Day 12: Corte do Pinto, Portugal to Santa Bárbara, Spain (51km, 900m)

Sep 25

We made it to Spain! Ryley has read some ride reports of cyclists doing the whole European Divide Trail or sections of it (Norway to Portugal) North to South who said Portugal took them about 3 days to bike through and they don’t really remember it. Here we are getting close to 2 weeks in, I think we’ll remember it!

We woke up to a very light rain (a spit, really) packed up and rode out around 8:30.

It was about 5km into Corte do Pinto for coffee and some breakfast (no food at the cafe so pastries and snacks were procured from the minimercado). Somehow it is always up into town, descend from town then climb up immediately afterwards. It’s hilly and everyone has built their town on top of a hill, too! After a long climb away from town we biked along a park on one side of the trail, before a long descent to cross a (dry) river which was also the Portugal/Spain border. This feat was slightly overshadowed by Axel setting some kind of record on asking for poop stops with no evidence of the big show. He did a big section of walking up a hill and seemed to forget about it for a bit. We biked through a massive orange orchard, maybe for 5km or so with the orchard stretching a ways on both sides of the road, it seemed massive. It also felt weirdly quiet – we didn’t notice a single person working anywhere for such a big production, but maybe it’s just not orange tending season. We’re near Seville so I was wondering if these are Seville oranges? We didn’t pick one to find out how bitter or sweet they are…

We rolled into our first Spanish town (Paymogo) and also the end of the EDT Alternate route made by the 4B’s owners that we’ve been following for 360km from Sagres – so that felt like an accomplishment!. We realized we bumped forward an hour in time, which also put us into town at mid-siesta time and very little was open. We didn’t find any public bathrooms which we’ve gotten used to finding and using for water fill ups from the tap. We’re thankful all the water is potable here, although apparently most locals choose to drink bottled water because of the taste.

We found a playground, picked up lunch items from a mercado (shortly before it closed) and made sandwiches while Axel had a good play session.

The afternoon was spent rolling over a mixed bag of gravel quality through mostly farmland again. Axel fell asleep right before we went from decent gravel to very rough gravel and so only had a 13-minute nap. There were lots of animals to see and big sections smelled strongly of pigs (not in a good way). “Axel saw lots of horses, Mama!” Axel yells at me from the trailer when we go by horses. We made it to Santa Bárbara for dinner (around 5:30pm) but again struck out – nothing was open except the bar and when I asked if any restaurants would open the answer was “la mañana”.

And again, no public restroom to refill water but the bar obliged. We tucked around the corner to a playground – we were originally the only ones there but soon many local families with kids arrived. Axel was mesmerized by 2 toy strollers and all the kids and mostly just walked around as close to the strollers as they’d let him get. He also did lots of laps of the slide, came over and slurped up some ramen for dinner, then headed back to play. He was reluctant to leave but we got him into the trailer and singing us a tune up our last (big) climb of the day to another beautiful camp spot at the top of a big cut block.

As Ryley tried to get the 6 ground wasps out of our semi-erected tent, Axel was very intent on playing rock-stick (a delightful game you can ask Roger about if you’re intrigued) and stick-stick (a slight variation). He announced finding rocks for this game as “going on a big bear hunt, mama”. I said – oh, are we looking for bears? “Big ones!” Did we find any? “Lots!” How many? “One, two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen.” and as we walked back towards the tent: “DADA! Axel and Mama went on a big bear hunt!”

Buenas noches!

https://strava.app.link/G6yvUy5NbNb

General musing on camping with Axel: he is VERY excited to help select the tent spot (inevitably not the same criteria Ryley and I use) and where our heads should go, rolling out the tent, and putting the poles together. We have one short top pole that is “Axel’s pole” when we pull the tent out, for “on top of the mountain” (it hooks lover the top and holds up the fly). 

From blowing up air mattresses and mama’s pillow, rolling out all our sleeping bags, setting up Axel’s spot and getting out his books – the whole show is a hit end to end. Ryley came up with a great game of “find what’s in Axel’s teeth” one day when Axel didn’t really want to brush, and now teeth brushing is a mix of drool and giggles as we “find” all the food he ate that day. 

When we pack up in the morning, he’s varies from happy to sit in my lap to stay warm and cozy while I do nothing and Ryley’s makes breakfast or packs up to jumping out of bed, saying “time to wake up, mama!” and wanting to go outside to play. He LOVES helping deflate our air mattresses by jumping on us and lying on us lengthwise to add his weight to ours to let out all the air . He also wants to help roll up everything and put it in its stuff sacks and bags. Not particularly helpful but very cute and we love the stoke!