were faced with a decision between unknown quiet country roads today and a busy main road (which may or may not have been a motorway). We elected the scenic route. It went well at first, from this….

To this….

To this…

It was a beautiful cool morning though, the birds were singing and the flowers were out.

To top it off we we weren’t on a horrific motorway. So even when we had to push for a bit, we were happy!

Luckily for us the dirt track eventually turned back into a road and popped us out close to where we needed to cross the Douro river. We stopped for a spot of lunch on some stone benches in the high street and devoured enormous cheese sandwiches, then crossed on an aged bridge.

We were a bit worried about the next part of the ride because as far as we could see, it was on an IC road. We had checked it out that morning and found that in Portugal, IC and IP roads may or may not be designated as motorways. Roads can also have more than one designation. This one was an IC, and N and an E!. The only way you can tell whether you can ride these roads apparently is just by seeing if there are “no bikes” signs when you get on. Thankfully there weren’t here, because that would have meant a 2-3 hour diversion!

So after spending about 2 hours doing 8 km on the dirt track we started burning through the remaining distance on the main road. We climbed the side of the Douro valley and soon we saw a massive dam across the river in front of us. Google maps said we could avoid the dam (and a few hundred metres) by taking an alternative bridge. When we got to it however, it was definitely a no-go! It turned out to be an old railway bridge that was slowly rusting into the river.

So, we went the long way round, over the dam and continued climbing, the sun was really starting to get to work now, and we were heating up nicely. I felt sorry for this poor guy I spotted; the only person I could see working on the vines in the whole valley!

After a bit more climbing we got to Vila Nova de Foz Côa. We expected we wouldn’t be able to check into our room at the youth hostel until 6, as we’d been told at our last Hostelling International hostel, but we decided to see if we could go and drop our bags then hang out in town for a bit. When we got there though, the guy said we could check in straight away. Aaaaaah showers! The guests’ washing machine was broken  but that was no problem either, he took our laundry and did it in the linen washing machine. What a legend!

So, freshly showered and with an afternoon to ourselves we decided to check out the Palaeolithic Art museum. The Côa Valley is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the rock carvings here, which date from 22,000 BCE. We couldn’t visit any of the sites on such short notice, although it is possible if you book in advance. The museum was great, it gave you a good overview of rock art around the world, explained the different eras and styles of art that exist in the Côa Valley, and gave some history of the site and the discovery of the artwork (it was during a dam building project that was eventually cancelled due to the discoveries). There were some replica works in the museum which we photographed for your viewing pleasure.

The museum building itself was also really interesting. It was built into the ground, which is a great idea from a temperature point of view. It is all bare concrete on the inside and feels pretty brutal, but it’s good to give the artefacts themselves centre stage. Going out into the sun again was not a nice prospect. Luckily Anna has a good hat.

On the way home we found some trees that had shed loads of fluffy white matter onto the ground. I have hayfever so didn’t want to go near enough to establish whether it was flower-stuff or seed-stuff, but it looked cool!

We arrived back at the hostel to find all our clothes freshly laundered. Impeccable service. Now all we have to do is cook dinner and get an early night to set us up for our last leg to the Faia Brava reserve tomorrow. Can’t wait!

– Dave

Yesterday the ride was absolutely brutal – the hills at the end of the day in the afternoon heat on tired legs nearly finished me off! After that, neither of us fancied a big day today. The lovely motorway assistance man who had escorted us back to safety said that there was a big campsite in the woods at Vila Flor, only 20km away. We were too tired to make it yesterday but decided to have a short ride today and stay there tonight.

It feels like it was a good decision. We slept in at the hotel because we’d been informed that breakfast would be served at 9am. ‘Breakfast’ turned out to be a ham and cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, but when you’re only paying 30 euros for a big double room, you can’t be too fussy about such things.

We set off around 11am to do our short ride to Vila Flor. It was beautiful! We took a small road alongside the dreaded IC-5 and enjoyed the gentle undulating ride. No crazy steep valleys today, phew! It was hot but the road was quiet and the riding was easy, so we were alright. We went through some lovely towns, one of which sported a bus stop with a fireplace!

