Sep 23
A climb to start the day…so, same as most days. Our goal was 25ish km into Mertola and we knew it would be on mostly paved roads. We were serenaded to baa baa black sheep, the wheels on the bus, just the ‘put on your boots’ part of Looking for Dracula, and a new one that went “put on Axel’s mountain shoes” (out of his Nike Velcro shoes). I think we stopped for 6 false alarm poop requests over the course of the day plus a few at actual bathrooms. The highs and lows
The first few big climbs were on gravel but the switch to pavement was quite welcome. We did opt to stick on route despite an avoidable 4km side trip that we knew from the map was a huge descent to the river by Mertola then a massive climb back up to the city, probably for a questionable gravel experience and view. But, I think it was worth the view!
We are on a birding route so have been going by lots of birds signage for it and keeping our eyes peeled for interesting birds. We’ve seen some but aren’t savvy enough to identify anything interesting, just to point out birds we aren’t familiar with that look neat.
Mértola was indeed very cool, with a narrow bridge entrance and exit, city wall and mideival castle. Typical narrow streets and compact infrastructure – although some light googling tells me that Mértola is less denser than most. We found a Café for late morning coffee and pastel de nata, then decided it was lunch time so found a vegetarian restaurant that could’ve been a spot in Victoria. We had a local draft beer, ménu lunch whose main was beet pancakes with some delightful sauce and baked chick peas. It was a great combo of nourishing and tasty. Axel loved the beet pancake and chick peas so that was also a win (he hasn’t had the most vegetables this trip!).
As we do, we headed out of town in the blazing heat of day, promptly opted out of what looked like a black Diamond mtn bike descent trail (our intended track) for a wind around ride on the road (a plus of riding in the heat during siesta time is that the roads are pretty quiet). Axel had been a bit of a bear at the restaurant but was asleep within about 10min of leaving town.
We looped back to our trail for a bit, had another nice rolling (big rolls, nothing is flat around here!) section of very quiet paved road, then bumped onto a rocky rough trail that took us to some scenic ruins but also had these very old destroyed rock bridges that were disconnected and had horrible walk-arounds. The road woke Axel up, we breaked in the shade of the ruins then kicked back into a detour of smooth road to our next destination – a lake with a beach!
It was amazing to have a swim in fresh water and Axel definitely loves a sandy beach. He also was running into the lake up to his chest and did a face plant at one point but wasn’t too fussed. They had pizza and beer at the lake so we did that for dinner then carried on a few km out of town to camp for the night just out of Mina da São Domingas (a mine town – we went by a full size wall art of a miner holding a rat, it was weird).
https://strava.app.link/VP54kGh9aNb
Axel quotes today:
Me telling Axel Auntie JJ’s birthday is in two days. “My birthday is in two days”. No, your birthday is in a little while. How old are you going to be? You’re two right now. One, two… what comes after two? “Big!”
Axel playing in the ruins at our break today: “I need to have another bath!” (he’d already had one pretend bath). Are you dirty? “Yes!” What are you dirty from? “From biking!”
Pretty sunset pic!