We are West Coasters. Coastal pathways attract us — the people, the culture and the chance to explore. We’ve explored the West Coast of BC. Now it’s Iberia — along Portugal’s 20 per cent of the peninsula. Portugal shares a rectangular shape with our province, even if it is 10 times smaller. It is reminiscent of home with something new to offer.
As a prelude to our trip (and to overcome jetlag), we spend a week in London at an Air-BnB base near Tower Bridge. It is a refuge from tromping along London’s cobblestones and underground transit system.
We take in two musicals, Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Guildhall. Marvelous guides walk us around the ‘pay-what-you-can’ WWII tour of London’s Blitz where Nazi bombardment devastated the area surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral on Sept. 29, 1940. The shrapnel marks are still visible.
That history comes full circle in Aldwych Theatre as we await the start of a West-End show: TINA the ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.’ A sombre announcement tells of THE Queen (Elizabeth II’s) passing. We observe a two-minute-silence, listen to ‘God Save the (what is now) The King’ and watch the tributes unfold in the weeks that follow.
Two days after TINA, we are in Lisbon on the top deck of a yellow bus, taking in views of the Tagus River (Rio Tejo), which is the largest of three estuaries we will cross. We will also cross the Sado and the Mira.
Tile buildings and mosaic pavements (influences from a 500-year Moorish reign), a Roman aqueduct (influences from Rome’s 700-year rule over Latin Lusitania aka Portugal) and the ‘new’ buildings post-1755 earthquake-and-tsunami, are all on display. In a commercial square (Praca do Comercio) is the former site of Palace Square with its archway (Arco da Rua Augusta) to commemorate the new city as does its Lisboa Story Centre.
We meet up with our bicycle group of 16 through the company Explore!, and our patient and competent guide, Mike. This launches a week of camaraderie and seafood extravaganzas — tonight’s is seabream and dorada (swordfish) over a glass of vinho verde — a young, spritzy-white from Portugal’s largest appellation.
A morning walk to a hilltop cathedral catches us all in the tail end of tropical storm Danielle — a downpour demands we seek safe haven in custard tarts or pastel de nata, pastel de Belem, as the southern Portuguese prefer to call them, or doces conventuais from the nuns who concocted the egg-yolk-and-sugar treat. We queue for Tram 28 Lisbon line and chat for the hour’s wait with fellow tourists before rumbling round Lisbon’s seven hills.
Our first flavour of Fado is a musical ‘blues’ dinner-time performance that expresses longing or saudade (love poems accompanied by Portuguese guitar and 12-string guitar). It is a fitting backdrop for a trip about to unfold. Musical passion and devotion blend like soft fruit in our sangria, made with a traditional Ruby Port for optimal sweetness.
After fine-tuning bicycles, we are off. Our group of adventurers includes 11 Brits, one American, one Swede, and three Canadians including us. Our demographic spans a half century, yet when we debark on a ferry near Belem Tower (short for Bethlehem), we are fellow discoverers as depicted in the ‘Monument to the Discoveries.’
The monument includes 33 giant-sized artists and travellers, scientists and sailors, whose expeditions were led by the likes of Henry the Navigator (Madeira, the Azores and West Africa), Vasco Da Gama (India trade route), Pedro Cabral (Brazil) and Ferdinand Magellan (first world circumnavigation). It was an historic departure point, and it is ours.
As the ferry approaches the Tagus’s southern shore, we see the towering, outstretched arms of the Sanctuary of Christ the King, which was erected in 1959 (inspired by Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue).
The monument gives thanks to God (in this Catholic country) for sparing the Portuguese people the destruction of WWII. Portugal remained neutral. The two monuments face one another as if to wish us well on our first day’s ride down the Caparica Coast to Albufeira Lagoon and on to the Cape Espichel Lighthouse.
Sail boarders and surfers romp, as do we, in the refreshing waters before arriving in the former fishing town of Sesimbra.
We are ready to roll a 50-kilometre-per-day average alongside pastel beach resorts and pale beige sand dunes. The further south we go, crowds diminish along gently sloping hills where the scent of pine trees mingle with eucalyptus. We become aware of another tree, the cork oak.
Cork trees can be stripped of their bark up to 15 times within nine-year intervals. Portugal is the world’s leading manufacturer of corks, and they bottle wines to go with them. Their 250 grape varieties are native and more prolific than anywhere else in the world.
We have timely picnics complete with locally sourced bread, salad, tomatoes, cheese, sardines, tuna, olives, chorizo sausage, oranges, lemonade and cookies. Water bottles at the ready, we are kept hydrated not without a dash of wine or sour cherry liqueur (ginjinha or ginja to the cherry pit-spitters) for fortification on the uphill, sandy or unpaved sections. Did I mention that we have the only two electric-bikes in our group? Pity!
We bypass industrial and congested areas in the tour company’s privately arranged bus and cab rides from Sines to Vila Nova de Milfontes (a thousand fountains) and Sagres. White-washed fishing villages punctuate the coastline and complement the crashing surf. We are now ‘beyond the Tagus’ in the province of Alentejo as we enter Cape St. Vincent Nature Park. There are 30 protected areas in the country — nature parks, reserves, landscapes and natural monuments with one national park in the north.
We’re ending our bicycle week in the European mainland’s most south-westerly spot, Cape St. Vincent, which is also its largest coastal nature park. Each boardwalk provides stunning outlooks. The ancients considered it a magical place where the sun hissed over the edge of a flat world.
We’ve rumbled through two of Portugal’s provinces: the Alentejo and the Algarve, meaning ‘The west’ in Arabic (along with 500 other Arabic words that have become part of the Portuguese language).
If the world were a flat map, we’d be westerners, but thanks in part to the Portuguese adventurers of long ago, we share a globe. We salute their spirit with the most popular spirit in Portugal, Beirao. Its seeds and herbs come from a-round the world, just like us.
As Rudyard Kipling said in his poem, The Ballad of East and West,
“…But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
| When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”
We have come from one end of BC to what is sometimes called Sportugal. ‘The twain shall (not) meet’ and yet…
We’ve basked along warm beaches and rugged cliffs. We bid new places and friends a fond bom dia (good day) and a heartfelt obrigada/o (thanks).
IF YOU GO:
Near Tower of London/Tower Bridge: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/1439666?source_impression_id=p3_1664557661_ODxVyepAWTK9sxJM
Book with Explore!: https://www.exploreworldwide.ca/holidays/cycle-tour-portugal-lisbon-to-algarve
To/from London via Air Canada
London to Lisbon on Ryan Air: https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en
(Explore! arranges transfers)
https://www.lisboastorycentre.pt/en/content/home
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