The Lisbon Six

Between Segovia and Lisbon we had a choice of a seven-day route or a bigger six-day push, and we took the six, wanting the extra time in Lisbon to sort bikes and gear before the flight to the States. Another wild camp was on the cards — there was nothing else on offer as we carried on across the plateau among the mountains we’d been riding through for a couple of days now. I’d been getting lazy with the camera, something I resolved to fix. We passed through Ávila, whose city walls rival Segovia’s, and carried on toward a destination we hadn’t yet chosen. By nine that evening, still surrounded by cornfields, I was starting to worry about finding anywhere quiet away from the road. A few miles further the trees thickened, and we pulled off to check a patch behind some bushes where the ground looked flattened and used — the local tip, as it turned out. We settled instead for a thistle-strewn patch of grass just off a layby, barely out of view of the traffic, and told ourselves it was late enough and we’d be gone early. Always worth checking the ground isn’t moving before you tread through that kind of undergrowth — we’d seen enough flattened snakes on the road by then to take the warning seriously.

Home, last night.

We ate breakfast and brushed our teeth by the roadside like a pair of vagrants, then rode on happily to Fleet Foxes in our ears. It was a glorious morning, the kind that reminds you how lucky you are. It’s not always easy to savour a moment when you’re stinking, hungry, and staring down another seventy-mile day — so much happens in a single day out here, your eyes taking in a thousand small pictures while your mind runs through where the next rest, bed, meal or drink is coming from, whether that squeak in your bike is about to become something serious, one uncertainty stacked on another. More often than not you don’t appreciate something until it’s already behind you, so it means a great deal when the happiest feeling of exactly where you are and what you’re doing catches up with you in the moment itself. It carried me through the whole day in a fine mood.

The day improved further when we met Javier, a local and an accomplished cyclist himself, who now runs tours — loaded and unloaded — for a company of his own. He rode with us and chatted all the way up a climb, led us to a fountain in a small town to fill our bottles with cold water fed by the glacial lakes above, and pulled us over on the far side of the pass to show us the cherry trees that keep the local economy turning. After a long descent he stopped with us in the next town and bought us drinks. It was a real gift having a guide like him for the day — if it hadn’t been so hot, and if he hadn’t had a mountain to climb back over to get home, I think he’d have ridden with us the whole way. He gave us good advice on the route ahead, though we could only follow it as far as Cáceres, since we couldn’t find camping options online for the rest and had to fall back on our original plan. Thank you, Javier — I’ll come back one day and ride the route you described.

Repping the sol.

Eal and Javier.

It took a while for them to appear, but Spanish campgrounds, once you find them, are excellent — mostly municipal sites attached to public swimming pools, ideal for a cooling-off dip after a day’s ride, if not for a proper swim. The one in Cáceres was a particular highlight: every pitch came with its own small building housing a sink, shower and toilet, and even a table and chairs. Simple pleasures, but we’d grown used to sitting on our air mats on bare ground, our tired thighs threatening to cramp at any moment. I remembered wooden benches on every plot back in the States, but these were the first chairs we’d had anywhere in Europe.

Had to improvise on the hard ground.

Since Segovia we’d been counting down the six days, and something about nearing the end of a section always seems to trigger the urge to speed up and simply get there. After crossing the final border into Portugal we had a few dogs to see off, guarding the strange mix of orange and tobacco fields along the way. In Elvas we caught a local custom we’d first seen in France — a post-wedding parade of twenty or thirty cars looping the town, horns blaring — and rode alongside them for a stretch, collecting smiles and happy toots of our own. The final approach into Lisbon was less charming: the route took us north before zigzagging south into the city to dodge the major roads, mostly through industrial estates and busy junctions, but the end was finally in sight. Five weeks since leaving home — the ferry, then Belgium through the Ardennes into France, over into the Alps of Switzerland, across the vineyards of southern France, over the Pyrenees into the heat of Spain, and now, at last, beautiful Portugal.

Rocking bags of pick ‘n’ mix swag lately.

Made it to Lisbon, badly in need of a haircut.

So we arrived in Lisbon with a few days to spare, and every one of them was needed. A full day and a great deal of walking went into tracking down two cardboard bike boxes and two large sports holdalls for the panniers. Lisbon is a lovely city, but between cleaning gear and getting everything sorted for the American leg of the trip I didn’t take a single photograph of it — it will simply have to remain a city I can vouch for rather than show you. From here, Boston, hopefully with a safe flight for both luggage and bikes. I still can’t quite believe I’m about to ride across America again.