We get up bright an early, unlike our kids, who will sleep another 2 hours. They will drive to Porto directly whilst we have chosen to stay at a very small village a few kilometres from the Portuguese border tonight.
As always, I timed the overnight charge to complete around the time we’re leaving and thus giving us the maximum of energy available.
Miranda de Ebro is located around 500m ASL – I assumed that from here we would go back down to the boiling temperatures of lower Spain as I saw yesterday. The distance we are planning to cover today is around 350-380km depending on the route we chose.
And for the first time since leaving Switzerland, I’m no longer alone in the TWIKE – this calls for a TWIKE team picture!
The day starts with a brilliant dark blue sky and a slight cool breeze at around 20°C – this is 110% TWIKEing weather.
Big open expanses of land are unknown in Switzerland and both my wife and I marvel at the landscapes with straight roads for dozens of kilometres and not a house in sight.
The road continues to climb ever so slightly until we start climbing for real –
We were betting on going over 1000m ASL – we both lost 😉
The following plateau was at around 800m and was … flat, very flat!
We both got into a meditative state with cruise control engaged and the TWIKE humming steadily. With virtually no traffic this turned out to be a real treat!
The pictures today are not very varied…as the views remained the same for most of the day… we were impressed all day long!
We stop a few times to drink and eat something at very small and local bars along the road – usually stirring up some locals that come out of their Siesta to ask us some questions about the TWIKE.
Eventually, we saw some hills far off in the distance with around 100km still to go. We knew that our hotel for the night was somewhere in those hills and were looking forward to checking in, walking around and getting our last Spanish dishes before entering Portugal.
For the last two days, as we are close to Santiago de Compostela, we would be coming across many ‘Caminos’, paths that lead to Santiago. We, in a way, are on our own Camino – to southern Portugal!
With lots of juice left in our batteries, we arrive in Puebla de Sanabria long before sunset.
A charge is set up really fast and our hotel is a comfortable 4-star affair. When we enter the room, we’re a little disappointed as all windows and blinds are closed and the air is not very fresh…plus there is no air conditioning unit. Did we book a dud of a hotel as the rest of the establishment looks fine and rather upmarket?
No, it turns out that we’re experiencing global warming here, too!
After showering and freshening up we walked to the town centre and found a nice little place that served ice-cold beers and tapas.
Whilst waiting for our snacks, we heard some locals complaining about the heat – we asked them if this weren’t the usual temperatures in July?
Not at all! At 958m above sea level the temperatures they would expect would be at least 10°C lower than what we currently have. Late evenings out without a jumper are not the norm here!
Later on we had a lavish meal at the best place in town with multiple dishes, a bottle of surprisingly good wine, dessert and some fine distillates to help digestion and had a hard time going above 30 Euros. For this price, in Switzerland, you’d get one normal meal, if at all.
We’re really looking forwereward to driving to Portugal tomorrow!
Good night!
(and for the geeks among us: we’re obviously very happy with today’s consumption!)
