Bike Tour- Days 9 and 10

Day 9: Portimao  to Loule (90km)

Weather: Partly cloudy
Traffic: Moderate to light, improving all day
Bike: no issues

Avoiding to clouded and overdeveloped Algrave coast, I headed inland today in a 2-day arc the hopefully will end up depositing me at the Spanish border tomorrow.  I am happy to report that the rest day yesterday and the week of solid biking before it is startling to pay results: even though I had some significant elevation gain today and the longest distance so far, I got to my destination merely very tired and not at the point of falling off the bike, like day 2. 

Today was Sunday, which in Portugal is taken pretty seriously- basically nothing is open all day, but the good news was that the traffic in the morning was quite light on my exit from Portimao.  The mid-sized 2-lane roads in Portugal generally lack any shoulder to speak of, and it can be pretty harrowing being on a busy street with lots of tiny fast cars zipping along inches from one's panniers. 

Anyway, the traffic got even lighter as I got on a more minor road and began my climb up to Silves.  The surrounding countryside soon transformed into rolling foothills covered in orange and pomegranate orchards, vineyards, and the occasional olive grove. (As a random side note, I now know why the call the color "olive" olive: it's from the color of the leaves, not the fruit).  The climb all day was generally gradual, but significant- a net gain of about a thousand vertical feet that that I had to win back a few times.

Silves was very quiet, it still  being Sunday morning, but beautiful.  The center of town is dominated by a surprisingly well-preserved Moorish castle and an impressive cathedral (obviously a later addition) attached to it.  There is also apparently a nice market building that used to be a 19th century cork factory, but it was all closed up. 

After sampling some of the fantastic local citrus and touring the castle, I hit the road again for a few hours, gaining more and more altitude until I stopped for a mid afternoon break at Alte, an insanely quaint whitewashed mountain village surrounded by ancient orchards.  Recharged by some fresh orange juice, I rolled over more foothills on the way to Loule.  I was losing daylight fast, and was hoping I could find a campismo not on the map (there were a couple such operations near Silves) but unfortunately no luck.  Having passed a couple viable (though not particularly desirable) dispersed camping spots earlier, I was cursing myself as I glided into town just as the sun went down.  I decided to regroup at on of the few restaurants in the very pleasant downtown, and used my tablet and a weak WiFi signal to try to find a hostel, at least.  No dice there, but I located a pretty cheap hotel nearby.  So... sweaty, cold, and worn out (but well-fed on double-ham pizza- I was kinda firing blind on the menu) I arrived at what turned out to be a pretty classy hotel.  It was more expensive than a hostel, but less than every terrible dump I stayed in while visiting the American south for work, and it sure beat scouting for a place to crouch in the bushes for the night, so I swallowed my cheapness for once and just laid down the coin.  A long hot shower had me feeling a lot better about life and I soon sank into slumber.

Day 10: Loule to Vila Real De Santo Antonio (60 km).
Weather: Simply glorious. Mid 70s and sunny all day.
Traffic: moderate heading out of Loule, non-existent east of Tavira.
Bike: all a go, brakes starting to show wear, hope to swap pads at Seville. 

Awoke in my nice room again far too early (a pitfall of going to bed at 9:30), but caught up on some writing and did some research on Spain, which is rapidly approaching.  Got everything ready to go on the bike and then checked out the complementary breakfast, which to my great pleasure turned out to be opulent.  As a cost saving measure, I have been avoiding eating out-generally limiting myself to one meal out a day or none when in Portimao, where I was feeling guilty for my surfing expenses.  Generally the one meal out is supper, when I am the hungriest and the least motivated to deal with cooking.  So all of this is a long way of saying my breakfasts heretofore have been meager.  Which is a hardship to someone who LOVES breakfast, and also burnt about  9000 calories yesterday.  Anyway, when faced with this bounty, I shamelessly destroyed this buffet.  At one point, I caught an uptight looking German couple staring at me inhaling some weird bacon/ham I had mashed between 2 croissants with a look of undisguised horror, but I cared not.  I came, I ate, I conquered. 

The traffic was a little unpleasant on the way out of Loule, but the weather was so great that it was hard to be too upset.  In any event, I was soon out of it and gradually climbing again, then spilling my 1200 vertical feet in a couple of fun descents though the citrus and olive groves, the approaching sea sparkling in the background.  My mood improved even more when I arrived at the splendid town of Tavira.  In addition to the cobblestone streets and charming 18th century architecture that is now kind of expected, this town is centered on a long slough, both sides of which are lined with gorgeous parks, plazas, cafes, and so on. There are several bridges across the span, the oldest of which is Roman.   Sort of a similar treatment American city planners have been going waterfronts these days, except here they did theirs 200+ years ago.  Of course, they also have a great Moorish castle and cathedral, which I explored and took some nice pictures and got some great views.

I felt compelled to sit and have a beer in the central plaza, and was glad I did, because a local soon started talking to me about my bike (he yearned to bike tour some day-apparently the lack of a front rack was all that stood between him and his ambition), and in this conversation I found out about the existence of an "Eco via" between Tavira and the Spanish border.  This was a considerable improvement on the route I had resigned myself to, which was a 25km stretch of busy road with narrow shoulders.  The "eco-via", as it turned out, was a patchwork of gravel roads, purpose-built bike paths, and city streets that maximized sightseeing while minimizing traffic.  It is marked with Appalachian Trail-style paint blazes that are subtly painted on trees, signposts, walls, etc.  This was a great find, tempered only in my enthusiasm with the realization that this stretched all the way back to Portimao, which I did not know until then.

A negative man would curse this as poor luck, but I had a great time checking out the sights in the foothills, and the roads were pretty mellow most of the way anyway, so... Meh.  Also I got that breakfast. 

I noodled around on the Eco via, passing some charming if touristy fishing villages and a salt harvesting operation, and all in all had a very pleasant afternoon.  I got to my destination campismo with plenty of daylight, set up camp, and went down to the beach, where I wrote most of this entry while sipping a Super Bock and watching the sun set over the ocean. 

And that, my friends, is that!  Great day, and tomorrow, across the ferry and on to Spain!  Multi ombrigado, Portugal.   You have been the best!!