To Sagres for a Sagres (or two)

Last night we walked the surprisingly windy and cold old-town pedestrian streets of Lagos, stopping at what felt like a very local wine bar before settling on Casa do Prego for dinner, a delightfully crowded little tapas joint. Dessert — a lime-mint cheesecake mousse in a jar — was so good we ordered another. And then they brought us the usual Portuguese treat, a free after-dinner shot of something in this case a fine tawny port. Rather than do the usual bar-hopping for our traditional nightcaps we stopped in a small shop for a bottle of characteristically inexpensive (six euros) tinto from the Douro region up north, which we took to the room and drained in short order while watching the first of three made-for-TV adaptations of Michael Dibdin’s excellent police procedurals, set in Rome, a city we hope to know better in coming years. (If you’re a fan of Man in a High Castle you’ll enjoy Rufus Sewell’s portrayal of Zen, a far more appealing role than his Obergrüppenfuhrer Smith.)

Today’s ride from Lagos to Sagres was a short day but a beautiful one, made even more so by avoiding N125 for about half the 20+ miles, riding a quieter route closer to the sea. An occasional tailwind didn’t hurt, either.

In the morning, before checking out of the Marina Rio hotel in Lagos, we took a cab ride to Ponta da Piedade, one of the Algarve’s scenic highlights. We walked down the hundred + stairs to water’s edge, more or less, to catch the towering golden-yellow rock formations, and the shimmering more green-than-blue water, from the right perspective. Looking down at kayakers and paddle boarders among the cliffs and grottos, we felt envious, but not for long.

Soon we were in the saddle and sailing along quiet tertiary roads to the nearly imperceptible towns of Luz and Bergau, little once-traditional villages overshadowed by luxury gated developments, golf courses and tennis clubs. Along the way, as always in Portugal, we were fascinated by the ubiquitous roadside art.

Even on these narrower, more rural roads, drivers seem not only conscious of cyclists but almost unfailingly respectful, and we rolled along happily, glad to be away from the heavy highway traffic. Mostly rolling hills before and after we joined N125 — a quieter stretch of that major artery than we’ve experienced east of here–and what climbing we had to do was very gentle.

We arrived in Sagres, hot, hungry and thirsty, around 1:30. The hotel is right on the spit overlooking the ocean, and, luckily for us, attached to a pleasant and well-rated Italian cafe. We ordered two bottles of Sagres–perhaps better known to the world than the town that must be its namesake–to quench our thirst, and two pizzas that turned out to be larger than expected (though we ate all but scraps).

The pies fueled us on a short ride, 8-miles round trip, to the southernmost corner of Europe, the lighthouse at Cabo de São Vicente. 250-foot high wave-pounded cliffs, their tops covered with flowering ice plants, 500-year-old fortresses with gun ports and three-foot-thick walls, and in the distance, all around us, the meeting of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

“So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.” (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse)

Back to the hotel, we locked up the bikes in yet another basement storage room, showered & changed, washed some increasingly smelly riding clothes in the tub and hung them on our sunny balcony to dry, & went out on the town.

Two-thousand-year-old Sagres, once the haunt of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, and Moors, today feels sleepy, its almost uniformly whitewashed walls and red-tile roofs clustered around a modest and, for a Saturday late afternoon in later spring, unbelievably quiet downtown. “Downtown” here consists of alternating surf shops and tiny cafes. Today’s the first day in Portugal where it feels hot enough for ice cream; all we could find were chocolate/vanilla popsicles, not inspiring but certainly refreshing. Ashley made friends with a few stray cats as we walked the residential streets in search of a cervejaria which turned out to be closed, as in permanently shuttered. Back to town through the winding lanes of homes and gardens, to a passable sports bar for a couple of cold Imperial pints of Sagres.

Ashley’s view every day includes this bracelet, which bears a favorite quote from her cousin, Greg Bowyer: “People climb Everest.” Greg passed away unexpectedly in December, and his wife (Dawn) and sons (Todd and Luke) have shared this quote widely in order to carry on one of his many positive missions: to inspire those around him to do the things that scare them, to try what seems hard, to live fearlessly and fully. Greg rides along with Ashley now, and so with both of us, and we’ve resolved to keep adventuring, even more fearlessly and fully, and that every adventure will be part of Greg’s legacy.

Today, our adventuring carried us roughly 25 miles (plus another 8 to the lighthouse and back), with about 1500′ of climbing all told, and into yet another place we never dreamed we’d be.