Time for a break....: Day 59 – 07/06/13

Caminha - Estela

67.9 km, 4 hrs 58mins, 506m total climb

Having barely digested the masses of Portuguese menu del dia of the previous day, we left the Campsite in Caminha at our usual time at around 9.30am. We didn't get very far.

Yesterday I had ended the day with a clicking sound coming from what I thought was the front crank. At the campsite I had a good look over the bike and even tightened up the bottom bracket, also inspected the frame for cracks but found nothing. In the morning when we set off, the plan was to get to a bike shop and have a better check of the bottom bracket there, but we managed to just about get onto the main road before I noticed the real problem – a broken link in the chain. In fact it was the Master link (where the chain is joined). I didn’t see it yesterday as the broken link was still facing. Luckily I was carrying some repair links so after a half hour of oily-fingered repairs I got it fixed and we were on our way again! The French bike shop had obviously over-tightened the link when they installed the chain. My review of that place is getting worse and worse. At least the wheel is still OK.

We were heading down the coast and had plotted the route to pass some of the famous surfing spots, just to have a look. We passed quite a few signs from the road promising surf-bars or campsites later on also and eventually decided to head down one of the access roads to have a look at one campsite. The main road runs about 2km from the actual beach line. This was when we discovered the real old or small roads in Portugal are still cobbled. We bumped and swore our way down through 2km of prime cobble. The whole flat area between the main road and the beach has been developed to grow vegetables, mainly salad stuff. Loads of onions, tomatoes in poly-tunnels, lettuce, peppers, cabbage etc. The interesting thing was that each plot was quite small, and people obviously still made a living out of each plot. Loads of people working. We joked about coming back later with a big bowl, a sharp knife and some oil and vinegar and helping ourselves to a salad buffet quietly in a poly-tunnel. The campsite turned out to be rubbish, one of the ones where people live almost permanently, and nowhere near anything interesting. We stopped at the beach to eat our 1 Euro worth of cherries we bought by the side of the road earlier (next to a Santiago de Compostella sign!) for lunch. When we bought the cherries we tried a couple straight away to sort of give the guy a positive review of his product, unfortunately I choked on one of the stones right in front of him, and went off eyes streaming and coughing out cherry phlegm. He didn't look as complimented as I had hoped.

We got back on the main road and continued to our planned destination – another of the Orbitur chain of campsites running all down the coast of Portugal. After another 3km of rattling and swearing we reached the campsite from the main road. Awesome huge place with a pool and near the beach. The site was separated from the beach by a golf course. You had to access the beach by two short tunnels which ran underneath two fairways. It was all netted to protect the beach goers from hackers, quite strange. I wonder which came first, the golf course or the campsite. The beach itself was wild. A steep dune terminated quite abruptly by huge white waves. We had hoped for a swim but it would have been a bit too adventurous to try that out. There was noone else there either. So we wimped out and had our first few hours in the sun beside a pool since Agen in France. We ate at the campsite which was cheap and had a few drinks there afterwards also. Still very quiet.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1409286