Day 9: Ovar to Aveiro - Grampies Iberian Inquisition Spring 2023 - CycleBlaze

March 10, 2023

Day 9: Ovar to Aveiro

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Morning brought another chance for a look at the Vintage Balcony Guesthouse. In the light of this day it looked as good as yesterday, and we got to step across the street and get the outside view. We admire the owner, Bruno, for the quality of the work done here. Later we learned that famous Cycleblaze blogger, Brent Irvine, also stayed here and met Bruno. Cool.

Beautiful staircase
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The kitchen, with tile backsplash and granite counter top.
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Vintage Balcony Guesthouse
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Presumably, the vintage balcony.
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Back now through Ovar, returning to our track, we noticed a nice park, with abundant Rosemary, which we see also at home, but not with such abundance! And there was yet another small, tile covered church. They must have a lot of them. Tile covering is really common here. 

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Bill ShaneyfeltWish we could grow rosemary here!
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Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltSo do we. It keeps dying over the winter when it is young unless brought in to the greenhouse, and then we go away and it dies of neglect.
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Portugal ranks highly with me for having a lot of bakeries - almost as much as France. Dodie noticed the one below for its sign about Pao de Lo, which she had seen in the online guide to EV1. Pao de Lo is a specialty cake of Ovar.

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We naturally stopped in, but found that the thing is quite a large cake. When Dodie asked for "two" the baker was correctly skeptical. We could, of course, not carry even one cake. But the baker said we could sit and eat a piece each. If we could sit and eat two pieces, we could buy and walk away with two pieces, or so I thought. But no. So we just settled for a photo of the whole thing.

The local specialty cake.
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Cycle path by a sort of normal road, in forest.
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The Eucalyptus can be smelled from afar.
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This sign illustrates that the Portuguese are serious about cycling routes. We took the red route, which we thought would be "rapido", but from this point we seemed to be casually wandering.
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The "red" route looked pretty fast, at first.
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Soon we found that we were snaking through a variety of tiny villages. This was great, because we saw the buildings, and also a lot of flowers and semi-tropical foliage. Most notable were the orange trees, and soon lemon trees, some with really giant lemons.

At first we would photograph every orange tree, but soon we realized they were everywhere!
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Jacquie GaudetFunny, that’s what I did in Spain. I kept trying for a really good photo of oranges (and lemons and olives).
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Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Jacquie GaudetThey are so photogenic, but too ubiquitous to allow for the perfect citrus tree shot. No forward motion would ensue, so cancel that idea..
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Dodie spotted this guy while we were stopped to look at an orange tree.
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Bill Shaneyfelt be a Bocage's wall lizard. Family Lacertidae can be difficult to ID.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/35706-Podarcis-bocagei/browse_photos
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Typical scattered buildings
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Everybody has orange trees!
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I like the black headed gulls - they are new to me.
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Every river entering the estuary is noted, and its bird and other life described on trailside signs.
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It's impossible to document it all, but I have focused on the occasional bird description!
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Typical estuary scene
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Another river heads for the ocean.
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This tree is common in gardens here. It is something like the Monkey Puzzle that we have at home. We are told it is a Norfolk Pine.
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Scott AndersonNorfolk Island Pine.
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Yet another small town. It was really fun going from one to another.
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The churches here are very vaguely reminiscent of Spanish ones in Mexico.
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Some nice houses in town
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Looks like a kind of chickadee?
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In southern France we used to talk of "juice" coloured houses. Here they are fruity too, but more intense. These are clearly raspberry and mango.
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Giant lemons
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A nice foraging stork
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These are some of the boats that have become symbolic of Portugal,
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These were farm geese that lived just beside an estuary. It provided them with water to swim in.
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Scott AndersonThis is also a wild species in Europe - the graylag goose - but Portugal is outside their natural range.
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The track took us between swampy areas and farm yards.
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Cute piglets
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The mother pig was very opposed to me coming any closer!
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This route was not very 'rapido". But we ended up here by a wrong turn and it was not the route's fault.
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Low speed way to go.
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I thought this might be a baby stork, but the telephoto reveals it is a nesting mother.
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Many little birds were sharing the stork's nest.
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This one was easy to see!
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Especially not being the one with the GPS to look at, I found the varied landscape confusing. I photographed this map not to put things straight but to show how  varied things were. This was way different from yesterday, when almost the entire route was one type of path, straight south beside the ocean.

