Biking the Alentejo – Elvas to Beja in Six Days

6/6-11/2013 – Biking the Alentejo – Elvas to Vila Vicosa, Estremoz, Evora, Alvito, and Beja by Pedal Power

As you may or may not know, Steve and I got on the European bike tour kick four years ago after he read an article about somebody doing a bike tour in France. It sounded fun, so we booked a bike trip in France and it was so wonderful that we followed the next year with a similar trip in Spain and the year after in Italy. We were, of course, very excited to add Portugal to the list.

Now, in prior years, when we were both working, we booked trips where the company would move our luggage for us each day and we would just take odds and ends (cameras, water, stolen croissants from breakfast) with us on the saddle bags or front bags that they provided. We looked at doing that again in Portugal, but after doing the math, I determined that it would be 1/3 the cost if we rented big saddle bags (apparently they are called panniers) and carried what we needed with us on the tour, having the rest of our luggage transported from our start point to our end point. We are trying to be frugal, and were up for the challenge, so we rented the bags, stowed the neccessities, and sent the rest onward.

I must say at this point that although we are travelling pretty light (one checked bag each, not that big or heavy) plus one day pack (school-sized back-pack), this trip confirmed something that we already pretty much knew, which is that when you are doing serious travel, the lighter the better, and you really don’t need very much to get by every day. Sure, it was a little cool on the trip and I wished maybe I had jammed my fleece and a pair of pants in my panniers, but over-all, it was a relief to have less to pack and think about. Steve did lament that somehow when he recently ordered a new pc, with designs toward a lighter-weight model for travelling, he ended up with something almost as heavy as the prior model, for this was by far the biggest part of his weight, but I rejoiced in my decision to jettison the pc from my life (of course Steve didn’t have this option) and learn to do whatever I needed from my trusty ipad – I LOVE this thing. Anyway, hurdle one was whether the extra weight would make us feel off-balance and unsafe, but we found that this really wasn’t a problem, we were just heavier, which made for more fun climbing hills and relief that this was probably the least challenging bike trip in terms of terrain that we had done thus far. That being said, I would like to say to the several natives who exclaimed, “you found the flat area of the country to bike in,” that, no, the Alentejo is not flat. I will grant that there are far more daunting areas of the country to think about biking in, however, every single village in the Alentejo is on a hill and given the lack of roads, every road goes through many villages, and, of course, there is always a big climb to your pousada (castle or convento, always at the top of the hill) waiting for you at the end of each day. I am not complaining, we would never really plan a trip to Iowa to bike…we like to feel like we are actually doing something…and we CERTAINLY are not hard-core professional biking types (I mean, really, we were riding hybrids with 20 pounds of luggage on the back) but until YOU have done it, don’t tell me how flat it is!!! Enough said. At the end of the day, we definately learned that we can do this type of a trip and I would imagine that there will be more similar escapades in our travelling future.

Now, the Alentejo…although each town was special in its own way, in the spirit of moving this blog forward so that I am not writing about Portugal when we are in Ireland or Scotland (too much), I will summarize the trip breifly and show you some pictures of the different places we travelled to.

Terrain was mostly arid with olive trees and cork trees, although there was more irrigated land in the north where we started and in the south where we ended. We mostly took the N-roads, which had small shoulders and in general where not nearly as highly trafficked as in other areas of the country. One road between Estremoz and Evora had a bit more traffic than we would have liked and we were able to find several back roads on the trip which were all delightful, if the couple of dirt ones were a bit bumpy.

Each day we road from one old but functional and pretty, mostly whitewashed town on a hill, to another, and enjoyed the different squares, castles, churches and cathedrals each destination had to offer.

The food was good, we mostly ate typical Portuguese food which means heavy on the meat (lots of lamb and pork) heavy on the oil and potatoes, and light on the veggies. We tried to order things that were a bit lighter, but never seemed to succeed due to the combination that we just don’t understand Portuguese very well and the food there tends to be meaty and oily. Steve is going for a worlds record of 3,000 olives consumed over the last week (If you include the last month with Marocco, I am sure he has it), which is a good thing – we always like olives, and it is with mixed emotion that we say goodbye to Super Bock, in general, the only beer you can actually get in Portugal. Although it is not our favorite, I am sure we will be a bit nastalgic about it in years to come.

One side note, can some beer other than Heineken please make it their goal to distribute in every country in the world?? There is almost no beer that we despise as much as Heineken. It has been the one import (other than sometimes Corona, much better, but not worth paying the import prices) that is usually available for sale both in Marocco and Portugal and this irritates us to no end. (If anyone can figure out a way to get a 12 of New Belgium Ranger to us somewhere on our trip, we will consider giving you exlusive acess to the CT house for the summer).

Overall, the landscape was beautiful, the weather was cool (although we had a bunch of overcast days, we consider this a HUGE blessing, since neither of us likes being very active in the heat. It was almost 90 degrees the day before we headed out on our bikes and over 90 degrees the day we arrived at our final biking destination, but highs were in the 60s and 70s during the trip), which was awesome, if a bit chillier than anticipated (again, I didn’t bring any long pants in my panniers).

The towns were mostly small and we were in the particularly small town of Alvito on a national holiday (Portugal Day) so nothing at all was open (dinners were always available at the pousadas so we certainly didn’t starve), but for the most part there were always several restaurants and a couple of small groceries (mini-marches) available, so we could get a snack for the next days ride, a cold water, or forgotten toiletries, when we needed them. One thing to know is that they believe in siesta in Portugal, so almost everything closes between 1 and 3 each day and restarants don’t serve between 3 and 8. Most of our bike rides were only 3 – 4 hours though, which left plenty of time to do whatever we needed to do.

We road approximately 125 miles over 5 days and rested one day in the middle. It was an excellent experience, one I would definately recommend. We were certainly happy, however, to arrive at the beach in Albufiera, on the Agalve Coast (South Coast of Portugal) yesterday afternoon.