Squalls of rain together with some winds played an early part the next day as we went in a large loop to find some interesting roads to Bragança, just inside Portugal. The last leg took us over some continuously twisty road, with perilous drops and no crash barriers, which taxed us all at the end of the ride. Bragança sits high on a hill and the winds here were sufficient to seriously rock my Harley even while stationary, and some tricky cobbled streets through the city had to be negotiated to find the Pousada on the hilltop overlooking it. The ragged flag on the castle opposite was further evident about the windy location. It was a good evening as Wayne and John each correctly predicted the scores of the Euro 2012 football matches at check-in and won a bottle of wine each later. The manager was delighted presenting, and so were we consuming them!
Setting off on a fairly straight route to our next Pousada at Viseu took us unwittingly onto endless roadwork where a new dual carriageway was replacing the old highway. It went on for miles and it made me wonder where the money was coming from in these austere times - Europe? The further problem is that these new roads were not in my satnav map, so we were taken off the road through some difficult cobbled village streets on one occasion, and I led us through another later looking for a place for lunch, to no avail. You have to be circumspect in these situations and take what comes. We felt we had seen another side of Portugal with these two excursions and they weren't to be the last! The Pousada of Viseu used to be part of a hospital and was relatively recently converted to a hotel, a rather grand one at that, with a large atrium and plush rooms.
Our policy was to ride until we found a coffee stop, then a lunch stop, then a cold drink stop, breaking the day into 4. Most of the time, this worked unless we were in more remote areas, and we had to take what existed when we found it. We did find some great cakes and custard tarts in some places!
No comments:
Post a Comment