Today needed to be a functional day. It was all about doing the distance. After a nice breakfast on my heated patio I was off and on the road by 9 o'clock. As I headed SW on a minor road the cycling was great, nice countryside, smooth roads, all was good. Until I reached the Albufeira de Monte Novo, a reservoir. At that point, the road deteriorated to a typical Alentejo road with loads of potholes literally a foot deep and continued like that until I reached the N256, which I had to cycle along for one mile until I connected with the IP2.
Now this part of Alentejo only has few towns big enough to have hotels to stay in at night and today I had options between Beja, Castro Verde and Almodovar, ranging from 50 to 90 miles. I had no hotel booked and was just playing it by ear to so see how the riding went. I needed to maximise the distance but also finish by 5pm to watch the Toon play West Ham. One of the difficulties was there weren't many roads. The IP2 connects everything, but there's no bikes allowed on it. So I shadowed the IP2 on what was the old road running parallel. This hadn't been maintained in years, and the surface was awful. From Portel after a few minutes trying to find it, I eventually found the old road running parallel again, which took me down to Vidigueira where I took lunch in a cafe in a petrol station. The next bit of the ride looked really tricky because there didn't seem to be any old road running parallel with the IP2. So I initially cycled west towards Cuba. Then a left turn took me across some wonderful countryside passing beautiful vineyards on the best road surface of the day. It ran down to the IP2 four miles away from San Mateos. There were still big signs saying no bikes allowed.
I did find the side road which I cycled down for almost two miles before it just stopped and turned into a vineyard. So I retraced my route and the only option was cycle down the IP2 for four miles to San Mateus and re-assess my options. Instantly I was on the iP2 a cyclist past me heading the other way followed by a police car who didn't seem too bothered. Once on it, I stayed on it all the way down to Beja, which I went around on a cycle path before back onto the IP2. The IP2 was great to ride on. It was single carriageway but it had two huge hard shoulders on each side to ride on, and the surface was really smooth and I was absolutely flying.
When I got past Albanoa the route took me off the IP2 onto the old road, which again deteriorated quickly into a dirt track, it was awful. In places it was just rocks and soil. However, the sun was low and the IP2 wasn't a viable option so I toiled the last 12 miles on an awful surface in town for the night, which is Castro Verde.