Describe the portugues region of Alentejo in one single word? Boring. But what can be more beautyful to a city-resident as I´m this days than this kind of lonesomenes!
Neverending fields only interrupted by also neverending oak trees. Until the province capital Evora I only passed by two villages on a way of 150 km. The real beauty of the Alentjo just awakes when sun goes down. Days are pretty short this time of the year. So I enter my sleepng bag at 6 o´clock in the evening and get up with the cock for having at least ten hours to cycle every day. As boring the flat land is during the day so beauty it turns when the night comes up. The uncountable oak trees hosts millions of birds that turns sunset and sunrise to the most livly times of the day. Diffenent sounds bring the solitude suddently alive.
Also behind of Evora landscape is not really changing. Between flat fields every little uphill offers a view to the whole next daytrip. Insteat of using a GPS or a roadmap a use a compass these days. Open a fence, close a fence, going south until the next one. Open a fence, close a fence and so on. But the highlight of this region for sure is not the landscape but the lost-in-time-feeling you get in every single village (as far as you find one). Only beginning in Beja landscape start to change. Singletrails built by goats take place insteat of wide unpaved roads for huge agricultural trucks. Cowoyboy-feeling comes up when cows, horses, goats and sheeps running away from my bike. Less scared than happy that finally something happend! The wellknown region of Algarve sends first greetings with slight hills and than with the first real uphill the neverending landscape finally got an end: I´m in Monchique, the top of Algarve. Still november, still camping season, still in love with Portugal.
Neverending fields only interrupted by also neverending oak trees. Until the province capital Evora I only passed by two villages on a way of 150 km. The real beauty of the Alentjo just awakes when sun goes down. Days are pretty short this time of the year. So I enter my sleepng bag at 6 o´clock in the evening and get up with the cock for having at least ten hours to cycle every day. As boring the flat land is during the day so beauty it turns when the night comes up. The uncountable oak trees hosts millions of birds that turns sunset and sunrise to the most livly times of the day. Diffenent sounds bring the solitude suddently alive.
Also behind of Evora landscape is not really changing. Between flat fields every little uphill offers a view to the whole next daytrip. Insteat of using a GPS or a roadmap a use a compass these days. Open a fence, close a fence, going south until the next one. Open a fence, close a fence and so on. But the highlight of this region for sure is not the landscape but the lost-in-time-feeling you get in every single village (as far as you find one). Only beginning in Beja landscape start to change. Singletrails built by goats take place insteat of wide unpaved roads for huge agricultural trucks. Cowoyboy-feeling comes up when cows, horses, goats and sheeps running away from my bike. Less scared than happy that finally something happend! The wellknown region of Algarve sends first greetings with slight hills and than with the first real uphill the neverending landscape finally got an end: I´m in Monchique, the top of Algarve. Still november, still camping season, still in love with Portugal.
