Last night’s guesthouse came with the bonus of a petrol station/cafe run by the same lady. So like the drivers we could fuel up, except with coffee and home-made pastéis de nata, not petrol. Though one local was getting stuck in to his own morning rocket fuel, in the shape of macieira – Portuguese brandy, said to pair splendidly with those custard tarts. Sounds worth trying, but not at half eight before a long hot day riding the N2.
The first few miles, though, were flat and tailwindy, and we whizzed along the highway’s empty straights through more wheatfields, cork oak plantations, half-abandoned farmhouses, and fields of staring cows. They gawped as if our passing was the most interesting thing all day. It probably was.
The landscape was sparse, wide open and dusty, and under the bottomless blue sky felt to me much like Argentina or Chile. Except I didn’t fear I was going to be held hostage at gunpoint in an armed raid here in Portugal, which tended to happen to me when I was in Argentina.
We had a drinks break at Torrão, where I admired a ‘Nitrato de Chile’ sign. Chilean saltpetre was a staple fertiliser of 1930s rural Iberia, and the tiled ads were placed in villages and towns, becoming as familiar as the once-ubiquitous ‘Osborne Bulls’ in Spain.
A few dozen Nitrato de Chile signs survive, including the one in Torrão. We have an equivalent in Britain, too, I reckon: the North Eastern Railway Tile Maps of the 1910s. Several examples survive in Yorkshire, and I visited them by bike last month.
And in case you’re wondering, what’s nitrate? It should be 50% more than day rate, but in the zero-hours gig economy, big business is probably exploiting the workers again.
On we went. Ups and downs were slight, and it was all joyous, easy riding. Nigel was off ahead of me, while I dawdled, admiring the views, taking photos, eating chocolate on the pretext that it would only melt, and talking to the cows.
Lunch was in Ferreira, where we shared our supermarket cafe table with a bikepacker from Spain also doing the N2 (he’s the one in the ‘nitrate ad’ pic above). He was incredulous that Nigel could be travelling so much lighter than he was. And that I was travelling so much heavier.
Nigel powered off into the distance and I carried on slow, enjoying a shade and drinks break at Aljustrel. Eventually we rendezvoused in Castro Verde, a smallish town with friendly pavement cafes in the square where a few other English voices could be heard. But I won’t hold that against it.
The great thing about Castro Verde was the accommodation, a lovely guesthouse/ hostel/ apartment called Birds and Bikes. The town is something of a biking and birding hub, and there are plenty of gravel rides in the region.
A few friendly people from Gravel Birds, a locally-based 750km offroad self-supported bikepacking challenge, chatted to us as we waited to check in. They told me of their website, and I was so inspired that I thought I’d definitely try it. The website, I mean, not the 750km offroad self-supported bikepacking challenge.
Anyway, Birds & Bikes is a really lovely place. It was probably my favourite accommodation of the trip, and not only because of the local bird ID sheet in our apartment-room. The hosts Susana and Rui – keen cyclists of course – are great people, delightful and fun to talk to.
And I was pleased to see that the common room reading library included several cycling magazines with articles carrying my name. In very small print, sideways.
Tomorrow is our last day. Roll on the Algarve!
Which, er, it will. It’s going to get very hilly again…
Miles today: 68
Miles since Chaves: 435