The Warm-Up: Porto to Madrid

On the 15th of May I’m finally travelling to Porto and my journey is finally starting. The last few weeks I’ve been annoyed by my own thoughts and worries that I normally don’t have. I guess the lack of having a 40 hour job makes my brain want to be busy by worrying about my equipment and what to bring. My mind is bipolar. It’s either in the state of “everything will be alright, what I forget I can still buy anywhere else” or in the state of “oh yeez, do I have everything?”. So looking back, one month of preparation was more than enough for me to go on this big trip. Funny enough I saw a YouTube video from people that are doing only the small US-part that I’m planning on doing, and they are talking about a preparation of over a year.

When I land in Porto I wait for the bike to arrive. It’s like waiting for a dear friend at the Arrival hall. When it arrives I want to start putting the pedals and saddle back on but I have no idea in which of the five bags I’ve put my tools.

After opening the same bags three times I finally find it. The in-which-bag-did-I-put-it-struggle will keep haunting me the first weeks.

I meet Jacko close to where our hostel is and we give each other a big hug. It’s exciting to begin this trip together and also a little bit scary. We’ve been talking and calling via WhatsApp a lot but seeing each other makes this thing very real suddenly.

The first days in Porto we drink, eat, discover and cycle around with the bikes. On the second day I break my chain on one of the very steep alleys of Porto. What the hell?! Jacko laughs and thinks to himself: with which amateur did I embark this trip on? My self-esteem dents a little bit. Not the start I wanted, but I tell myself hey! things like this will happen more often and it’s about overcoming these things.

On Tuesday we set off (me with a new chain from the bike shop) for our first cycling day! When getting on the bike for the first time and cycling out of Porto I am the happiest man alive and cannot stop smiling. We follow the Douro river that also cuts through Porto and not long after we leave the city we find ourselves climbing some hills. Damn it’s hard to haul 30kg of bags and a 20kg bike up a hill! On the flat or downhill it’s easier to overcome the weight but ascending you really feel how heavy everything is. At the end of the day we find a really sweet wild camping spot next to the Douro river after a kilometer long steep descend on cobble stones.

However the camping spot is closed off with a wire, blocking vehicles from entering the spot. We’re definitely not planning on going back up to the main road over those cobble stones again! We lift the bikes over the wire and make camp. After a while a car enters the area. It’s the owner driving up the patch and we walk towards him fearing that he orders us to leave. The contrary happens and he says it’s all fine and even tells us that we can use the toilets of his property. Nice first encounter! We grill fish on the camp fire, boil some potatoes and life is good.

The next days we follow the beautiful Douro valley. My legs still hurt after every climb and I start wondering why these Portuguese guys cannot just put a flat road next to the river. The second day we find a restaurant at the end of the day and decide to go for a beer. The restaurant has some really nice patches of grass outside at the terrace and I joke how nice it would be to camp there.

Then we find a little harbour just across the hedge we are sitting at and it also has a really nice stroke of grass next to the river. We ask the waitress if it would be a problem if we camp there. Next thing we know we are putting our tents up and taking a nice swim in the river after a long and sweaty day. We cook, read a book and again life is good.

The Douro valley is getting nicer and nicer. Lots of grapes are grown here that will be made into Port wine by the big companies such as Offley and Sandeman. We begin the day with a 15km climb and the traditional Coca-Cola at the top tastes delicious. We find a wild camping spot via the app Park4Night but the pictures on the app look nicer than reality.

Lots of insects and the trees leave a trace of some kind of fuzzy substance that sticks to everything. We set up camp anyway. We drink a beer at the river and rest a bit but are shaken up by a sudden sound that’s emerging from behind of us. Scared we look behind and we find a flock of sheep storming right at us. To our relief they storm into the water to find themselves some refreshment.

On Friday we are a bit scared about what the day will bring us. Our navigation app says that we are gonna have a really big climbing day with 1700 height meters, which even on a road bike would be a lot. After some steep climbs in the hot weather I see Jackos shirt slowly transforming from light to dark grey. At the end of the day we pass the Portuguese-Spanish border and to my disappointment I don’t see a “Welcome to Spain”-sign.

I thought it would be fun to make pictures with all the borders I will cross. I guess the USA-sign will be the first one then. We drive into Spain and have one big final col to climb, we need multiple breaks on this last one and almost run out of water. On the top we enter Saucelle and treat ourselves with a hotel stay. I’ll tell you, taking a simple shower after days in nature feels like a full-blown Wellness treatment.

On Saturday we set our goals for Salamanca, the first big city after Porto. This means we have to go over 100km today. Luckily for us the road is pretty flat. However the road is also pretty straight, boring and busy so we drive behind each other and just paddle the kilometers away. Driving into a big city is always a magical moment and driving into the small and old streets of Salamanca is exactly like that. We stop at the Irish pub to watch the last bit of today’s Giro d’Italia race.

After a few beers we get back on the bikes and cycle towards a ‘normal’ camping just out of town. We make dinner and head back out to the city to see what the Saturday night in Salamanca has to offer us. Too bad the Spanish life is totally out of sync with the life of a cyclist. The Spanish start eating at 11 and go clubbing at 1 or 2 AM but by that time it’s already really hard to keep our eyes open.

In Salamanca we take a rest day and don’t do much. On Monday we saddle up the steel and aluminium horses again. We come across a Decathlon and I buy some bidons because I lost mine somewhere. Also we get seduced to both buy a camping chair: another 1kg added to the total weight. We ride out of Salamanca on a beautiful gravel road that used to be a train track.

When we stop along the road to eat a sandwich we sit down in our brand new camping chairs: already totally worth it! At the end of the day we find ourselves another awesome wild camping spot and roaster burgers on the camp fire. The sun got me bad and I remember myself to put more sunscreen.

Funny how a seemingly ‘unorganized life’ like this still finds a way to find a certain routine. Our routine these first weeks looks a little bit like this:

• Wake up from either daylight, each other or a burning sun
• Make coffee
• Have breakfast that we’ve bought the previous day
• Pack up our tent and sleeping gear
• Pack the bags and get the bikes ready
• Cycle throughout the day
  • Coca-Cola after the first +-30km or a first big climb
  • Lunch after +-50km
• Around 3/4pm we try to find a village and try to watch the final part of that days Giro d’Italia stage either in a bar or via WiFi
• Do groceries for dinner and breakfast in that same village

• Cycle the last bit to find a nice camping spot
• Put up the tents
• Have our “arrival beer”
• Cook dinner
• Read, make a fire, swim
• Sleep
• Repeat 🙂

On Wednesday I wake up camping next to a lake. Suddenly a thought flashes through my head: this is not just a holiday, this will not last for a few weeks after I go back to my apartment. I don’t even have an apartment or a job to go back to! This is my lifestyle, the road and my bike are my new home. I tell this to Jacko and he laughs. He’s been living on the bike for 9 months already, for him this lifestyle is so normal already. I still have to pinch myself now and then.

Thursday the 26th we cycle into Madrid, our destination for this first small chapter of this journey. We are gonna be 5 days in Madrid, so enough time to give the sore legs some rest. In Madrid we take it easy, do chores, meet a friend of Jacko, visit the beautiful Prado museum and watch Real Madrid become champions of Europe.

The first bike boxes we arrange for our flight get thrown away by the hostel we’re staying at because they thought they were too big for the storage room(!). We book a new Airbnb and try to get our money back from the not-so-bike-friendly-hostel. Luckily we have time to arrange new boxes.