March 13, 2023
Day 12: Figueroa da Foz to Pedrogao
I'll start today with two small topics from yesterday. The first is a rant, something were still still thinking about over night. Of course it involves a bank or a telecom, the two worst kind of companies . The bank, of course, usually shuts down a credit card because you have dared to actually use it - in some foreign country they really don't quite understand or approve of. But yesterday it was the telecom, in our case Shaw Cable, the regional supplier of our home wifi and our email. Last night Dodie handed me her tablet, reporting that the email did not work. This had me putting aside what I was doing to fool with it for a long time, until I realized that the problem was with the company. So I phoned them, itself a good telecom trick, given that local telecoms do not make it easy to contract weird far off places like Canada. Shaw's explanation was as I had surmised - what was I doing actually using their system to communicate, in Portugal, wherever that is! And now they have another trick - the pernicious "two factor verification". This is where they send a secret code to some device that does not work in the foreign country, or that you wisely left back home. In this case, they wanted to send a code to the email - the email that does not work! When they asked at the end if there was anything else they could help me with, they did not get exactly my politest response! I must be warming up for inevitably also phoning the bank!
The second topic is prompted by a comment from Kelly Iniguez, about towel warmers. We can not remember seeing these in North America, but they often appear in slightly upscale European hotel rooms. Often we can not get them going, but when they do work, it's heaven. Their official function is to warm towels, but for the cyclist it's to dry your washing. They reduce the time from hours to almost minutes. So great!
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It turned out that our efforts to find postcards, stamps, and post boxes in Mexico were fruitless. At least no grandkids have yet received anything. Maybe in some months? Undaunted, Dodie is at it again, having found abundant postcards in Porto. But this morning we backtracked all the way into Figueira to find the post office, which presumably would have stamps. Post Office here is Correios rather than the Spanish Correos. The photo below shows the triumphant Dodie at the Correios. A letter to North America cost 1.10 euros - reasonable! (If they in fact do deliver on it.)
We set off again, out the east end of town, on the first crazy mission required by the track. The bridge over the Mondego River, right at town, is too big for bicycles, so we had to travel about 10 kms upriver to a usable bridge, and 10 kms back again! The first step in this was crossing a railway track, and here we found the way blocked by a serious gate. We looked up and down for some sort of button, and we scanned for a phone number to call. No luck. We tested the gate to see if it could be forced - nope. We were just about to give up (and go home?) when a bell started to ring and the gate mysteriously opened for us. We figure some operator in Lisbon or wherever looked up from playing Solitaire on his phone and saw us jumping up and down on his camera monitor. This impediment was on the official EV1, of course.
The EV1 web site described this stage of the route, which was in the estuary of the Mondego, in glowing terms. It promised rice fields, salt marshes, and reed beds.
But these wonders were overshadowed for us by some other features not mentioned by EV 1.
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There were however some additional fun sights. Such as a determined egret hitchhiking on a sheep.
Jacquie Gaudet echoed in a comment the tendency to photograph citrus trees at first. We still find them fascinating. And now, below, we can add another tree mentioned by Jacquie - the olive.
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In this section of the trip we are exclusively following Eurovelo 1. But it has not rewarded our faithfulness with the likes of any signage. Until later today, we had not seen a single route marker. If you do not have GPS, or are not carefully watching, then intersections like the one shown below are deadly.
So we were surprised to suddenly find the marker shown below, stuck on a pole. And then we were stunned to find a whole EV1 poster. We had lots of time for these shocks to wear off, however, for after a couple of more signs, it was all over!
The route took us now through some fairly undistinguished small settlements. Here we did not see tile siding on the houses, and in fact there were quite a lot of abandoned and tumble down buildings.
However there were some gardens with zippy flowers, that we do not recognize.
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In time we left any sort of habitation behind and again found ourselves seemingly alone in Portugal. We were following a terrific bike path, separated from the road, but it was not really necessary since we scarcely saw any other vehicle.
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Because it was getting late, we passed on going through Pedrogao town and just made directly for our stay at "Pedrogao Guesthouse". This was on a street of nondescript buildings, that we think is typical of the town overall. The guesthouse was immaculately clean, with my favourite - marble stairs. The only staffer we met was a desk lady who was a virtual clone of those at the last two places - French speaking and about fifty. We have no idea why such ladies own or run the guesthouses in this area.
The room tonight leans a little toward the hostel model, mainly for its lack of electrical outlets and lighting. However the lady says the included breakfast will be great, and there are also toiletries supplied, which we had not seen in our Portugal stays so far.
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Dodie Update: Sadly Dodie is not having a good trip, though there is still lots of time for things to turn around. She has added a severe cold to her rib trauma, and now lists that as the thing she wishes would resolve the most. Here is Dodie tonight, in a pose that can not be said to reflect a lot of joy. However the moist steam did help!
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Perhaps the French medicines only work when you are in France. I say this because some years ago, on a bus tour in China, our kids (middle school age at the time), were sick with severe colds. The tour leader took Jacinto to a Chinese pharmacy, where he bought some medicine (big black horse pills), for 25 cents a box. Whatever it was cured the kids right away. I sent Jacinto back to the pharmacy for boxes more of the miracle pills. Alas, the miracle medicine only seemed to work in China. We tried the pills at home and gave them to others to try. No one had positive results. That's my foreign medicine story!
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Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 292 km (181 miles)
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