On one lovely downhill section, I came alongside Dave for a chat and heard a blast of lorry horn behind me! I tried to pull in and almost got us tangled up, doing 40kph with a truck behind us, but thankfully nothing was coming the other way so he could pass safely, and by some miracle or other neither of us fell off before I could get the panniers separated. We stopped in a side road to recover for a bit. This was a particularly poignant incident because my parents had a handlebar tangle crash just the other day that resulted in two fractures! So my Dad has his arm in a cast and Mum is all bruised. Luckily Dave and I didn’t follow suit. Or go under a truck. Guess I should go back to riding in the ‘gutter’!

We made it to the campsite around 12:30, showered, did our laundry (it’s going to actually dry!) and pitched the tent. Then after second lunch, we headed 3km into town, up and down some 10% hills, but without our stuff they were easy peasy!

It was really hot today and we were sweating just wandering around town doing the shopping. Then we stopped in the shady town square for some cherries and oranges before braving the sweaty 10% hill back to the campsite.

We set up to make dinner as a gang of French people on tour in 4x4s came in and set up camp alongside us. Hopefully they don’t like to stay up late partying! We had a delicious dinner, sorted all our stuff out and got into bed. The sun has just gone down but it’s still really warm – can’t even contemplate getting into the sleeping bag yet!

Tomorrow we’re aiming for Vila Nova de Foz Coa, a more respectable 50km away.

– Anna

Today we actually got up when the alarm went off!  Although 7am in Portugal is 8am in Spain, it was warm and the sun was already up, so maybe not such a massive success.  Still, we were on the road by 9am and it was straight uphill in the hot sun, which pretty much set the scene for the day.

Both of us were in a pretty bad mood.  Not necessarily angry with each other (I don’t think) but just a bit moody.  I was pretty quiet today and we rode up meditatively, except for when Dave found his salted snacks spilled all over the place inside his bar bag and lost his rag for a bit, but otherwise it was pretty meditative.

We started in the bottom of the valley in the campsite and after just 1.5km of crazy steep hills, we felt like we were on top of the world again!  But there was still plenty more climbing to do.

The hills were insanely steep and we were only managing around 5-6kph!  Since that’s about as slow as you can go before you fall off or start going backwards, we couldn’t regulate how hard we were working and had to stop for lots of rests.  So it took ages!  But the views were lovely so it was a good ride.

We wound our way up through lush green villages, stopping for a calipo in the shade to cool down.  Then up and up until we’d gained around 700m.  Not bad, I thought – we only have to do another 400m to the top!  But then we had to go down for a bit… then up… then down.  So I think our total elevation gain for the day was more like 1300m.  Not far off our Big Hill Day!

When we got out of the pretty rural towns, we were in the uplands surrounded by heather, gorse, pines and the usual smoothed rocky outcrops.  We finally made it to the top of the pass after 25km of riding and we had done half the distance for the day.  It was around 3pm and very hot by then.  There was a big lake at 1000m, then we headed over the other side, down towards Vila Real.

We were treated to 10km of unbroken downhill in the glorious sunshine with amazing views of the hills and the valley with the city nestled in the bottom of it.  Even from the top, though, I could see that it was up again on the other side.

As we got towards town, there was more traffic, we had to do some insanely steep downhills, sometimes on cobbles.  The quality of a single road varies quite a lot as you go from countryside to town and back.  We were both tired and hot, more navigation was required and we were about to have to start going uphill again.  Cue being a little narky with each other.

On we went, stopping at a petrol station for a toilet stop (surprisingly, petrol station toilets are the only ones that are consistently spotlessly clean and always have loo roll and toilet seats, unlike campsite toilets, which are very variable!).  This petrol station was taken over shortly after our arrival by a huge gang of Vespa riders!  We left them to their chatter and pedalled out of town towards our campsite for the evening.

The last part of the ride was along main roads but they were pretty quiet and had a good shoulder.  We made better progress without the crazy gradients and pushed on up via a fruit stand and two much-need oranges to make it to the entrance to the Natur Water Park, where there’s a campsite.  Just one more steep cobbled uphill… groan!  But we got there and hopped in the glorious showers, did laundry, ate and headed to bed for an early night.

