2022.04.23 – 2022.05.21 (27 days)
Having completed many local trips and having experienced traveling by plane with our bikes within Canada, we were now read for, we had graduated towards, our first international trip.
Day 1: We leave snowy Montreal and arrive in sunny Lisbon the next morning, excited to take on the city. After assembling our bikes just outside of the airport, we chuck our bike boxes to recycling (since we’re flying back from Barcelona) and we head to our airbnb.
Days 2-3: Exploring Lisbon. It’s a beautiful city!
Day 4 (57km) – Lisbon to Setúbal: It’s time to start our journey. We take a ferry to Seixal to get out of the city and start heading south. The scenery is already gorgeous.
At a certain point, since we are blindly following Google Maps (cycle option), we end up on a dirt road. We’re confident it will eventually lead back to a regular road, so we keep going. We think: Google would never make us go through a terrain not meant for bikes, it’s probably just a witty shortcut. WRONG. This road was not at all suitable for biking, not even mountain biking, honestly (and lest I remind you we have road bikes). At one point, we even had to completely unload our bikes in order to get over a steep little hill, just to realize a whole field was waiting for us on the other side! We ended up having to lug our stuff back and forth by foot to get through. I won’t mention how we got through the barbed wire fence that was waiting for us when we finally did make it make to a road (mom’s reading).
Lesson #1 of this trip: NEVER BLINDLY RELY ON GOOGLE MAPS.
We did eventually make it to our campsite, EcoParque do Outao, which was perfect. It had showers, which was enough to make us extremely happy. We met a nice older couple from England who were also doing a similar bike tour. We realized we forgot to get gas for our burner, but thankfully the couple lent us some so we were able to cook our pasta. Saved!
Day 5 (65km) – Setúbal to Praia da Galé: We head to Setúbal to take the ferry to Tróia. The city center is charming. There’s also a Decathlon so we go grab some missing items while we wait for the ferry. The ferry ride is great!
We then head south towards Camping Praia Galé, a spot I had found on Google. However, when we arrive there, we find a gated community and the guard tells us the camping is closed; it actually no longer exists. There are no other campings nearby and it’s getting late, the sun is going to set soon. We decide it’s the opportunity to find a wild camping spot! It was a bit of a challenge, as this area was quite residential, and access to the beach was a bit complicated, but as we always do, we found a way. And boy, it was a BEAUTIFUL spot. It was going to be hard to top this.
We find a spot to hang our hammocks and then we start cooking dinner: pasta with pesto sauce. We quickly realise the gas cartridge we bought isn’t compatible with our burner.
Lesson #2 of this trip: Check the compatibility of gas cartridges as they might differ from country to country.
We end up making a fire to cook our pasta, with a view of the sunset, so all ends well.
Day 6 (84km) – Praia Galé to Praia do Almograve: Beautiful ride, mostly by the coast. Some of the nicest scenery so far.
Arriving in Porto Covo, we fuel up by having a delicious meal followed by ice cream.
Bellies full, we continue to Almograve, where we find, by the beach, some beautiful sand dunes. It’s the perfect spot to pitch our tents for the night.
Day 7 (91km) Praia do Almograve to Salema: Another beautifully scenic ride characterized by many hills: 821m elevation. We arrive at our campground, Salema Eco Camp, just as the sun is setting.
Day 8: We decide to have a rest day. I’m starting to feel sick, so I rest. Gen and Tihare check out a nearby beach.
Day 9 (25km) – Salema to Lagos, then train to Vilamoura: Since I’m still feeling feverish, we decide to book an airbnb for a few days in Vilamoura, near Faro, in the hopes that I recuperate quickly. We bike to the nearest train station in Lagos. Our first time taking the train with our bikes in this country and everything goes pretty smoothly. Portugal has a national train company called CP (Comboios de Portugal) and it’s possible to bring bikes (without having to dissemble them) on some of its lines.
Days 10-11: Rest days in Vilamoura. For me, these two days are mostly spent taking Paracetamol and watching Netflix.
Day 12 (41km) – Vilamoura to Loulé (13km), then train to Faro, then bus to Vila Real San Antonio, then ferry to Ayamonte, Spain, then biking to Playa de la Antilla (28km): What a day! We decide to take the train to get to the border of Spain because, with the added unplanned rest days due to my sickness, we wanted to try to stay roughly on schedule since there was still a lot of road to cover/places to discover before getting to Barcelona. When we get off at Faro to get our connection to Vila Real San Antonio, we learn there’s a problem with the next train and that a tourist bus is bringing passengers the rest of the way. We get stressed that they won’t accept our bikes, at least not unless they’re dismantled. Our worries were appeased when the bus driver tells us to just stick our bikes in the storage compartments, not making a big deal out of it. Relief!
We arrive at Vila Real San Antonio and get to the port to catch the ferry to Ayamonte. Just like that, we leave beautiful Portugal and arrive in beautiful Spain!
