But a lot of cars would go flying by much faster. And for some strange reason they were consistenly VWs, BMWs, and Mercedes. Finally a "slower" BMW 535 went by, and I wanted to guess how fast he was going. My first guess was 160. So I pulled out and sped up. It was a slight downhill section. By the time the Peugot topped out at 195, the gap to the BMW was still growing rather than shrinking.
It seems there's some inter-European politiking going on on Europe's highways. No respectable German car wanted to be overtaken, even if that meant doing 150km/h in bumper to bumper traffic at night.
I tried to stay with a Mercedes 200 CDI (300 series body style, but the diesel version) out of a toll stop just for fun, as he came into the lane next to me after I had stopped. With my head start, and 4 shifts at nearly 6,000rpm, I was probaly 50 meters behind once we were at highway speed. It's like road bike racing - sometimes you can get dropped cause there's no way you can put out that kind of power.
We toured through Ponte da Barca for a bit, then drove up to Britelo. In Britelo we stopped for a 6 ml coffee in a dainty little cup that had the potency of a half litre of home coffee. We suited up for riding then spent a few minutes working on Tori's gears. The roads are beautiful, we rode to Lindoso which is a stone's throw from the Spanish border. At Lindoso I saw a sign for a trailhead, so we turned right (south) off the road. This took us through the town of Lindoso, which is cobble sidewalks 6-8 feet wide with houses on both sides. The paths are STEEP. Vehicles in the neighbourhood included a Landrover Defender and a Yamaha quad. I'm glad we brought mountain bikes. The houses are stone, but they've had electricity and water brought to them in tidy fashion, each with a junction box built flush into the stone wall of the house. We proceeded along the path until a gate, which after a minute of figuring I managed to open (I'm proud to say I'm smarter than the Portugese livestock it was designed to hold back).
There's stone structures that look like big coffins on stilts, but they're for grain drying and storage, and to make it harder for rats to get in. Cool. Gotta see the pics.
We snacked at a fieldhouse, the rode along the fairytale style trail. It was stone/cobbled, with a green mossy wall, and latice work overhead for vines to grow on. We passed a bunch of cows, which worried Tori. Portugal seems to be a country of pretty docile mentality other than football, and I didn't really see any reason for the domesticated mountain cows with bells on their necks to be any different. They did have big horns though. They were nice and let me touch their noses. We got up to an alpine meadow and took a while to find the trail, and when we did it led us to the shady side of a mountain. It was slow going at this point, and with the chill in the shade we thought it'd be best to head back before the sun set.
On the way back down the hill we saw a road cyclist climbing the hill. Full pants, full gloves, full jacket, and a bandana across the face. Our car said 17C when we turned it on, and that high up the hill it couldn't have been less than 13-14C. I wore arm warmers, wind vest and shorts. Vest and armwarmers were cause I didn't know what they day would bring in terms of mountain weather changes. Too funny.
Lots of smoke from forest fires on the way back. Fires are a huge issue for Portugal, it's amazing how many hillsides are black. The volunteer firefighters (Bombieros Voluntarios) are the largest component to managing the problem, every town has prominent monuments and stations. There's apparently 20,000 of them, they're inadequately equipped, are often the first and only ones on the scene, and they've got a great track record of saving people's houses from fires. Portugal's forestry industry replants with eucalyptus and pine, which both burn easy. The bombieros voluntarios aslo die pretty frequently. They've earned a status of heroism.
Tonight we're staying Pousada da Rea, the first of the historic sites we're staying at. I don't think they're government operated, but whatever spawned them they sure found a way to access some pretty cool old sites. We're 4km south of Torreira, which is south of Ovar, on a thin peninsula of land that forms the coast of the Atlantic. It's a cool building in good shape, and is a little on the pricey side. Although it's not easily accessible by road, Aveiro probably shows up as the nearest town of larger substance. Aveiro must be quite a shippoing hub as it shows 4 rail lines running out of it.
We had seafood for dinner, a tasty appetizer of spicy shrimp, squid and octopus, then for main I had a shrimp the size of a lobster, and Tori had a big octopus, all with a Douro valley white to wash it down. We had 10 desserts... or really it was just a buffet that we could try things. I recognized cheese and soaked pear, rest were new. All were natural - cheese, honey, egg, sugar, baked, nuts, etc. Cool stuff.
We'll try to ride to the castle tomorrow that was our first choice of accomodations (right next to it), but the place was closed.
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