So when I booked my room tonight I didn't realise it's actually on top of a mountain ! Guarda is 300ft up and the top of town where my room is, is at 3350ft and most of the town is cobbled streets with ridiculous 15% gradients.
Anyway after a good breakfast in the hotel I was on the road spot on 9am and immeditely stopped at an ornamental park with a pond and some great typical portuguese tiles. I then had a straight pretty flat 10 mile ride where I saw 3 magpies and I started to think, yes I'm getting north as you only see Iberian magpies in the south. Having had that thought I then passed about 200 Iberian magpies which I tried repeatedly to photograph to no avail as they are very timid, unlike the northern ones.
At Lentosa I turned east away from the motorway and as I was leaving town I cme across a local place name sign with directions to Zebras and Orca ... I thought there must be a zoo here !
Soon after a squad of Sunday morning cyclists went past and I hung on to their tails for a couple of miles until we reached Zebras, where I just had to stop to photograph the sign.
After Orcas the road goes uphill steeply so I had found some quiet roads to the east which still went uphill but much less.
I turnd off the road onto a dirt track and I was immediately concerned, but having spent hours routing I had convinced myself it was 3 miles maximum and looked to have some form of surface on it. It was up quite a steep climb on packed stone with lots of tyre puncturing loose sharp stones - I managed the 3 miles quite easily intact and was glad to get onto tarmac again , riding 5 miles to a point where I nearly doubled back on myself and hit a fantastic 500ft climb thorugh fertile farmland with terraced trees. The top was even better and I had a super fast descent down to Capinha where I had lunch in a typical thick stone village cafe - no wifi would penetrate those walls !
Now the back end of the day was loaded and I knew it - I pushed on through Belmonte and stopped at a garage to take on as much liquid as possible, I had 15 miles to go but still a few hours cycling !
5 more miles of flat road followed, all the time looking at huge mountains to every side, to the left I thought I could see a road crawling up the mountain at what looked a decent slope. With 10 miles to go i did turn left onto that slope and it would be 1200ft to the top - I was actually correct and the gradient started at 7 or 8% but once on the climb was a fairly steady 5%.
I broke this onster up into 200ft sections, stopping every 200ft not because of fatigue, but more discomfort as these prolonged gradients put pressure on places where 60 year old men shouldn't have pressure.
After 6 stretch breaks I was at the top and still full of energy, but this wasnt a normal climb where there would be a great descent. At the top I was looking up a Guarda, only 3 miles away but in between was a 200ft drop and a 700ft climb. I enjoyed the drop but soon I was on nasty gardients going well over 10%. I crossed the orbital road into town and the last 1.5 miles were probably the toughest cycling of my life. There were multiple very steep cobbled streets stretching every last sinew in my legs before arriving into a square with a snall bar facing the cathedral , where have typed this. There seems to be very little in town if this is the centre.
Guarda .. got the Tee Shirt but I doubt I will ever be back on a bicycle !