Day 3: Serta to Castro Daire

Today was a strange combination of beautiful riding and frustration. I left Serta at 9:30 on a beautiful sunny day and started heading north gaining altitude. The day was booked as a 210K ride, that was scheduled to take 4 hours. Based on the distance and the time estimate, i knew that i would be on tight roads, and passing through a lot of towns. My route planner had plotted out 31 points of interest along the way.

Unfortunately the storms that hit Portugal in February and March had caused landslides that closed sections of the N2, and as i found out, those closures had not been resolved. I hit my first road closure only 1/2 an hour into my ride, and spent over an hour trying to find a route around the closure that would get me back on track. Eventually i just gave up and took the autoroute for about 30K before finding a way back onto the N2. The riding was fantastic, with lots of miles in mountain valleys.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1d37dd_08a7f0207870405b8204036c09026bf2/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Riding through mountain valleys

Around 1pm I ran into my second road closure right at the entrance to a snack bar/cafe and decided that fate was telling me to grab lunch. I had a hamburger and fries riverside with some incredible scenery at the bottom of this valley.

Views of the town on the other side of the valley.

View looking south down the valley.

Beautiful town on the far side of the river valley.

While having my lunch i had to plot a route that backtracked from this point to find a bridge across the river to allow me to get back onto my route past the closed part of the road. As frustrating as it was to back track again, the weather, the scenery and the good riding had me in high spirits.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1d37dd_797881b01abc457d866a2b2269b059d5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Back tracking to find a bridge across the river.

The ride after lunch was a combination of some nice roads and lots of small towns, as well as one more road closure and subsequent re-routing via one of the highways.

All in all, it was a great day. Perhaps longer than i would have wanted due to the road closures, but the weather and the beauty of the interior of Portugal more than made up for a little bit of saddle soreness.

I was too tired to explore Castro Daire. It looks like a beautiful town with cobblestone streets and tight alleyways stretching away from the center of the city. I will have to use this as a reason to return and explore things properly.

View of the cobblestone alleys from my balcony in Castro Daire.