Day 2 – Camino Interior
Another first… that was the most intense rain I’ve ever experienced on my bike :)
Today was 10x easier than day 1 though.
When I woke up at around 7.30 am it wasn’t raining and was nice and cool. I needed that. After the intense heat of the day before as I might have had mild heat exhaustion. I took a while to get going and treated myself to a shower and a hot breakfast of 4 eggs and salt. Five minutes before I was set to leave it started pouring. I got my rain jacket and booties on and off I went…
It was great until the map wanted me to turn left on a 20%+ gradient that it called a “road” but was asphalt for 4 feet and then turned into a rocky stream bed and what looked like a waterfall. It is a bad sign when you loop back twice and still don’t see a “road”. So… I tried to get out of the rain to replan as the current path is not working for bikes. I was next to one of those alter shack things they have everywhere, but Mary or whoever was inside wouldn’t let me in the room. She was nice and dry with her candles and crosses and I was outside. Maybe instead of building little shacks for religious alters we should build shacks for people :)?
Anyway… it was pouring rain… and very hard to use the touchscreen on the GPS (thank Jebus the name of my destination was 7 letters and not the normal 15 to 25 the Portuguese like for their town names!). In the process, I broke a little hook on one of my bike panniers but it will be fine. Anyway… I got rerouted and had a good time.
After about 1.5 hours in heavy to light rain the sun came out (once I was over the next mountain). That was really nice and it was a beautiful day. Some really cute towns and I love Lamego (tons of festivals going on).
Other updates…
- Sad news… I lost a single sock to the wind when I was changing and drying clothing. It jumped right off the stone cliff and fell 15 feet to a new future in the bushes. It has served me well and I believe it was from a sock batch that was over 10 years old. I wish it luck.
- I found out that the Goretex jacket I got from Joel’s dad in my 2nd year in college has no Goretex left. At least it is water repellent and kept me a little warmer. I love this jacket and I’ve taken it everywhere (not a scratch on it). Maybe once I get to Santiago I can look for a new one for the ride back. I remember Joel got one at the same time and he hilariously wore it into the shower to show off the Goretex.
- Today the route took me on stairs which was silly. Amazing views but humping my bike up even 15 stairs that were uneven and rocks was rough.
- Wow! There are some amazing mountain people here in Portugal. The Romans were so insane, who else would try to conquer people living up here? It made me remember a story from a tour I was on in the Serbian/Croatia region. One of the town names was called (in Croatian) “Where-Wolves-Fuck”, which brings me to TWO important rules, #1 never fuck with Serbians/Croatians/etc and
#2… don’t fuck with any mountain people. - I had a glass of green wine, Portuguese sausage starter, garlic bread and break, then lamb chops with potatoes and cabbage, and then homemade Gelato (cream). All for only 21 euros.
- I ate all 3 cans of pate I found at the last house, all the cheese I bought, 5 bread rolls, ~200g of homemade mac and cheese, and a nectarine by midnight last night. Pate is a food of legend and I felt great today. I could have biked far longer.
Stats?
I rode somewhere between 36km to 39km over 3.5 hours. I changed some settings on my bike GPS and forgot to set it to log when I kept switching maps from the Camino walking path to a path along roads. I also switched from the Camino path to road and then back for a bit. Maybe 700m in ascent but it could have been more since my GPS was off for a good chunk of that.
Tomorrow I’ll do ~40km with 1,170m in ascent. I redid the map so we shall how this version goes as it should stick more to roads and no more path. If that goes well I’ll probably start pushing to some longer distances.
Not as many pictures today with rain:
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