Castelo Branco to Abrantes to Apiarca to near Lisbon

from Castelo Branco towards Abrantes. We expected a ride of about 80 kilometers by adding up the distances on the Michelin map. It turned out to be 115 kilometers. (The Michelin maps are excellent but their accuracy declines as you get farther from France.)

They weren't easy kilometers. We climbed in and out of gorge after gorge. The road never leveled. As soon as it reached a summit or a bridge, it immediately started falling or climbing.

Also, for the first time this year, the weather was hot and the sun blazing. As if to mark this passage from spring into summer, Joan started her old habit of wearing two hats -- the helmet to protect her from wrecks and underneath a hat with a visor to shield the sun. In the winter she wore a fleece hat under her helmet.

Fortunately we passed many little towns where we could always find ice cream or a cold drink. Also the scenery was great, traffic was light, and the people were friendly. A few cars gave us very enthusiastic thumbs up, cheering as we passed. This was partly in recognition of the huge hills we climbed.

We saw groups of motorcyclists wearing all black leather and riding Harley-Davidson style bikes. I also saw several trucks - from small delivery trucks to tractor trailers -with big American flags draping the back of the cab. The kinds of flags with a big truck in the middle and the words, "Ride Hard, Live Free."

We were taking the hills as they came and resting frequently. Then when we expected to have just about 40 kilometers to go, we came across a big sign that read, "Abrantes 59." We didn't talk about that for a few minutes after reading it. We both hoped it was wrong. It wasn't.

So the last half of the day we didn't stop much. We kept pressing on, climbing some long long hills.

With about 15 kilometers to go, Joan was suddenly felt sick. She might have had some sort of mild sun stroke. She was exhausted from the sun. We stopped in the shade in someone's front yard and I made sandwiches. We rested for about 30 minutes until Joan had recovered. She had no more trouble.

Immediately as we started rolling again a man and woman got into a huge screaming match in one of the nearby homes. We were glad to be leaving.

Entering Abrantes was a pain -- lots of traffic, narrow roads, steep hills. I had seen a very tall antenna tower far off on top of a big hill while we were stopped to let Joan rest. Eventually we climbed that hill and saw the base of that damn tower.

We were lucky to find the campground fairly quickly with the help of some drunks who gave us directions. There was not a single sign for the a strange little campground along the river.

I cooked the usual Tibetan Tuna Casserole for dinner. That night we discovered that the spare fuel canister we had bought in Salamanca was the wrong kind. This angered me because I had been unusually organized in buying the extra fuel. I wrote down in a card inside my wallet what fuels the stove would accept -- CV-270 and CV-470. In Salamanca we got a 470. That turned out to be very similar in appearance but not compatible with a CV-470. Arggggh.

The next day, from Abrantes to Apiarca was more like a day off. We only rode 60 some kilometers, it was mostly flat, and we had a tail wind. It doesn't get much easier.

It was Easter and we had worried that everything would be closed. On the contrary, everyone seemed to be out spending the day at cafes and restaurants. Everything was open and busy. We stopped a lot. In the morning we'd stop for coffee. Later we'd get cokes. Then in the afternoon we drank beers. I found a CV-470 fuel bottle at a Shell gas station.

We made lunch at a little rest area with tables overlooking a castle in the middle of the Tejo river.

Along one stretch we passed many many roadside orange stands. We randomly picked one and asked the old man for cuatro (4) oranges. He asked us where we were from and where we were going. He was very enthusiastic, practically agitated talking to us. Then he filled a bag with six oranges and just gave them to us "gratuit."

We got into the campground near Alpiarca fairly early so we set about doing laundry. Laundromats are rare to nonexistent in northern Portugal and western Spain. And no one has dryers anywhere in Europe. We sometimes have to take a day off of riding to do laundry so it will have time to dry. But in the hot dry plains of the Tejo river, things dry very quickly.

The campground was set up in a grid like Manhattan but the population density was slightly higher. We got a little square on the upper west side. This was one of the few campgrounds where the Portuguese campers outnumbered the foreigners. Some of the other campers had huge tents as large as small houses with heavy steel frames. They parked their campers and cars inside the tents.

For Easter dinner I made .... Tibetan Tuna Casserole with instant mashed potatoes. Such a versatile dish. It works for all occasions as long as the diners are very hungry.

The next morning I got up around 8 a.m. just as the sun was clearing the horizon. The air was pleasantly chilly. Not a sole stirred in the entire campground. It looked like 6 a.m. in an American campground. Well, it looked like I think an American campground would look at 6 a.m. I've never been up that early.

For breakfast we had the usual -- four to six prepackaged grocery store muffins (called "Magdalenas") each and orange juice. Nieves, our house mom in Salamanca, had gotten us started on those Magdalenas.

We had a big day ahead. We planned to ride 90 kilometers into Lisbon. We would have preferred to get about 40 kilometers out of town and go in the next morning. That way when were lost in heavy traffic on some freeway, at least we wouldn't be tired and hungry too. But coming from the northeast there was no convenient place to camp outside town. So we decided to go for the city.

About ten kilometers from Alpiarca, after crossing the Tejo river and climbing a steep, winding hill, we reached the great old city of Santarem. We sat in a very pleasant shady, well groomed park and got some coffee at a cafe. Spain and Portugal were both good at making town parks but this park was especially peaceful. It's hard to explain why but I'll try: the trees were old and tall and shaded the sunlight just enough to be cool but not so much to be dark; on the sidewalks, the leaves and branches cast broken shadows that some how looked green; the shrubs and grass were groomed nicely but not to perfectly.

The grounds keeper made me move my bike once so he could water the grass behind it. When we rode away, he insisted with agitated hand signals that we walk the bikes not ride them. I was a bit perturbed to be hassled so much but that guy was probably the reason the park was so pleasant.

We bought some meat and cheese at the market then explored the narrow streets of the old part of town before heading down the road toward Lisbon.

Next: Lisbon's Impenetrable Urban Ring

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