Portugal is hilly!  More to come tomorrow, too.  And it’s set to get hotter the next few days… we did ask for sunshine!

– Anna

We knew the weather was meant to be rubbish this morning so we decided last night we would check out of the hotel at 12 today. It was drizzling as we went through town picking up groceries, eventually finding the supermarket, which we needed for that all-important 1kg bag of muesli, with the help of a cheery butcher and baker. We eventually got out of Fafe around 1 pm and immediately started climbing along a winding road that was far too busy for our liking. There were a couple of lorries that went past uncomfortably close. I think on the whole Spanish drivers were more considerate, although maybe the roads were just quieter and there was more space for them to go around us.

After an hour’s grumpy climbing in the on-off rain we crossed the motorway and things immediately improved. There was less traffic, the rain stopped and we were treated to a looooong winding downhill. Fun! After another hour or so we turned off onto the quieter road that Anna had picked the day before. It was a single-track road, with no signs on it, and straight away it dropped steeply down the side of a valley.

There were lots of even smaller side roads and we knew it would be awful to have to come back up so we were checking the GPS every 100 metres or so. The view soon opened up, and it was a picture of smallholder’s paradise, with red-roofed houses, vinyards and vegetable gardens filling the bottom of the valley.

The road was so steep Anna felt like she was going to go over the handlebars, and I wasn’t sure I could actually stop without skidding out with both wheels. It was brilliant! When we got near the bottom we found that the road we needed to follow for the next couple of kilometres was made of this….

We rattled our way along, past houses big and small, but nearly all with vines and veggies luxuriating in the wet, warm weather. Loads of people have dogs tethered in their gardens in Spain and Portugal that love to bark and strain at the leash. Usually the untethered ones stick to their own garden, but here we found the first one that looked like it might actually latch on to our ankles. Luckily we were going downhill at the time and it couldn’t catch us. Anna mentioned that a squirt from the water bottle is a good deterrent and proved it a few minutes later when another rabid frothing beast came yapping out of a front gate to be met with a face full of glorious agua. Definitely stopped him cold!

Once we reached the end of the cobbles we stopped for lunch. You can live well for not much money here. Since getting to Portugal we have been enjoying pastéis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts) on a regular basis, so good!

Soon after lunch we came back onto a main road, but it was delightfully quiet after the morning’s experience, and somehow still downhill! As we rode along there were swallows flitting down across the road in front of us, catching insects out of the air. So beautiful! After a while we crossed a big river at an impressive old stone bridge and soon found ourselves in the town of Mondim de Basto.

We were on our way out of town when Anna saw a sign for a municipal campsite. We had done approx 30 km in four hours by this point. After about half an hour of arguing whether to push on or not, whether the campsite would even be open, spotting a cow mowing the lawn in a residential garden etc etc we decided to go for it.

A lady on the street managed to communicate with no English but lots of hand gestures that it wasn’t far away so off we went down another hill, really hoping the place was open and we wouldn’t have to come back up! It turned out it was open, and even better it has really good showers, flat pitches (unlike our first night in Portugal), and a beautiful river running just along the bottom of the site. Because we arrived so early we had time to have a wander along the river, and for me to capture another ever-present aspect of cycle touring – the daily hand-washing of the cycling kit. It’s a tough life!

– Dave

Our wild camping spot last night was gorgeous and I was looking forward to waking up to the amazing view again.  But I woke up at 5am to the sound of RAIN!  Why?!  We were supposed to have two days of nice weather before the rain returned!  I was so disappointed that I stayed awake in a rage until the alarm went off, when it was still raining.  But we lay there for another 20 minutes and… it stopped!  I poked my head out of the tent and saw the full moon in a gap between the clouds, the sky brightening.  Hmm… looks like it might be safe.

