This post covers the first three weeks of my “escape from the Quercy cold”, covering most of January 2022. For this part of the holiday I was joined by Georgina, recently returned from two years in Canada, who was off again at the end of Jan to participate in a Yoga teacher training course on one of the Greek Islands (Amorgos). Tim and Helen spend every winter out here and now have their own apartment in Alvor – they had kindly arranged an apartment rental for me in the same building at a very reasonable rate. My original plan was to use Alvor as a base but to also venture into Morocco but with the Covid situation this has not been possible.
The journey from Albas to Alvor is about 1500Km and we broke the journey into three legs with two overnight stops. We were towing the trailer with my KTM and Trek mountain bike, to give me plenty of opportunities to explore the trails in theAlgarve.
Our first overnight stop was at a truck stop, which was fine, but we weren’t prepared for the dining experience… We went down to the “dining room” at the appointed hour and found lots of small tables spread out around the room – each one laid for one person. We sat down and were immediately brought another place setting and a bottle of red wine straight from the fridge. Food quickly followed – no menu, no choice – you just eat what you are given it seems…
The second leg took us right down through Spain to Badajoz, right on the border with Portugal. After two days driving I needed to get some exercise so went for an evening run down by the river.
This was a “proper” hotel but the main restaurant was closed so we went to eat in the cafe next door, which proved to be fairly basic, but filling..
We arrived in Alvor in good time, but spent a while trying to get the trailer into the very small underground parking space. Tim was most insistent that nothing was allowed outside the white line on the floor that defined the allocated space. I carefully arranged the trailer and bikes to comply and used the space like this for three weeks, until one day I returned from a ride to discover that my trailer and mountain bike had been unceremoniously dragged across the garage into another space (in spite of having a wheel clamp fitted!). I consulted Tim and he soon realised that he had shown me the wrong space ! So much for being careful with the white lines !!
One of the great things about Alvor is the beautiful sandy beach that is only a short walk from the apartment. I have been taking advantage of this by going for a run on the beach every morning, usually followed by breakfast at the Plaza Cafe opposite the apartment.
After my run and breakfast I have tended to return to the apartment and spend some time reading on the terrace which gets the sun in the morning – not really had any rain and daytime temperatures have been 16/17 most days. There has been a bit of a chilly East wind but in the sun and out of the wind it is very warm and certainly a far cry from the sub zero tempertaures being experienced back home in the Lot.
Georgina had signed up to a local gym and was spending each morning there, before starting work at lunchtime – she has continued working for a Canadian cosmetics company, providing on line and telephone support to customers. This kept her busy all through the afternoon until 8pm in the evening. My afternoon routine involved heading out somewhere on either the motorbike or mountain bike, usually following a route I had planned the day before. There is an official trail riding route that covers the whole of Europe called the TET (Trans European Trail). This doesn’t come down as far as Alvor but does run East West through a town called Monchique, which is about 30Km North of Alvor. So I had in mind to head up North and explore some of this ready defined route. I also tried to find some routes of my own which became quite frustrating as a number of the routes I had identified from the map and on Google Earth turned out to be private or blocked off.
I spent many an evening plotting potential routes to explore – the main issue is that the coastal strip is all concrete so it is necessary to head North (or NE or NW) to get clear of all the development and across the motorway which runs parallel to the coast. North of the motorway there are an almost infinite number of trails to expore. However, I eventually worked out that directly North of Alvor is mainly golf courses, which don’t allow access to the trails and North East of Alvor is an absolutely massive solar farm that generates 49 MW of electricity. Other than using the main roads, the main route out is one I found to the North West which became my go to start point for any trail riding. In order to explore some sections of the TET I did three trips out with the car and trailer to get to the start of the route and then unload the KTM to get straight onto the off road sections.
My morning beach run makes an 8-10Km circuit, depending on how much of the beach I cover. The difficulty varies depending on the state of the tide. At low tide the sand is hard and flat, but with the tide in I have to run in the soft sand nearer the dunes which is much harder work.
I also played a bit of tennis with Georgina. Tim and Helen are regular players and members of the local club – but we couldn’t play with them as they are far too good for us! I brought my old bats and balls from France but found that the balls were so old they had lost pressure and didn’t bounce very much at all. Fortunately Tim was able to let me have some more from his stock and put mine in his special device for re-pressurising…
The Plaza Cafe gets the sun in the morning and it was usually warm enough to sit outside. I gradually worked my way through the various options covering various “pastries” and their toasted sandwiches – my favourite being the “Tosta Mixta” or ham and cheese. I finally settled on a decaffeinated coffee and “Pastel de Nata” – a traditional Portuguese custard tart. Tim and Helen’s usual habit is to eat out at lunchtime at one of the local restaurants which offer traditional Portuguese food (usually fish/seafood) and are great value. Tim usually makes a strategic choice of restaurant on the day by judging the amount of sun and the wind direction – ensuring that outside eating is going to be possible. Georgina and I joined them a few times – usually at the weekend when George wasn’t working.
It seems that most of the land to the North of the motorway, that is not reserved for golf or solar panels, is dedicated to forestry of some sort. It is hard to tell as most of the trees/shrubs are only a few feet high and look to have been only recently planted – it seems that there was a massive fire that decimated the whole area and it is now being replanted. This has a trail riding side benefit in that there are a huge number of “twin track” trails, which are probably to provide forestry access to all the different planting areas. The ground is gravel/shale and mostly quite easy going if somewhat dusty. However, there are some big climbs and descents which can be okay, but in some cases have become very rutted due to heavy rain and strewn with rocks which makes some of them pretty challenging. I did find one over to the North East by the reservoir which I named “Dam Hill” – being close to the reservoir dam. I came to the top of the hill and looked at the steep, rutted and rocky descent and thought “shall I get off and walk the bike down here?”. Instead I just decided to go for it and managed to get half way down before I fell off – no real harm done but a lesson learnt. I subsequently went back to the bottom of the hill a few days later and walked up some of it to assess whether it was worth another attempt. I think it was probably manageable, but on my own in the middle of nowhere I decided it was took risky and left it for another day…
I forgot to bring the GoPro so don’t have any riding footage apart from this low quality video from my phone on the handlebars which gives some impression of the trail conditions. This is a loose and rutted descent but nowhwere near as difficult as dam hill – there are lots of them like this one so it is fairly typical. I was glad I didn’t bring my big KTM 950 on this trip…
I also had a similar downhill scary experience on the mountain bike, which is much less capable on these big hills than the KTM.
When not risking life and limb I do get a chance to stop and take in the views :
Monchique has become my favourite destination – it is reachable on both the Trek and KTM (using different routes) and has a nice bike shop/cafe, called Velochique, with great food and a sunny terrace.
I’m now about half way through my Portugal break and my sister Sara is arriving later today for the next ten days. It looks like the temperatures in the Lot are now above freezing but they’ll have to be much warmer than that before I’ll want to head home…