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At last the route resolved itself into a straight run. This was along the N327, beside the Ria Aveiro, which is a huge lagoon.

Great bike path - good work, Portugal!
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Again, all along this route there were bird observation stops, with signs describing what should be there. 

There were so many wading birds described! This was one of them.
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The bike path became this - completely protected!
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A typical bird watching stop.
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A typical bird
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Bill ShaneyfeltMaybe a whimbrel?
https://ebird.org/species/whimbr
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Scott AndersonTo Bill ShaneyfeltYup. And not one I think of as a typical bird, really. Pretty interesting species, and one you might see on Vancouver Island in migration.
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Bill ShaneyfeltPossibly a great cormorant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_cormorant
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At Torreira, the path looked like this!
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Typical boats at Torreira
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The path came to an abrupt (really abrupt!) end. But no matter, the road had a shoulder and low traffic.
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Bill ShaneyfeltEgret

Possibly little egret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_egret
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Scott AndersonTo Bill ShaneyfeltDefinitely the little egret. You can distinguish them from the great egrets by bill color, among other things.
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These giant plants are something like Aloe Vera.
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Bill ShaneyfeltCentury plant. You will find them all over in warm dryish climates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_americana
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Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltHey Bill, thanks for all the ID'S. We have fallen massively behind in replying to comments, but really do appreciate the time and effort you are taking.
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Bill ShaneyfeltTo Steve Miller/GrampiesDon't worry about replying. I just hope those who actually know more than I do will reply, especially when I'm wrong...
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We even had some flamingos, spotted by Dodie, of course. I then complained that they were not pink enough.
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Scott AndersonI was surprised to see them this far north until I looked t the map. This is well south of the Camargue.
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Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonThanks for all the ID'S and comments. We are currently so far behind it will be impossible to catch up, so we are going to do a reset and start answering from March 18th. The joys of busy touring days...
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This shot of fishers with their nets and boats is typical for Portugal.
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Dodie knew from the GPS, but had spared me the anxiety by revealing, that we had been going down a long spit and that our only hope of getting over to our hotel in Aveiro was a hypothetical ferry. Fortunately the ferry existed, but was it running, and when? We were glad to see another touring cyclist there, and he had an idea of these answers!

The cyclist was David Cain, an experienced world traveller, and he had a good idea about when the ferry would go. Hooray! The time was in about half and hour - long enough to exchange lots of stories. Language was no problem, because David is from Ontario!

Dodie and David kibbitz with the ferry ticket taker. The cost was only 2 euros each.
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We're on!
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To get from the ferry to Aveiro involved negotiating some quite big and fast roads. But for one thing, the traffic and drivers somehow never gave the feeling of being dangerous, and for another there always turned out to be a bike path way to go! David and us arrived in Aveiro all in one piece.

Aveiro is known as the Venice of Portugal. It does have canals, but oh, does it ever have its own style, and it's gorgeous.

Aveiro!
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The Venice of Portugal - but those boats are not gondolas but rather were used to gather seaweed. They do convey tourists these days.
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A language school for us? Naa!
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The streets with the black and white patterns are called calcadas - they are are a special thing in Aveiro.
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Painted boats!
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The street with our hotel. The hotel is ok, but I am typing this in the bathroom - the only place with adequate light!
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Update on Dodie's ribs: she is definitely wincing a lot, but with pain pills is going along well. She says the pain is less than yesterday, but then again she has taken a lot of pain pills. She can breathe well and get on and off the bike, but coughing really hurts. The hotel clerk says another cyclist was in here last week with the same problem. Misery enjoys that company!

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 119 km (74 miles)

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