Given our long, long, long day nine and our relatively late arrival we decide the simplest thing to do once we have showered, blogged and pitched the tent is to eat at the on site restaurant. It’s not super inspiring to be honest but it absolutely does the job. Suitably sated we head back to the tent (via a teeny explore of the sea front) and are ready for sleep around 930 ( time zones are clearly designed to be confusing but I really do think it is actually 1030!!) .
The campsite is clearly geared up for families with small children (hence the teeny loo which honestly I have never seen before and it also makes aiming so much harder!) so we completely swerve the very noisy swimming pool area and camp as far away as possible.
Tonight might well the best nights sleep I have ever had in a tent….a measure perhaps of how absolutely done in I am. Nonetheless we are up bright and early and once we have thrown some purple porridge (it’s the blueberries!) at our faces we continue our journey south, hoping for something a bit easier than yesterday but fearing something worse.
We can see already that we have to make two ferries today if we are to avoid significant additional miles. The first is at Sao Jacinto and on the basis that it has a website the suggestion is that it’s real, that it really does run on a Sunday and that we can commit to that route. Whilst it’s more direct, if it isn’t real we will have to make a significant (ie:20 miles) backtrack and our entire day would be ruined. We decide to go for it and push for the 1140 ferry and so put in a massive burn across the countryside pausing only for garage coffee and pastel di nata. Fortunately the Garmin is much kinder today and we are blessed with smooth red cycle lane for the first 15 miles. We do then fall foul of our arch nemesis (cobbles) a couple of time, but overall progress is pretty good and we roll into the ferry port around 1100 to find that hallelujah it actually is real and yes it is running today. It’s a massive relief which can only be properly celebrated by climbing the children’s climbing frame!
Ferry number one out of the way we look ahead to number two, which seems far sketchier and unlikely. If it is not there or not running we will have taken ourselves down a 40km dead end …for those not in the know that would be what is best described as “sub optimal”. We scout out a plan b campsite if all else fails and we can’t cross the estuary as hoped today and decide to roll the dice again….well it is supposed to be an adventure after all!
I don’t know much about the Portugeuse governments approach to transport but I do know two things….the first is that is zero rhyme nor reason to how they spend cash on roads. Much of the b roads we rode on today could really only be referred to as “roads” in the most generous sense….we complain about potholes in our roads in the uk but these were entirely potholes with only the smallest amount of what you might consider to be “road” running around them. The next second though we turn a corner onto a pristine purpose built cycle path that must have costs hundreds of thousands. One such path lasted nearly 20 miles through the most remote area we have come across so far…..dead straight and smooth all the way and actually started to mess with my head a little bit. The other thing I know is that we are starting to get to grips with the road signs here….this one we believe is to indicate we are approaching an area specifically set aside for those with a high fibre diet who want to use the facilities!
Eventually the vanishing point road ends and we begin the climb and then drop down into Figuar do Foz where are much dreamed out about second ferry hopefully resides ….and it does. There is a bit of a kerfuffle when I purchase tickets from the self serve machine and then try to get on with just the receipt …..no of course I didn’t throw the wrong bit of paper away! There are just 3 short miles of cycling after the ferry to our campsite for the night and we are soon clean and fed.
