I woke up cold this morning, no wonder, everything was frozen.
After lingering to let things defrost a bit and to ease my numb hands after handling the front tent flysheet, I set off down the steep hill on tarmac with some trepidation. In the UK the tarmac would have been icy and a every bend a dice with a fall, but here, the road surface was rough and no bother at all.
The trails were the same as always, winding through some beautiful woodland, down some steep inclines and rolling into the next valley. At around 10 ish, I was hungry and thirsty, so stopped by a steep beck to boil up some coffee and porridge. Once repacked, I set off again feeling much better, until the front tyre slid out and dropped me on my side in some mud. On a bend which switched left, then right, it slid again, this time leaving me with around 4 inches between me and the several hundred metre drop. That's it, time for a new front tyre. Once back on tarmac,
I found a coffee shop in the village of Paramio, then worked out the route and decided to bail to Braganca, which looked like a really big town. Once there, I stopped ata garage to ask for tyre places and the owner jumped in his car and said 'follow me'. We wound through loads of bits of town to a little back street motobike shop called Brigmoto. The lass in there had a Mitas C19 and, (I think), her dad was the mechanic. There was some sweating as he took off the E09 Dakar and he punctured my existing tube, so replaced this with a 4mm Continental, which I've never used before. Once done, I debated about finding a hotel and a bed, but decided to do some shopping, get fuel and then head out again. I haven't seen a shop or a fuel garage since I crossed the border yesterday.
The road between Paramio and Braganca, wow. A perfect bike road, superb tarmac and just awesome bends. A 690 supermoto or a great little sports bike and you could have a right giggle on that road! After looking at the TET route and the ACT route, I found out the ACT started about where I was parked,so I took that for the day to see how it panned out.
It's fast, on open trails until you hit the muddy bits, then its a slog. The navigation is much easier than the TET. I was just getting bored, when it came to Castelo de Algoso, which looks like a medieval tower perched on a big chunk of granite. One hell of a job building it! From here, the ACT drops to a beautiful pack horse bridge, then has a steep climb out. Both sides of which were good fun. It does a similar thing later on, but between them is some big distances on bendy tarmac.
I guess if you want to blast along and are on a big 200kg ish bike with limited time, you'd enjoy this, but I must admit, I'm hankering after the TET route again, so have picked where I'll turn off and pick it up tomorrow.
Camp tonight was next to a reservoir on a scenic loop of the ACT. The sun was turning the sky red as I parked up, some clouds have been dogging my path all day, so I'm hoping they go away and it is dry tomorrow again. It makes such a difference and I really need to dry some kit again.
Hey ho, sleep time.
