Cycle touring sometimes ramps up the demands on your life skills. Last night the topics were wifi, internet, telephone, and email - yes, all of them! The details are too hard to remember and/or too boring, but in summary the hotel wifi (mostly) did not work, Lyca mobile played games with the mobile data in our "plan", and we had to somehow phone Canada, about our email, which was shut down again!
This morning there was another test. I stepped out of the elevator in the basement of the hotel, where our bikes were stashed , and found myself in an absolutely pitch black room whose exit door was apparently locked (actually just jammed). I had to carefully feel all over the wall to find the elevator button, to call it to rescue me!
We set off from Santa Cruz using the cycle.travel "paved" route, which was largely the same as what Brent Irvine had followed. Sometimes this coincided with EV1 and sometimes not.The difference is that EV1 sticks more to the coast and we went more inland. The coast is where you find the nastier hills, as the road tends to ascend and descend headlands.
The very first part of the ride, which was inland, was admittedly a bit dull, without major features (or hills) to grab our attention.
There are a lot of these former windmills about, now converted apparently to housing. Windmills like this are iconic, such that some businesses feature miniature versions out front.
I recorded a random Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia Reginae) just to help remember how extremely plentiful they are in yards. I had always thought of these as symbolic of exotic southern California.
Even our "inland" route could not resist lunging for the coast, at Sao Laurence, Ribamar, and ultimately Ericeira. The main features of this ride were firstly the fact that it was "on road" and the road often had little or no shoulder. This is fairly nerve wracking, but you can get used to it. The second feature was that even though we were shooting for a route with fewer hills, there were some really serious ones. When the road ahead of you goes down, down, and then you look ahead to see it snaking up, up, you of course know you are in for it!
Ericeira was very dense with condos, and reasonably heavy traffic on the narrow main road. We still can not figure the organization of places like this on the coast. There is a huge amount of (new looking) housing stock, but relatively little retail, and also nowhere near enough people visible, relative to all that housing. If the lack of people is due to this being the off season, that means there are tens of thousands in this world able to afford a fancy beach condo, just for vacation. That sure is not us!
We stopped to eat our sandwiches at a roadside bench overlooking the sea cliff, near Ericeira. On the opposite bank (across the road) the ice plants were putting on a flowering display,
A "foz" is a mouth, so this signals where the Lizandro stream enters the ocean. It meant a long descent to the stream, followed of course by a long ascent. The road down and up was steep and curving = nerve wracking. However four road bikers came flying down past us at an "insane" speed - faster than the cars. Amazing.
As you push your bike, you can see even more than when riding. Here for example is part of a large area of nasturtiums, growing wild. In some spots they already were making their characteristic yellow/orange flowers.
The road coming up from the stream was very steep, as was the land beside the road. Yet there were houses here. This afforded this old lady a venue to stay young by descending to her mailbox by the road, and climbing back up to the house. We are glad to report that there was in fact a letter for her.
Kelly IniguezI think you could well be correct about walking to the mailbox, up/down that steep hill could keep the lady young. I went for physical therapy on my shoulder. As part of the assessment, I had to prove I could get up off of the floor. I could. The therapist said I should do that three times a day, and the ultimate goal is to be able to get up from a cross legged position, without hands. She said getting off of the floor is a life skill. Maybe similar to getting the mail in Portugal! Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Kelly IniguezOh dear, we would both flunk. Dodie because of arthritic knees/replacements which no longer have enough flex for that maneuver and Steve because he never had the flexibility to cross his legs let alone use them to rise up. Life skills indeed! Reply to this comment 1 year ago
The GPS soon instructed us to turn onto an extremely narrow and very steep laneway, that was ascending to Sintra. This was not only a push up affair, it was a slow push. Also, a car was brave enough to descend the lane, and there was not room for it and us. We backed down to a spot where we could step aside.
Once we reached the streets of the town itself, we found car drivers to be quite aggressive. I cautioned Dodie to watch out for their mirrors. We were pushing the bikes, and so were de facto pedestrians. But the streets lacked space for pedestrians and cars both, causing a conflict. The Classens had noticed this problem as well, last Fall. In the photo, there is a bit of sidewalk coming up ahead left.
City Hall, we presume. In the typical frustrating manner of the Grampies, we will leave town tomorrow without really looking at it. No problem, though, the Classens and Brent Irvine have already done all the looking for us.
