Advertisement
Published: September 17th 2022
Ansião to Águea 92.00 km Another day
I have noticed that I may have made some grammatical errors in earlier messages. Given the fact that I write these notes at the end of my day and that is the last thing I do before going to sleep after a long day of biking, I beg you to forgive any error. ( Now back in Florida I have tried to correct most of the errors, nevertheless still may still persist.)
Today again was a day of biking and tourism. We biked to Coimbra, some 50km, and took the time to visit the world-famous library and the Santa Ana Convent, where one of the former queens is buried. Coimbra, at some point in time, was the capital of Portugal. A spectacular and beautiful place, although difficult to reach on a bike. The old way up is extremely steep and paved with basaltic uneven stones (cobblestones).
In the Santa Ana Convent, we saw something extraordinary. A woman arrived at the gate of the Convent/churchyard with flowers in her hand, kneels, and start praying the rosary. A man, I assume her husband, stands next to her. After finishing the rosary, the lady
Coimbra
Castelo Viajas Convento Santa Clarastarts moving forward on her knees to the main entrance of the church some 100 meters away; climbs the stairs on her knees, and enters the church, all the time with the man walking beside her. No idea why the lady did this, but her display of devotion and sacrifice impressed me.
Here I should be making a clarification: our bikes are what are called pedal-assisted electric bikes. The level of assistance goes from “eco” the lowest assistance to” tour”, “sport” and “turbo”, the highest assistance. This assistance is additional to 10 gears. To get to Coimbra library we needed to use “turbo” to get up. For normal biking, I use either “eco” or “tour.” The more assistance you use, the shorter the battery life. To get uphill to Coimbra we used "turbo" and the lowest gear and still went slow. A real aerobic exercise.
We normally recharge the batteries during lunchtime. It is crucial to have battery life because without the battery the bike is unmanageable.
An interesting thing to mention about the library is that it has in-house bats to contain possible insects that may eat the paper of the books. At night the beautiful wooden tables
Church inside
Incredible the details an riches are covered with leather to avoid damage from the bats' excrement.
The roads today were decent, but finding the right ways was not always easy. As I indicated in previous notes, the marked Santiago road is for walkers and not for bikers.
Overall, we biked 92 km in about 9.30 hours.
One new thing to mention is the wind. Whereas until recently we had the wind more or less in the back, now we have the wind in front. Something that affects our physical efforts, speed, and battery life.
Tomorrow we will reach Porto and probably do some additional sightseeing.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.269s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 45; dbt: 0.1261s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
