Day 44: Brotas to Ponte de Sor

April 14, 2023

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Maria plied us with five varieties of home made jams and three home made cakes, as we enjoyed sitting in the beautifully decorated dining building. We left with good feelings about Brotas and the nice little house we had stayed in.

Then back onto N2, and we were thinking that the landscape while not dramatic was certainly pleasant, and that the road was suitably quiet.

The landscape was not dramatic, but was pleasant.

Here entering Mora, you can see the quiet road and decent shoulder.

Mora has the white buildings, orange roofs, and small church of most towns in this region.

Beyond Mora, we noted this field dressed up in red. The attempted closeup shows the red to be from a reddish grass.

Birds seemed rather flitty today. Just barely got this Stonechat.

These white trees are new appearances on this route. They are clearly from the birch/alder family.

The road stayed good for us as we approached Montargil. We are always concerned about the road, and as we will see, things went sour quickly from this point.

The dam at Montargil is not a hydro one, but seems to just create a reservoir. We passed over the dam, with the road then following the water for the next 15 km north. These 15 km did have pleasant views of the reservoir.

The reservoir resulting from the dam had some nice recreation areas.

Our problem was that, by some mechanism, the road after Montargil got infested by fast moving 18 wheelers, racing with equally fast moving cars. It was not only wearing, but there was a risk of getting sucked under one of these thundering behemoths. Dodie tried a strategy of stopping when one would be passing, but there was a risk in this. Unless I reacted promptly to her stopping, I could bang into her rear, sending us both under the truck.

I didn't get a photo illustrating this truck problem (hard to ride the bike with one hand and zoom the camera while dodging the truck) but I did get a "fun" one showing Dodie facing off with a much smaller truck. The fun part comes from it's being a cork truck. Smooshed by 5 tons of fresh cork in Portugal is certainly one way to go. You can see Dodie's hat and jacket out in front of the truck.

Fear of cork trucks turned to some other darn negative emotion as we reached Consado and our stay for the night Quinta da Saudade. This was our first try of an Agrotourismo, or rural B&B. At 100 euros this one was rather pricey, but the description sounded good, with the farm environment and included breakfast. We arrived at the place to find an assortment of buildings and structures and some miscellaneous people walking about. The people ignored us, and we assumed they were other clients. We found one structure marked Recepcao, but it was closed. So we called the number. Yes, of course, we got someone talking faintly but rapidly in Portuguese. We tried the three critical concepts, in three words: Miller, Booking.com, and Reservation. The lady responded by hanging up. I am fuzzy on how we then got any service, or the Reception door to open, but some of the miscellaneous people about seemed to coalesce into workers of the place. Best was an 11 year old named Miguel, who spoke perfect English. He turned out to be the only reasonable and personable individual around. He translated for us with a rather hostile lady, from who, we learned that we would be in "#3", which was being cleaned, and we should sit on the bench in front of it and wait. OK, that is all perfectly fine. We sat there, until Miguel came and said "It's time to go to your room, follow that man".

"That man" was on a bicycle, and he took off down a sandy track. We followed, pushing our bikes. We can't afford to go flying. After 1/2 km, we arrived at a shack by a pond. The man opened the door and I (Dodie was bringing up the rear, still pushing) stepped in. I took one look, spun on my heel, and stepped out. The place was tiny, dark, and dingy. Not for 100 euros, not even for 40 euros! Dodie followed and had exactly the same reaction. With Google Translate, I said to the man "This is much smaller than even #3" and he replied "Yes, it's much smaller". Things went downhill from there, as we climbed back up to the main cluster of buildings, and were given to understand that #3 was not on offer. One of the miscellaneous people handed us a cell phone, and on the line was someone who identified himself (ok, in English!) as being from the "booking" function of the place. He did this function by giving us an argument, claiming we knew what we had booked when we booked it. Giving us an argument is not usually a winning strategy, and he ended by agreeing to a refund. For our part, we flounced off to the next town Ponte de Sor, where we are now in the modern, reasonably priced, and friendly Hotel Ponte Sor. We also had a fun chat with Booking.com in London, of course.

Your 100 euro accommodation is down here, somewhere.

One of the advantages of the incident at Consado was that fueled by adrenaline Dodie covered the distance to Ponte de Sor in half the usual time. Ponte de Sor did not look particularly quaint, as you see from the photos, but the clean and well equipped hotel was what we really wanted to see. Most importantly, the desk staff were very friendly and helpful. It really makes an incredible difference!

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Oh golly, more cars! But soon we would be at the hotel.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,955 km (1,214 miles)

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Jacquie GaudetI’ve always avoided agriturismo accommodation, even though some of them look really nice. It’s just that they tend to be out in the country and far from food (unless it’s a half-board situation).
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Jacquie GaudetYou are spot on on all counts, and agritourismos are now at the bottom of our list, after B & B's, hotels, and even hostels with bunk beds.
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1 year ago