quarta-feira, 27 de outubro de 2010

La Revancha (english version)

The day was dawning cold. A thick fog fluttered in the air letting the sun peek sometimes.I arrived on time to have a coffee with Nuno. We hadn’t ride together since June. By that time, Nuno still belonged to the class of two ordinary unpretentious men who like to ride a bike. Now Nuno is still unpretentious, but belonged to the restricted class of the Geo-Raid finishers. Thus my expectation was high, because I would ride to someone in a class above my own ... (it's to the best that you learn with; I'm obviously kidding, because Nuno doesn’t give a shit to that).


After the final preparations, we began our journey which is fondly called “leg breaker” by Machado. The start was made at good rhythm despite all the sand. It is very difficult to progress due to loose ground. Along with the sand, eucalyptus also abounded reminding the surroundings of Corga da Chã.
Later on, a fun trail took us on a roller coaster, where we went through some gardens and a clear stream. We were in the Sentieiras do Souto. Further along the track sent us to the left, but Nuno felt that we should go right to contemplate the Zêzere in all its splendour from the top of “miradouro das fontes”.It’s not easy to get to top due to the hard climb, at least to me. Nuno doing justice to the bike’s name seemed a lightning.


There we eat something and we prepared to the descent. Although we still chatted a little with a cute kid who was riding in circles around there. The descent was fast taking us back to the track and to the Ribeira da Brunheta. One more climb to Cabeça Gorda, where some wonderful figs are waiting for us.

We attacked them as we could, but with the owner’s permission, well, more or less, someone authorized us, but I’m not quite sure he was really the owner.
We went then to the river beach of Aldeia do Mato, a beautiful blue flag place that spreads over the hills of Zêzere.
We continued forward, or rather, up. Arriving there we should have followed to the left, instead went to the right. What a nonsense. When we realized that, we were completely off the track. There were some potentially interesting options (rather than back) and we decided to follow one of them. Dead end.

Option two. After a few kilometres of descent, another dead end. Annoyed but resigned, we ended up choosing the last option that was returning back to the original track.
We did a bit of tarmac, where we were taking turns (pulling) until we left tarmac.


A good talk followed (as usual) with some Nuno’s stories of Geo-Raid. That's how we came back to Abrantes at lunch time.