Down by the Sea Side

After my first month of cycling across France and then the Camino to Santiago I decided to rest up in Vigo at Pablo´s house. I had only had 2 days off from cycling untill then and it was great just to hang out in one place and meet a whole bunch of sound folk and be spoilt by Pablo´s kind Galician hosptilaity so a massive thankyou to you for everything P.

It was great to play a bit of capoeira again and meet up with a small but perfectly formed crew of Angoleiros there and mess around doing our thing.

The Galician coast is a beautiful rugged coast line with little islands and gorgeous bays and there were plenty of beautiful sunsets across the Atalntic. Infact it seems that we are having an unusualy hot hot autumn and every where i go people tell me that the weather patterns have completely changed over the last few years..... climatre change is happening for sure!

I do also need to big up a fantastic little bar in Vigo called the Charlatana bar run by a great English woman called Fleur who has spent many years wondering the globe but now settled down here to run the bar and be the hostess with the mostess. We spent many a happy evening drinking in her place and felt very welcomed by the vibe there.

Leaving Vigo i decided to take the coastal route and have now spent the last couple of days on the coast road heading south. Its so good to be by the sea again and have little time lounging on a beach. I took a little ferry boat across the river at the border with Portugal and entered only my third country of the journey but with a whole new language and different way of being. It´s good to be speaking portuguese again although all my languages are now mixed up into a strange melange of Spanish, Portuguese and French but poeple seem to understand some of what i ramble on about.

After a couple of days i´ve made it to Porto which is a beautiful city on the Beach at the inlet of the River Douro. It reminds me so much of Brazil but I guess it is really the other way round that Brazil very much takes after Portugal. I bet this place kicks off in the weekend but I´m not hanging around to find out but going to follow the river east heading inland into rural Poirtugal and slowly back towards Spain.

Oh yes and most importantly i gave my bike a make over in Vigo. As much as i loved the pink plastic flowers i had been given on my departure from Lex and Daisy it was time for a new look. The comments of ´les belle fleur´ or ... ´the women in my country have baskets like that´ will be no more. My beautiful, and i must say incredibly reliable, Thorn Sherpa now proudly sports the red gold and green of Africa!