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Cycling from Serpins to Penacova
I left the camping in Serpins (urgently, see the former blog 🖱️) and had to cycle heavily uphill to get out of the town.
I first passed the Rio Ceira, the river that flows along the camping I stayed at.
Rivercrossings always attract activities, then everybody (plus there thirsty and hungry 😋 horses) had to pass here. But this Casa da Ponte probably forgot to adapt itself to more modern times. Or maybe it was confiscated during WW2 ?
I stopped at a bakery to have a good coffee.
Where the waitress wore a mouthcap but the chef did not, he really gave the impression
did the best he could to not care at all about covid.
He was chatting with the customers while leaning over all the bread and pastries, I suppose all day long.
Where his shop had all the measures taken to avoid infections.
You can be a covid-decliner, but you should not show that if you run a foodshop ...
Anyway, the coffee was very oké and the ham-sandwich was the tiniest
(length, width, height, weight and price )
I have ever seen.
I first had to climb a hill ridge before life got a bit more easy.
While in that climb I was not in the mood to make an extra climb. But I should have taken a look at this little chapel.
Click 🖱️ to open
After having conquered that ridge I freewheeled down.
But Santa Maria took here toll and I had to cycle quite heavily uphill again.
I stopped to note the telephonenumbers of the real estate agents at this sign. They try to sell this moradia antiga which is para recuperar. All you need is (to be) a 🛠️ handyman.
Then I saw a first glimpse of the Rio Mondego !
I realised I once more had conquered a ridge and as usual 😀 I came closer.
All you have to do to achieve that is to mount your chain belt in the right direction :
forwards !
After one more descent I neared the valley of the river Mondego.
And Penacova.
I suppose nowadays younger people have to move to bigger towns to make a living. Resulting in quite some abandoned properties in the more remote areas.
Trucks transporting timber are on there way constantly.
Then I "fell down" into the Mondego valley
and was on Portugal's most famous national road : the Estrada Nacional N2. It runs from Chaves in the north to Faro in the south and is with it's 738kms the longest national road of the country. Penacova is located at 238kms from the start in Chaves and 500kms from the finish in Faro.
Very many people ride this road and have there special N2-pasport stamped during there trip (at ie petrolstations, cafes, restaurants, hotels, campings, etc) so they can prove they did (at Feesboek I suppose). One can also use an app for that which also provides several extra infos concerning this road. I had no idea about this popularity and question is whether there would be a campingspot available for me ?!
The weird thing is national roads are not at all interesting. Which should actually not be a surprise to anyone ?! They are always mainroads and were (only) build to have a shortest and fastest way to connect areas for commercial reasons. The N125 in the Algarve even seems to be the most deadly road in europe.
To my opinion riding them means one has no imagination to make up for own track ideas.
Like ie tracks in nature, demanding tracks, winding tracks, uphill tracks, abandoned tracks, smaller tracks,
etc1, etc2, etc3 tracks.
Too bad, or should I say too lucky (for me !).
I reached the camping which is situated directly inbetween the N2 and the very nice Reconquinho beach along the Rio Mondego. But "not directly" to Penacova town and it's cafes and shops ...
The Rio Mondego is the longest Portugese in-country river with it's 258kms. It starts in the east in the Serra da Estrela, the biggest mountainarea at Portugals mainland with it's highest peak reaching to 1993mts. From there it flows all the way to Figueira da Foz 🖱️ at the Atlancic Coast in the west where I had my winterstop 2019 - 2020.
The camping in Penacova is a member of the Federacao de Campismo e Montanhismo de Portugal. So of a sportive group of camping and mountainclimbing enthousiasts. However, this camping turned out to be the favorite of a whole bunch of pensionados ... In other words, nothing moved here haha except at 13h00 and 19h00 for the 💨 takeaway lunches and diners. It was completely filled with longterm staying campingguests but there was one spot that was to unhandy for regular people to manouvre there house on wheels on to.
That is where I come in 😀 with my little tent. But only after having had a wrong discussion with the owner who stated I could only use half of that half campingspot "then maybe another cyclist would arrive". Which I declined after which I tookover both halfs of that half campingspot.
But I must admit I immediately felt very safe here. My 🌡️ temperature was measured when arriving and next to my campspot was a safety-exit to the riverside. However, temperature turned out to be checked only at new arrivals. No matter how often people left and returned, after there first arrival temperature was never measured again. The safety-exit was open from 08h00 to 21h00 daily, in the nights that gate was locked. That brings one the safe feeling that there will 🆗 not be any emergency during nighttimes.
Click 🖱️ to open
Today I conquered 280vms in 21kms which means an average uphill of 1.33%. So average, including the (length of the) descendings. If the total length of the uphills and downhills (and the starting and ending height) would be equal the ascendingrate would be 2.66% over 10kms. That does not seem that much but it is, for 10kms netto of climbing on my OnTheRoad 4.0 🖱️ supertouringbike of 67kgs in total ... Then it is not about the heights but about the hills and this part of Portugal is a bit demanding 🙃. But as the official saying is : It is not about the miles but about the smiles !
It was another nice day on the road. Let's find out what this famous Penacova N2-town has to offer. To start with there is a quite extreme uphill to get there anyway. And the supermercado is even behind the town at the second hill ...
But the nice aspect is that this time I can 💪 descend with my shoppings.