We packed up the wet tent but the weather was decent again, beautiful cloud formations over colourful hills and valleys, the sound of the rivers bubbling in the background and the sun starting to shine on the hilltop above us.  At least the clouds meant that we were warm in the morning for a change!  We breakfasted at the picnic table just below where we’d camped and started up the pass towards the Portuguese border.

The ride warmed us up pretty quickly and it was humid but luckily we were in the shady side of the valley, the sun not high enough to reach us over the mountain yet.  We only saw a handful of cars all morning as we made our way up towards the border past purple, yellow and green hills with rounded rock formations sticking up here and there.

After we crossed into Portugal at the abandoned border post, the quality of the road surface deteriorated.  We bumped downhill for a bit, then came back up again, all the while in a tunnel of sunshine dappled by gnarled oaks, proud pines and perfectly delicate beeches.  The beech trees with their rows of thin bright leaves soaking up the light, leaving the ground below them covered only in coppery crinkled leaves from years gone by.  We crossed over rocky rivers of perfectly clear water and filled our bottles from the mountain streams.  The forest was fresh and fragrant and we think we’ve established that the tall trees with the peeling bark and thick narrow leaves smell the best!  Yet to find out what they are.

Once we’d reached the last of the uphill for the morning, we saw the first of the crazy switchbacks – down we go!  Amazing views, scary corners but hardly any traffic, huzzah!

After dozens of switchbacks on the lovely quiet roads, we came past some picnic sites and there were a few people around.  Then there were three switchbacks that weren’t paved like the rest of the road, they were cobbled!!  So we took those slowly and arrived in the town of Geres where we resupplied at the hidden bakery and grocer, ogled the fancy hotel spas, had second lunch and got free wifi with a coffee.  It was all pretty touristy and built up and it wasn’t as nice as the reserve we’d just come from, but we did need its handy facilities.

Out of Geres, we had a bit more downhill to do (zoom!) where we exited the national park before reaching the part of the Rio Caldo that is so wide it looks like a big lake.  Then we crossed over and headed up out of the valley, more switchbacks surrounded by houses with big vegetable gardens, orange trees and vineyards.  We sweated up in the afternoon sun and were sorry for the lack of hard shoulder given the (relatively) heavy traffic.  But we made good progress, the views of the valley got better all the way up and it was a beautiful day to be out.

Every town and village here has a stone church and rectangular graveyard and, in this part of Portugal, quite often a few shrines too.  The churches almost all have benches and water fountains near them and are usually in the middle of town, near a few shops, so they’re really useful for us and we often stop for one of our lunches by a church and wave at the curious locals.  Today, after our big uphill out of town in the heat, we stopped at a church as the 3pm bells were chiming.  We stepped off our bikes with shaky legs and ate bread and cheese and Portuguese egg custard tarts to recover.

Then we continued through rural landscapes, gently up and down hill in the partial sunshine.  The clouds were coming in and taking the edge off the late afternoon heat.  At one point we took a lovely quiet road through some forest used by an adventure centre as a quad bike and paint-ball playground, all quiet in the spring.  We thought about camping there but it was still relatively early and we didn’t really want to stop.

So on we went, the ups becoming steadily harder on the achy legs and the downs giving us a chance to get our bums out of the saddles for a minute.  The area was quite built up and the camping options didn’t look great.  I also knew the forecast was for a rainy night and a very rainy morning.  So we headed towards the town of Fafe, sort of hoping it had a hostel but also still hoping to camp because it was so lovely right then.

I saw a sign for a rest area / picnic site and we headed down the side road to look for it, down an insanely steep hill to a river with no camping options and with another big up on the other side!  How far is this rest area?  We decided to ditch the idea and go back towards town but had to get back up the crazy steep hill!  Dave pedalled up in granny gear, committed once he’d started because he was clipped in with his cleats!  I walked.  Not the best diversion ever.

The last few kilometres towards the centre of town, the hills were ridiculously steep and the cars were overtaking quite close.  We were passing shops and houses but there were still a few fields with vines and veggies – and even a sheep tethered up by the side of the road!  We could see the ugly buildings in the valley and dreaded what Fafe might have in store for us.  As it turned out, it was a closed visitor centre, some ice lollies to pay for wifi and subsequently finding out that the only place to stay in the whole town was the Comfort Inn.

