Bike Hippies The adventures of two UK cyclists on a bike and a trike Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 1 0 6 3841

Articles from Bike Hippies

Lisbon 2006-11-11 04:39:00 We spent a few days in Lisbon last week. As Portugal's rail network is (a) sparse, and not very useful (we would have had to get a bus and three trains) and (b) not that cheap, we decided to get the bus. This involved a half hour trip to Chaves, followed by a change and an approximately eight hour journey to Lisbon via Vila Real, Regua, Viseu, Coimbra and Fatima. It was nice to see some more of the country, we learned that not all of Portugal is as mountainous as the area we're in, but there are some very beautiful parts, especially the river Mondego near Coimbra. It's just a shame the bus driver was a bit crazy and by the time we reached Viseu (notable for the windiness of its roads) I was green in the face and desperate to stop, fortunately we got a 45 minute lunch break there which provided ample recovery, and the journey thereafter wasn't so bad.We reached Lisbon at about 4:30pm and took the train to Cascais (seaside resort where dgym's mum was staying with some friends). We f ...

By popular request 2006-11-09 06:32:00 We've been staying in Valpacos for a couple of weeks now, having mostly got used to the idea that people were so willing to help two wet, smelly foreign strangers and welcome us into their lives. Strange isn't the right word for it, it's sad that such things might be considered strange - but it is very much at odds with what we are used to.We are living with Manuela, her father, and a Ukrainian girl who speaks good Portuguese. We still don't understand much of what is said, but are learning to pick out words, and are coming to the conclusion that most conversations are about food. Everybody cooks for everybody in the house - huge pots of soup (including a fantastic Ukrainian red soup), stews, roasted castanhas (chestnuts)... We have been working our way through a selection of delicious sausages which hang over the fireplace, some made with bread and some with honey. Unfortunately, we have provided suitable representation for English cuisine by cooking such delights as a bland, tast ...

Wednesday 18th October - A strange day 2006-10-23 05:51:00 dgymOur last day of planned cycling in a country usually goes slightly awry, either because we can't find accomodation where we were hoping to (France, Netherlands, Germany, Spain) or because we got horribly lost (Belgium) or just because we have to cross 2 miles of London. This time it was raining and we had a hill to get over, but other than having to get off and push because a cobbled street was too slippery for our tyres nothing too strange happened and we made it back to Valpacos in reasonable time.Comming in to town we headed straight for the cafe we had stopped at last time, we were both wet and it was raining too hard to eat lunch outside and we knew we could get some sandwiches there. The trike attracted some attention as ever and when we sat down one of the locals tried a bit French with us. Upon learning that we were English he tapped his friend on the shoulder who turned round and said hello with a definite cockney accent - he was Portuguese but had moved to London more th ...

Sunday 15th October - Dogs 2006-10-23 05:49:00 The dog thing is ridiculous here. This morning in Pinhao we were awoken at quarter past six by somebody driving around with a trailer full of yippy little creatures making noises that belonged not to dogs, but to tortured budgies. Tonight in Alijo we are staying next door to a concrete enclosure of yet more impossibly high-pitched animals and the sleep prospects are not good. As much as we wanted a decent meal in Spain, we want a decent night's sleep in Portugal. We made the mistake of opening the windows in our room and were quickly inundated with swarms of flies. A quick trip into town stocked us up with plenty of fly paper and now we are having some fun collecting tiny corpses on a bit of sticky paper. It's like watching the footy, only much better.We stopped considering Poland as a potential place to live - it's not that we particularly disliked anything about it, we just didn't particularly like anything about it either (well there were the cherries, and the nice cake shop, bu ...

Cakes 2006-10-23 05:42:00 Well we did say we would educate our readers on the topic of Portuguese patisserie and we're not the kind of people to break those kind of promises, so reluctantly we dragged ourselves down the local pastelaria (there was a good one at Tabuaco and we gave ourselves another day off just to check that it really was rather good).Clockwise, from top left:1. Nutty goodness (chestnut, we think) in a flaky pastry case.2. Moist chocolatey loveliness with chocolate icing, this one really was fantastic3. Coconut cake (apologies for the bite marks, dgym was out of control)4. Mostly like an eclair, I think the orangey stuff was some form of orange-based confection.And, for anybody who thinks we may not have truly earned these cakes, this is what the terrain is like around here:Somebody forgot to iron Portugal. ...

Friday 13th October - Legs of steel 2006-10-23 05:36:00 There are things we like about Portugal. The weather is lovely (although much easier to deal with the sunshine when you're not sweating your way up a hill). There are some beautiful houses here with stunning views. The prices are low - we can usually both get a good meal for 15 euro, and rooms are typically 25-35euro. The food is of excellent quality, and the Portuguese are clearly quite serious about their cakes.However, there are also things we don't like. There is quite a lot of litter in the countryside, particularly in laybys, lookout points and other roadside stops. There are a lot of noisy dogs, especially in the towns, many of them bark all night. There are quite a lot of flies around. There are also a lot of those insanely loud little scooters around. And the standard of driving leaves a lot to be desired. It wasn't too bad, at least not by English standards, until Wednesday when we reached the port-producing region of the Douro river and its wine tourists driving from one ...

Thursday 12th October - slowest day yet 2006-10-23 05:28:00 dgymToday we did a nice little 500m climb for a warm up, then went down 400m very slowly (it was very steep and the road surface was a bit bumpy), and then went up another 400m in the afternoon. I think that is proof enough that trikes can do hills. Because we were on very small roads the gradients were far harsher than we have seen so far - we only covered 23 miles. Going down into the valley my brakes got literally boiling hot (I'm glad I tested them with a little water rather than my fingers) and then it was my legs' turn to suffer on the other side. It was a great day's cycling, but we are staying two nights at the hotel to recover and I hope that is enough. ...

Monday 9th October: uphill some more 2006-10-11 15:34:00 We had breakfast at about ten - bread, jam, ham, cheese, fig and walnut cake, coffee... all of which was delicious, and then we said our goodbyes and continued sweating our way up the long, long hill. The sun was no kinder to us today and we went another thirteen miles before reaching the top of the hill. Lunch was in a bus shelter, and unusually fly-free. We had sausage with fresh brown bread rolls (not so dense this time), a leftover fig from yesterday and an orange. The oranges are most excellent here. The afternoon was much kinder to us, with a lovely foresty descent into the valley town of Villa Pouca. Villa Pouca is quite nice, but would be slightly nicer if they weren't digging up the roads left, right and centre (it's like a little slice of Poland fell into Portugal) and if they weren't building an enormous motorway bridge right across the valley.However, it does have a fantastic cake shop. Damnit, after 27 miles of uphill, we deserve cake! We agree most strongly with Portug ...

Sunday 8th October: uphill all the way. 2006-10-11 15:33:00 Our day started at 7:40am inside a cloud. Everything was damp and misty and quiet, and we found a long, long line of very busy ants transporting eggs across the road. It was about 10-12m of ant - quite impressive, apart from the fact that there was a little puddle in the middle of a manhole cover which was messing things up for them big time. A few would just fall in and drown - but more than half of them would get confused, turn around and go back the way they came - apparently ants have no sense of direction. The rest went around it, so at least some progress was being made.The cloud lifted, the sun came out, we packed up and, careful not to interrupt the line of ants, left the campsite. We climbed up to Valpacos, seeing some very nice houses along the way in Possacos, and Valpacos itself turned out to be quite lovely too. We looked out for a padaria (bakery) but they were all shut, as were all the other shops - then we remembered it was Sunday. So we stopped at a cafe and had some n ...