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Jackie Link with her faithful Crusoe Petite in sunny Portugal
Jackie Link recently switched from a Bike Friday New World Tourist to a Pocket Crusoe which she loves. She leads regular rides as a member of the Bay Area Velo Girls and the Bike Friday Club of San Francisco. She urges all Bay area cyclists, and those who like to visit the area often, to join the club and ride one of the world's most bikeable big cities together. Contact her on jackielink at msn dot com.
OF THE MANY HIGHLIGHTS of our three week cycling vacation in southern Portugal, 'the pudding that bounced back' (imagine dense, white Jell-O) stands out. This happened in Beja at the end of a long, frustrating day where we’d only planned to go a short distance, where instead we’d found no room in the pensoes along the way and had to keep riding.
That morning as my friend Judy and I left Mértola, a small medieval hilltop village near the Spanish border, we encountered our first touring cyclists — a German couple we would meet twice more — and our first rough road. The beauty of the landscape with its recently harvested cork oaks more than made up for the broken pavement and we took our time, taking pictures along the way.
I was enjoying my new Bike Friday, a red Petite Pocket Crusoe, which bumped over the potholes with ease. In seven riding days we’d had nothing but perfect pavement (except for the cobblestones in the towns) and very little traffic. We got to Serpa, an easy 38 miles, by midday and sat in the square having a beer before finding the residencial, then when we got there those other cyclists had beat us to the last room in town (!) and we found ourselves late in the day back on the road to the bigger city of Beja where there would be plenty of rooms, or so we thought.
Coming to Beja we could see the castle and the part of town we needed to get to high on the hill, but thanks to railroads and industry and circular ancient city plans it was unusually hard to reach. At one point we got off and pushed our bikes up the steep cobblestone streets, finally coming to an imposing pousada.
Pousadas are state-run converted castles or monasteries and are fairly expensive. It was getting late, we were getting worried about where to go next and would have paid any price, but again there was no room. We finally found another hotel — again, no vacancy, so I could have kissed the young man who offered a room in another very charming residential, “.... but we could only stay one night, they were fully booked for a radiologists’ conference that weekend.” Ah ha! Finally, the reason for all the full hotels. Up until then we’d never been turned away — once we’d even had an entire hotel to ourselves — and we never saw anything like our motels ringing the cities.
After doing our daily hand laundry and taking quick showers and putting on our same-every-evening outfits we went out in search of dinner. We walked the narrow lanes until we came to a nice looking restaurant where I later discovered I was eating cuttlefish, or squid, choco — not something I’d order at home but it was delicious and I finished every bite.
And every day I tried what I thought would be puddin’, a regional dessert similar to flan or creme caramel, and every day it was different — and I kid you not, in Beja, the puddin’ fought back. It was so stiff and had so much bounce you could have played tennis with it. So we got the giggles. I said, “But this is a really nice restaurant, they must want it this way!” That thought cracked us up even more and we couldn’t stop that helpless, sliding under the table, nearly wet your pants laughter for a long time. Perhaps we were just ready for a really good laugh after our long, anxious afternoon.
The riding was never hard and almost too easy (I rarely left my big chain ring) but after the hills of our home in San Francisco we didn’t want to climb mountains on vacation. After the first few days I realized that at the rate we were going we’d finish the ride a week early so we began spending two nights in many places, sometimes turning into tourists, sometimes just hanging out in our air-conditioned room reading through the heat of the day. Our longest day was 70 miles, our shortest just 22.
Our cycling vacation had been two years in the planning, which sounds like we had all the details worked out but, other than booking two nights on arrival and two nights on departure in Lisbon, we left the rest up to chance, figuring since we’d be there after the high season we wouldn’t have a problem finding lodging. The route was taken from John Rakowski’s 1981 book, 'Adventure Cycling in Europe', a 520 mile loop south from Lisbon down the Atlantic coast to Sagres, east through the beach towns along the 'Riviera' to the Spanish border, north to Évora and back to Lisbon, ten easy riding days in the 'cycling backwater of Western Europe'.
We ran into the German couple again the day we left Évora and stopped for a midmorning break together. They’d hoped to put their bikes on a train to Lisbon and discovered that trains no longer accommodate bicycles, at least not from Évora. It didn’t seem surprising that we’d keep running into each other — there are only so many roads, I guess — but really! Three times in a week?
The day before at our pensao in Évora we came back to find another Bike Friday, a black New World Tourist sitting in the entrance. (I’m sorry I didn’t get the owner’s name, a British woman traveling with two men. “Hello” if you read this.) These were the only other touring cyclists we saw the entire trip, a cycling backwater, indeed.
My Crusoe never failed to delight me, from breaking it down into its suitcase and rolling it easily through airports, to riding off with front panniers packed, ready for anything. I was never uncomfortable, even after the longest day, thanks to a perfect custom fit. I do love my Bike Friday.
We had a wonderful, relaxing time because we didn’t trudge through museums, duty-bound to see any and everything of note. If a castle was right where we were—and plenty were—we looked, otherwise we went on.
We’ll have many sweet memories of a gentle landscape; of huge flocks of storks and little brown birds flying in to roost at sundown; of peeled and painted cork oak trees; of a gypsy caravan moving slowly as they led their horses to market; of ancient homes and buildings covered in decorative azulejos (tiles); of narrow, steep lanes with small square cobblestones set in decorative patterns; of blinding-white villages and of the many friendly people. I know I’ll savor these memories and more, a long, long time.
Now, I must go make some puddin’, see if I can get it to bounce.
Jackie Link