Tuesday, April 25, 2006



Coimbra-Cantanhede-Aveiro

Trip dist: 82 km. Trip time: 5 hrs 39 min. Total dist: 379 kms.

(Clicky on picture for movie)

Dolphins.

Aaah, this is what bike rides should be like. What a nice, short, easy ride from Coimbra to Aveiro. If I were running a bike-touring company, this is the ride I'd recommend for Portugal. Flat, quiet national roads with scant traffic, through lush young forests and little towns chockablock full of azulejo-covered houses.

Heh. You know how sometimes, when you're in a ship or boat out at sea, dolphins like to swim behind the wake of the boat, and they play and cris-cross around and in front of the hull, and everyone watches, enthralled, because they seem to have so much fun, and they're so cheery and happy and it is like a bit of good luck?

The same thing happened to me as I was passing one of the towns. All of the sudden, I hear the jovial calls of some 7 or 8 youngsters aged 14-17, who caught up with me on their mountain and cross bikes, rode with me for a brief minute or two, criss-crossing each other and surrounding my bike as I rode, and then at the quick command of one of them suddenly veered off and vanished onto one of the side-roads as quickly as they appeared.

Gave me a few minutes of chuckling, that one. Put me in a good mood. :)

The weather was quite warm, summerlike, almost, but the scenery and easy ride made up for it, and it was such a nice ride I truthfully didn't want it to end, that is, until about 10 kms from Aveiro when a passing car unintentionally splashed me with about a bucketfull of some pothole-marinated brackish water, at which point I pedalled as fast as I could to reach the safety and showers of the Aveiro Youth Hostel.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You look good with that outfit!

:) TQM

-- said...

Hi! I haven't checked your blog in a while and oh my goodness! You are actually doing it!

What do you do with language barriers as you travel? Do the countries you visit all speak some good English?

Elisa said...

Ha ha ha!! Lucy, you're funny. Why would people spend any time studying foreign languages in school if everyone in the world spoke English?