6/3: day 8 (fifth day of the VBT tour)

Today was day 5, the next-to-last day of riding.

We got on the bus and drove about 30 minutes to the start, Corte Tabelao.

Here's the bus that couldn't navigate the small roads yesterday and our driver. Unlike other trips that arrange transports as needed, on this tour, we had enough long hauls that the bus stayed with us all the way from Lisbon. The driver, Carlos, was a bit of a character. At our first stop, he pointed to a Maserati and told us it was his car.

The guides know the roads and develop the routes and they have ridden on them before. They pick the routes to maximize the time spent on quiet and usually well-paved roads. They also plan for restaurants and bathrooms at appropriate spots. Today our start was in the middle of nowhere. This wasn’t a problem for men – we just found trees. I guess the women just didn’t pee.

It was once again gray and overcast and cool enough so that we all had cool weather gear.  I had a base layer and arm warmers (that's been the gear choice every day so far) and I was cold. Since the rides are supported, we are not limited finishing at the same spot as the start so today’s route was typical: more elevation loss than gain. Today was +638 meters and -816 meters. So we started with a nice downhill run. This would have been fine except that we were already cold. The first uphill was a welcome opportunity to warm up. The rest of the ride to the lunch stop was a pleasant mix of rollers and downhill runs.

This was the third day I used Ride with GPS. It took a few days to figure it out but I finally had a set up that worked well. I could load Ride with GPS and start the route. Even without using cellular data, the app would pull the GPS signal and tell me what to do. If I had one ear bud in my right ear, I would still hear traffic and conversation. And with the Ride with GPS in my ear, it felt like I had a Directeur Sportif. Ha.

Here we are at the top of the first climb.

We rode down to the Guadiana river and rode south, parallel to the river to our lunch spot, Foz do Odeleite. Spain was across the river to our left. At the lunch stop, we had the option to get off the bikes or to continue on for a loop, before returning back to the lunch stop.

The ride away from the lunch stop began with a hill and continued on with a series of long climbs and long sweeping descents. Our guide, David, described it as “sporty”.  This segment has 430 meters (1400') of elevation gain. It really was a lot of fun.

I have some nice video of the descents. It will be a while before I get that done.

Here's the link to the ride on strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/1614636771
Here's the link to the ride on Ride with GPS: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/23874088

Lunch was a picnic prepared by the guides. Today, Jorges was with the van so he put on an apron and served a nice assortment of cold cuts, salad and small bite-sized things that looked a little like empanadas.

Since we were waiting for the bus to move us to the next hotel, I took Mary Claire's e-bike out for a spin.

That's Mary Clair in the blue and David in the red. I told David I would just take it up to the top of the hill and be back in about 15 minutes. I told Mary Claire I would turn it on "turbo" and drain the battery.

It was a whee moment, when it worked. But unlike the test ride on last year's e-bike, this one was a little unpredictable. Mary Claire warned me that sometimes the power would cut out. She seemed to think there were particular times when that happened. I found it happened a lot.

When it worked, it was a lot of fun. I passed a guy on a road bike who was struggling up the hill and I felt bad passing him with little to no effort.

My time going up the hill on the road bike was 6.42 minutes, an average speed of 7.5 mph. On the e-bike it was 3.42 minutes, an average speed of 13.6 mph. I need to erase that from my strava post.

We took the bus to our next hotel. It is called the Vila Monte Farm House. I would call it a resort and it is a little over the top. First, the grounds are covered with grass. It was the first grass we had seen since arriving in Portugal. Everything is carefully manicured. Here is the pathway where our rooms are located.

And here is what it looks like in the evening after dinner.

Here's some of the signage.

Here is the pool.

Here is the "second pool"

More pathways.