Enjoying a beer and the view in Lagos

Wonderful day today

A really nice day today.  Went to the west coast, great waves. 

Stoped off at the beach.

But I was fat too lazy to walk all the way down and back.  

In the mountains just north of Lagos

That's Lagos Portugal, not Lagos Africa.  

And the hotel

Very nice

Now in Lagos

The chaps arrived an hour late blaming it on a lack of taxis at the airport and long Waits. So they got the metro in. We then took the motorway south until we turned off on to an A road to head the mountains north of Lagos. We decided to stop off for food on the way. Pulling into the first town we found we were directed to a local cafe. Very local, we were not locals. Through the cigarette smoke we saw the owner and enquired what food they have. None. Looked like the locals were just drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

The next town we stoped at had 2 small cafes, only one selling food. Steak sandwiches or burgers. The dubious person I am I opted for eating one of my expedition camp meals, a rather nice chilli concarni. The chaps steak sandwiches arrived and it was quite tricky working out what was bread and what was steak, it was all a sort of off yellow Colour. I ended up sharing my chilli. Before we set off we saw the next delivery of meat, whole carcassEs sitting on the back of a pick up in the heat and open air.

We then road some great twisty roads through the mountains to the hotel.

A great nights sleep and ready to go

Problem is, no sight of the chaps...........

Haaaaa, luxury

What a nightmare trip today, so cold this morning. The thermometer I passed on the motorway said 6C, but that was before I spent about 2 hours climbing up the motorway hills. Total road time today was 4.5 hours and it would have been a real nightmare if I had not had those heated gloves. Another bad day for winds as well, at least until I crossed the Portuguese border, then they appeared to drop off. Lots of scary high long bridges over valleys as well. Had to pay close attention to the wind socks to gauge the speed and position when crossing, the strong, gusting winds, meant I had to lean into the wind and be ready for any wind correction as it happened. Interesting riding, especially with mad Portuguese lorry drivers one side and a 500 meter drop the other.


The weather was a lot better towards Lisbon and I nearly decided to camp, but I had had problems with the Satnav losing all the map data for Spain and Portugal, so needed to reinstall all the maps. Garmin is quite useless in this area and it can take many hours to reload from the Garmin site, so Power and WiFi were essential. So far I had been using MapsMe on the iPhone, but the screen is difficult to see in daylight.


Riding into Lisbon I quickly discovered that the road system is basically spaghetti and a nightmare to navigate through, especially using an iPhone as a satnave and not being able to read the screen in bright light fully. So lots of missed turns and swearing. So I decided to first find the Hertz office where the chaps would be picking their bikes up tomorrow morning (2 were flying in from Ireland to join me for 3 days). Low and behold and a nice hotel right next to the Hertz building and with secure parking.


So looked on booking.com and had a double superior room for 150Euro. So went in and they said 230Euro. So I went on booking.com and booked. Went back inside and had to wait for the booking to go through to the hotel. Took ages. they kept phoning booking.com to see why it took so long. Anyways, comes through 45 mins later. So, as compensation to an already discounted room, they gave me an upgrade to a room with a view and a 15 Euro voucher towards breakfast.


Such a nice room after such a tough day.

And what a shower, big enough to fit a small cheerleading team in.

Anyways, the plan worked.   We now have a fully functioning Garmin with all the routs for tomorrows ride loaded and ready.

Yellow warning

Wow it's cold. So much for sunny Spain and Portugal.

Now sitting in a service station trying to get warm. Already had to stop on route and unpack my thermals and heated gloves.

Just had two large cups of coffee and still cold. May be that mars bar will help.

TV playing in the corner is showing some place with snow and children making snow men......,,.... just checked Accuweather and it is showing a yellow alert for snow. Think I better get moving.

First Day In Spain

Problems with satnav, but being an x boy Scout I had a plan B.  Never the less, lost time today do to a big round about route, plus crazy windy conditions blowing me all over the place     so decided to stay in a hotel tonght  as running very late, did not get to the hotel until 19:30    Also, needed  good WiFi signal to update the satnav   

Great roads though through the mountains   

Sent from my Samsung device

Test from android

Test via wifi

Sent from my Samsung device