We unpacked the bikes and set up camp still all grumpy and overheated. Aidan solved this by opening a really hot can of that had been boiling in his luggage since the supermarket this morning, while I swapped jeans and boots for hotpants and flipflops and used one of the panniers to do the laundry in.


Housewifing done and sufficiently calmed down, we wandered up the road with a bottle of wine, see if we could find the ice-cold s we had been craving. Stashed the wine and went into the first bar we saw. 90 cents a half pint? Bring it on! I'm suddenly up for a pub.... er, I mean bar crawl

Everyone seems to be scooting around on those awesome little bikes and a couple of guys came and went, riding up to their mates, having a and then riding on.


We decided to explore some more of the village. So fetched our wine bottle from its hiding place and walked down the road. Quite scary, as there are mostly no pavements and cars just zoom past without slowing down for anything. So you find yourself jumping into ditches or pressed against someone's garden wall a lot.


There wasn't much to see, so we popped into another bar. I did the usual british thing and walked up to the bar and bought a . The second time the bar tender thought he'd teach me the portuguese way and refused payment. Then the penny dropped. You just keep drinking as s are brought to your table and then you pay at the end before you leave. That would never happen in London! I liked this relaxed attitude

As I sat down, I knocked the flimsy plastic table and spilled lots of . So I had to get up again to fetch some napkins from inside. Aidan took the piss out of me endlessly. Then he got up and knocked the table so hard, my fell over! HAHA! Who is drunk now?!? We spent the rest of the evening discussing the bikes and our riding styles, and how I could improve my cornering. Aidan was lots better at it than me. Finally it was time to stumble back to the tent and pass out.

The next morning we slept in and only crawled out of the tent when the sun had turned it into an oven.


Didn't bother making coffee. Just drank what was left in our thermos. It's a really good one, so the coffee was still warm. Some squashed bread and peanut butter sandwiches later, we packed up and headed straight for the beach in Esposende. Being the Atlantic coast, it was quite cool. But we grabbed our swimming clothes and jumped into the water head and all anyways. It was too cold to stay there long, so we just lay on the beach, reading our books. Eventually that got cold too, as my wet bikini felt like ice, so I put my bike jacket over it, looking just a little bit silly

As the beach filled up with tourists, we grabbed our shampoo and had a shower under those wash-the-sea-salt-off-your-skin-when-you-leave-the-beach showers. Bit odd standing on the beach in full view of everyone, having a shower, but no-one seemed to mind too much. And yes, we left our bikini/swimming trunks on of course! Was sooooo good to be all clean again We munched some biscuits while our stuff was drying in the sunshine and then packed up and headed into Porto.

The idea was to whizz though the city and find a camping spot on the other side. Daniel had said Porto was well worth a visit, so we wanted to return the next day and have a look around. But we got hopelessly lost and ended up riding in circles. Daniel's friends told us later, that they would not attempt going to Porto without a sat-nav! Aidan got more and more pissed off and did a kamikaze left turn across three lanes into a petrol station, with me in hot pursuit. We checked the maps on Aidan's phone and set off, only to get lost three minutes later. All we wanted to do was to leave the city eastwards, but the roads kept taking unexpected turns south and then west! But Porto just wouldn't let us leave! We got more and more frustrated! Every time we thought we were heading east, a sign was telling us we were heading towards "Centro" again!

It was Jinxed! So Aidan just gave up and told me to lead us the hell out of there. So I turned down the one road that didn't say "Centro" leading north. Ignoring the first road east, we ended up on the second turn eastwards - which promptly turned into the A1 SOUTH towards Lisbon (See what I mean?!?). I thought what the hell, we need to go south eventually anyways, so I just gunned it. We continued to ignore the exits until we had well and truly left the city, then we left the motorway and rode down the N1. I pulled over and apologised to Aidan for going south, not east. Tuns out we weren't far off from where we had wanted to go. But most importantly: we escaped!!!

Finding camping was not easy that evening. Village seemed to melt into village and every little clearing and mountainside seems to be either occupied or farm land. It's really pretty but seems quite poor, with farmers working their small fields by hand. Freshly harvested onions were stacked in little piles dotted around the fields and there were people selling onions, potatoes and melons from sacks by the roadside everywhere. We scrutinised every little path leading into some trees, but did not find anywhere to discretely put a tent.

There were forest fires to avoid as well. We had seen smaller ones all over Portugal and no-one seemed to do anything about them. Strange given I had heard of stories where people died because they were unable to escape the advancing flames. But here the sandy ground just seemed to smoulder and plants slowly caught fire. But then we hadn't seen any of the big fires yet. My dad txt me that evening to be careful as there were huge forest fires about 75km south-east of Porto (guess where we were -ish?). We could see some black smoke clouds to the north and one hill that could have been the perfect camping spot was on fire.

So we rode on and eventually found an ok spot near a housing estate..... A sort of light forest that seems to have been declared a public dumping ground. Oh well, it was getting dark and we were exhausted, so it would do. A couple of teenagers walked past and completely ignored us. I felt almost invisible! At least we weren't told to move on, so we set up the tent and Aidan cheffed up some yummie chorizo and veggie rice

We discussed our options for the next day over a bottle of port whilst writing the diaries and decided not to return to Porto. It had been such a nightmare just trying to navigate through it! We would head to the smaller Aveiro instead.

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