Day 13 (68km) – Playa de la Antilla to Huelva (52km), then train to Sevilla, then biking to Dos Hermanas (16km): In Dos Hermanas, I book a hotel room because I’m still recovering from being sick. Gen and Tihare find a wild camping spot for the night.
Day 14 (35km): Train from Dos Hermanas to Malaga, then biking to Playa Amayate: Coastal Spain here we are! It’s absolutely gorgeous. There’s a beautiful bike path when you’re getting out of Malaga towards the east. We get to Playa Amayate and enjoy the sunset with a delicious meal; fish on the grill. We scope out a place to camp for the night and we find this area with beautifully dense palm trees, just perfect for our hammocks. Unfortunately, the area is too accessible and when we start setting up camp, some men are luring around and one of them even comes up to us asking if we want sex. He was not forwardly threatening but he was drunk and possibly not alone – we didn’t feel safe. We thus packed up our things and found an actual camping nearby. This was, fortunately and unfortunately, the only time we felt unsafe on this trip. The situation made me very frustrated. As a woman, I do not want fear of the potential actions of men to dictate the activities I can and cannot do, because then patriarchy wins, through intimidation. That being said, sometimes certain precautionary measures have to be taken, and our gut feeling has to be followed, and this situation was one of them.
Day 15 (50km) – Playa Amayate to Almuñecar: These next few days the cycling are, although hilly and challenging, quite beautiful and satisfying. In Alumncar, we stay at Camping Tropical, where we successfully find a way to hang all three of our hammocks for sleeping. We’ve found that we’re significantly more comfortable sleeping in out hammocks than in our tents, so finding camping sites with trees becomes a priority for us (more on suggested equipment in a future post).
Day 16 (79km) – Almuñecar to Playa de las canadas: After another beautiful but long day of cycling, we stay at Camping Havana, right by the beach, where we decide to stay 2 nights in order to have a rest day. We’ve noticed that for us, after 5 days of cycling, it’s nice to try to fit in a rest day in order to recharge our physical and mental batteries.
Day 18 (71km) – Playa de las canadas to Playa Retamar: Arriving in Playa Retamar, we find a hidden spot inside some type of bushes and decide to set up camp there for the night. There are signs indicating we aren’t allowed to do wild camping, but we decide to be rebels for one night. It’s not our most restful night of sleep. After our scare in Playa Ayamate, we are somewhat worried that strangers will find us, but not enough to keep us from staying the night.
Day 19 (55km) – Playa Rematar to Carboneras: Another beautiful ride, the scenery is great, often seeing the see, and the road has long moderate climbs followed by very enjoyable descents. The weather keeps being greatly in our favor, sunny and reaching around 26 degrees, perfect for touring. We find a great wild camping spot hidden behind some small dunes, and enjoy the beautiful sunset.
Day 20 (57km) – Carboneras to Aguilas: The day starts off with quite a challenging stretch, as seen on the pictures below, we had a pretty long constant climb through that mountain. The view on top was totally worth it though. That night we stay at Camping & Bungalows Bellavista where we enjoy a nice warm shower and some paella by the sea.
Day 21 (60km) – Aguilas to Totana: This is without a doubt the most challenging day of our tour. Having not fully learned our lesson to not blindly follow google maps bike directions, we end up on a road that is absolutely not for road bikes, it’s barely suitable for mountain bikes. So we end up essentially doing a 2 hour hike while pushing our loaded bikes besides us. Miraculously none of us get a flat tire, but at some point the moral was so low we were not sure how we would make it on the other side. To make matters worse, we were out of emergency energy bars and had very little water left. Thankfully, we did make it to the other side and found a small restaurant where we ate and drank everything in our sight.
Day 22 (48km) – Totana to Murcia: Our last stretch by bike, then we arrive in Murcia where we take the train to Valencia where we stay two nights at friend of Tihare’s
Day 24-27 – We take the train from Valencia to Barcelona where we spend our last days together being tourists. Barcelona is a great city to explore by bike. The airbnb we rented is a sailboat at the marina, which we really enjoyed! The three of us get different tattoos related to biking, marking the end of our first international trip together <3
TAKEAWAY: Cycling in both Portugal and Spain, at least in the parts we explored, turned out to be extremely pleasurable. The nice roads with lots of shoulder space, along with the moderate hills providing decent but not overwhelming challenges, were perfect for us, not to mention the incredibly beautiful scenery at almost every turn. That being said, being three girls, we did sometimes, as mentioned, fear for our security. The good thing is that in those circumstances, we had the option of finding an actual campground to spend the night. In terms of official campgrounds, we found that the options are mostly limited to privately owned spaces that are best suited for RV type of camping, as opposed to the nice national or provincial parks we have back home that allow for more connection with nature. That being said, we compensated by doing quite a bit of wild camping which, although technically illegal, proved to be, most of the time, quite easy and fun. One thing to take into account is that in both countries many restaurants would close during part of the afternoon for the “siesta”, which sometimes left us scrambling to find food since we are late risers so that would often be the time we got hungry and would want to have a late lunch. All in all, both countries are amazing destinations for bike touring!