I’m cycling the Portugal End to End, with my chum Nigel: from Chaves in the north to Faro on the south coast. It’s a journey of about 475 miles (760km), or about 25 custard tarts.
We’re taking the old N2, once the main road that runs – or rather, crawls – the length of the country. Well, almost the length: it starts in Chaves town centre around 10km from the Spanish border, and goes to Faro town centre about a kilometre from the harbour there. The N2’s winding, gentle ups and downs were fine for tractors and donkeys but less suited to cars, and it’s now bypassed all the way by the IP3 motorway’s cuttings, embankments and viaducts.
Ah, once important, but now considered quaintly old-fashioned and slow, and superseded by faster, younger, but characterless alternatives: somehow I identify with the N2.
All this makes the N2 a cycling delight almost all the way: hardly any cars, a few quiet villages and the odd provincial town, lots of birdsong, and thrilling views of the dark green hillscapes it goes up, over and through.
No wonder Portugal is plugging the N2 as its ‘Route 66’ heritage trail, to stimulate tourism inland away from the overcrowded honeypots of Lisbon and Porto. (Beware pots of honey: often they turn out to be diluted syrup.)
We got here by the woke, plane-dodging, bike-friendly land route: ferry to Calais, TER train to Paris, overnight in Paris, Alsa overnight coach (which takes bikes, bagged and with front wheel and saddle removed) direct to Chaves. So no flight shame, but quite a lot of sweaty-armpit shame on that marathon 18-hour bus journey.
Still, we arrived refreshed and with bikes intact at Chaves this morning, ready to start our odyssey. Except that we were both knackered and Nigel’s bike had lost a bolt from the front wheel skewer.
Luckily we solved the latter with a quick visit to a bike shop, the excellent and helpful Barbike of Chaves – thanks, guys – and addressed the former with a couple of rounds of galãos (lattes) and pastéis de nata (custard tarts) at a cafe.
If you only remember one phrase, remember this: Dois galãos e dois pastéis de nata por favor, and bear in mind the rule of thumb: Portuguese looks a bit like Spanish but sounds more like Russian.
Anyway, today was an easy day. All we had to do was ride a handful of miles (handful of kilometres) to the northern border with Spain, perform the ceremonial start of the journey, ride back, and have some beer and famously tasty Portuguese food before checking in early to our hotel and get some proper kip at last.
Between Chaves and the border is the Ecovia Tâmego, a gravel path along an old railway line. We were delighted to dawdle along it up to the border, to stop and look in vain for birds at a lakeside hide, and enjoy the tranquillity of flat rural northern Portugal.
With our border-start pictures taken, though, we decided to return on the much faster main road to Chaves town centre. The thought of a €2 pint of chilled beer and plate of hearty, garlicky sausages and fresh local veg was much in our minds.
Chaves proved an attractive and friendly place to overnight (it’s said to be among the cheapest places in Portugal to live, in case you want to spend your retirement in the sun eating custard tarts).
We strolled over the Roman Bridge, which still carries a two-thousand-year-old column inscribed with the legend ‘IMP(eratori) CAES(ari) NERVA / TRAIANO AVG(usto) GER(manico) / DACICO PONT(ifici) MAX(imo) / TRIB(unitia) POT(estate) CO(n)S(ule) V P(atri) P(atriae) / AQVIFLAVIENSES / PONTEM LAPIDEVM / DE SVO F(aciendum) C(uravit)’.
This is the Latin for ‘Works here until the Ides of March/ Narrow lanes/ Chariots do not overtake cyclists’.
There’s an N2 souvenir shop in the centre for those starting the road trip, and I picked up my ‘Pilgrim Passport’, fashioned in the manner of the credencial for those doing the pilgrimage to Santiago (for which there are many routes in Portugal).
It’s gimmicky, superficial, and designed to waste your time on diversions in an amiable but ultimately pointless way. So, obviously, I loved it.
I think I’m going to enjoy this trip.
Miles today: 15
Miles since Chaves: 0