Day 41: Serpa to Alvito

April 11, 2023

Storming the Castle

Heart

Comment

We enjoyed the space afforded by our newly built hotel at Serpa, which had a lot of space both in the room and at reception. It was really convenient to load the bikes inside and then to roll them on out. But first the great breakfast, which we rated at about an 8. It included fresh squeezed local orange juice, which is soo good!

Just outside the door we were struck by the view out to the surrounding agricultural land. But this was just the beginning. You will soon see that the lands here are totally amazing. They are almost indescribably pleasing, offering a range of textures, symmetries, and colours. Normally I will select a few representative shots of great scenery, but today I am leaving in a lot more. The scenes were really what the day was all about.

In front of the hotel. One small detail here is that the planted garden has marigolds and petunias. I had been remarking to Dodie about about the lack of these Vancouver Island standards to be seen hereabouts.

Thisi windmill seems to have been converted to a house. We snapped this because it is presumably representative of Portugal, but in fact it is the only one we have seen in many days.

Here is a look back at Serpa. Seeing the whole wall like that gives a correct idea of the size of the medieval city - that is, not very big.

We set off on our route to Alvito, having chosen basically the most direct route, from several options. This took us on the 265 north, until the 258 west. Both of these roads offered gorgeous views, although it must be said that 258 had a noticeable number of larger trucks for most of its length, and in at least one case a truck caused a very dicey situation for us, as the driver went for the pass when really there was not room to do it. So he almost dragged his rear end over Dodie as he desperately pulled in front to avoid the head on collision. Idiot!

Below you have images of what we were looking at for all the day. What created the visual excitement was first off all the immense extent of the orderly plantings of olives and grapes, and the new plantings, stretching to the horizon. Next we had colours, for example from flowers in the fields, or from field crops, and then the road itself - curving on ahead, in the way so alluring to the cyclist. Have a look:

Magpies are notoriously hard to get a shot of. But ha ha, got one on the fence post!

Passing by all the olives, we stopped for a closer look, curious about whether we were seeing flowers on them, or was it baby olives? Ok, it was flowers.

But soon we came to huge plantings of trees with no flowers, and to boot the leaves were not "olive" coloured. So what was all this?

No flowers, and leaves that looked like this.

Look, mystery tree on the left, definite olive on the right.

Here is the thing. It would be easy to label the mystery trees almond. But if they are almond, then what were those trees covered in white flowers, with the few limp green leaves, from about a fortnight ago? If pushed, I could dig up the photos. But we had decided those were almonds! Any ideas? One other thought, the flowerless trees are not likely to be citrus, as there was no other citrus in the immediate area.

Of course we were not just looking sideways at the trees but also up, for birds. We spotted at least two, that both seemed to be either dining or nest building.

Following the animal theme, we also had sheep - complete with shepherd and dog, and some very contented looking cows.

Carrying on down the road (did I write "road" - here are a couple more road shots!) we looked at scenes of pure grain, grain with red earth tones, and amazingly, whole embankments of wild lavender.

Normally you see shots of lavender colour like this from plantings in Provence. But this lavender is completely native and untended!

We noticed places were olives were being rejuvenated by radical pruning. But in the place shown below, there had obviously been a decision to grub out and replace. We saw big trucks filled with branches, but we also assume the wood is usable for salad bowls and the like.

This is an area that has the Guadiana River running down from a huge reservoir and of course on to the sea, at Ayamonte.

The Guadiana, or perhaps the reservoir that the river runs out of.

All of the towns along the way looked like this. One point, I had thought the tower might be a grain elevator or such, but eagle eyed Dodie spotted the bells. It took my camera to later confirm this.

This seemed like an extreme way to dispose of grubbed out olive bits.

Would you like to live in a villa among the vines?

Some distance beyond Vidigueira, we came to what we guess was the place the Classens stayed. If yes, good work by them to have found it.

Kathleen had mentioned about this being the Alentejo wine route. This info clearly came from the many signs like this.

Near Vila Ruiva, we have been clearly climbing a lot. Dodie's battery has certainly noticed this, and she is starting to push the bike up hills. We are leery of running the batteries too low, which can damage them.

Could this be the back end of a Goldfinch?

By the time we reached Alvito, Dodie was purely pushing. She wanted to save enough power to "walk assist" up to the castle. I was saying "When the prospect of staying in a castle came up yesterday, I didn't know it would be up a mountain" and she was saying "Idiot, that's what castles are all about!"

The way to the castle, is steeper than this looks.

The castle keep, where we will "keep" our bikes. We dare the thieves to bust in here!

Ha, ha, the renovation put in an elevator!

The rather Moorish view through our window.

Looking through the photos from today, we are amazed again at how beautiful and great the ride was, and at how good the Alentejo has been as a place to ride. We still have the ride to Evora tomorrow, and then a further jump back to the N2 somewhere, before we would conclude the Alentejo circuit. After that, there is a long stretch on the N2, and then the Douro, so we have lots of fun still to come, but the Alentejo has been so great we are already nostalgic about it!

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,788 km (1,110 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	9
Comment on this entry	Comment	0