There was no way we were riding any further, we’d already done a hilly 65km and it was two hours before dark, so we begrudgingly checked in.  The room is actually nice and the rain started hammering down just after we’d had deliciously warm showers, so it seems like it’s worth it so far.  And breakfast is included – yay!  Dinner isn’t though, so Dave is making chorizo tomato pasta on the stove at the desk.  Smells good!

– Anna

We slept past our alarm again this morning! When we finally deigned to rise at 8 am we were greeted with a clear blue sky through the treetops. Thank you Portugal! We had chilly breakfast and were ready to head off by 9.30. When we went to pay we found the office all locked up, even though it was supposed to be open at 9. We didn’t have the right money, and we were undecided about whether to go and find change and return, or just abscond. We went about 3 km down to road to the petrol station, as we were pulling in we were moaning about what a pain it was going to be to get change and go all the way back. Luckily enough though, the campsite lady was also in the petrol station, so we were able (indeed obliged) to pay her there and then. We didn’t attempt to advise her about opening the office on time in Portuguese though! We carried on up the road, and as we came around a corner we saw a small village with the valley below it cloaked in cloud. What a start to the ride!

Our first stop today was Castro Labroeiro, a great little village with an old hill fort nearby, and a huge selection of elderly ladies wandering the streets dressed in black. One elderly lady (who wasn’t dressed in black) brandished a hoe and shouted at us as we rode past, but we then saw her brandishing a hoe and shouting at her neighbours as well, so we didn’t feel so bad. We stocked up on food for the day; at the bakery we got a brown loaf. It cost €7.50 which came as a bit of a shock until we tried to pick it up. It weighed about 1.5 kg and was filled with fruit and nuts. We decided it will probably keep us going for 3 days so not such a bad deal. We had first lunch on a little hill overlooking the village and admired the beautiful sky and the impressive boulder ridges on all sides. It would be amazing to live there if you could take being shouted at and threatened with a hoe on a daily basis.

We headed on towards the Spanish border, ready to brave the Galician weather once more. The landscape continued to be beautiful and impressive, the usual gorse, broom and heather interspersed with huge rocky outcrops and areas of coniferous and deciduous woodland.

At the border we had raincoats at the ready, but it stayed dry (although I thought I detected a slight drop in temperature as we crossed over). As we came whizzing down the other side we saw some sheep on the road verge. All the black sheep were on the sunny side, and the white sheep were on the shady side. As we came towards them though they banded together for safety, then proceeded to trample over each other to escape our big scary bikes. We then saw a little old lady herding two massive cows up the road with a stick. We would have loved to get a picture but we were scared she would herd us too. We stopped at a little church that had a lovely old oak tree in front of it. The oak had had its trunk chopped off at some point, and had regrown from some big branches at the side to a fantastic bushy form.

We stopped for second lunch in Lobios, a town with a big lake below it. From there we continued South, tracing the river Caldo uphill back towards the Portuguese border. All very confusing I know, but trust me, we know what we’re doing!

We decided that once we had got a few km outside Lobios we would find a place to camp. We found one almost straight away, which was in a great setting, but was quite close to the road and showed evidence of boar rootling, so we decided we would wait a while longer.

The road up the valley was stunning, we saw a massive waterfall tumbling down the opposite side of the valley, then a minute later we had our own little waterfall right next to us on the road!

After a few kilometres we go to a bridge over the river, and decided we would stop. There was a little area just off the road where the river formed a big pool, perfect for washing, but after walking a little way up a few paths we couldn’t really find anywhere good to camp. The only option we could see was right next to the road, totally exposed to cars in both directions. We decided to cook dinner and wait a bit to see how we felt. While we were cooking a police car went past twice, and a group of people stopped to ask us where the hot spring was. I didn’t find this ideal and I was getting a bit stressed about pitching up right by the road so we went walking a bit further afield and eventually found a place out of sight on a walking trail. So as long as we don’t meet any late evening / early morning hikers with an officious streak, we should be fine!

– Dave