Today is a great day, it is Sunday, the sun is shining and I am taking another day off at a great place of a dear friend close to the Serra da Estrela called project kamp, a great place of an emerging community and run by amazing changemakers. It is definitely worth to check out what they are doing, either on their website or on their YouTube channel.
Many things were happening again and I would like to take you through the experiences of my last days, entering the Serra da Estrela, baring witness to the impact of the fire that was there in the summer, sleeping on the Torre and many other things.
Douro valley to the Serra da Estrela
I left my campsite early in the morning so I could get as much distance covered. I was on my way to the mountains and it was great to start with a rejuvenated body, even though I didn’t feel like 100 percent. I made some major mistakes in my rest days which was eating pastries with a lot of sugar and gluten. That threw my system off the keto track I was on (being fuelled by fat instead of carbs) and made my recovery much harder. I thought to consume something to treat myself, but the opposite was happening: In order for the short pleasure I made my recovery much slower.
It was good to also learn something about my body in the opposite direction.
I was very happy to be driving through the familiar region and was also happy when I heard flowing water again for the first time since many days.
It has been a great experience for me to be in contact with locals, I was always welcomed and gifted by the contact. On my way I met this farmer who was just filling his barrels with spring water, one of the last ones still carrying water in that place. He told me I could drink it, so it was a nice chat and encounter we had.
I was cycling through the Douro valley the whole day and also had to see a different way of exploring the land, which was through the many monocultures of grapes for wine and now massively expanding the orchards of almonds.
After a long and hot day of cycling I by chance walked into this bar that was run by a local association. There were some old friends opening it every now and then in order to play cards together, watch football and provide a home to whoever comes by. After I asked if they knew about a place for me to sleep they offered me to sleep on the lawn in front of the bar, they offered me to have a shower there, I was given some local wine and another guy came to give me 2kg of grapes from his parents garden. It was lovely and I felt very supported by these gentlemen.
After I had enough wine I went to bed, the next morning I wanted to leave early enough to cover many km before the rain and wind would come.
It was a beautiful, very abandoned and original landscape with many old structures from another time.
A lot of the olive trees have already seen many decades, even hundreds of years. The land, it’s trees and boulders were radiating a frequency way slower and calmer, that persistence over centuries that our modern lifestyle is desperately missing.
It was a treat to drive in that area and to absorb the impressions.
It didn’t take long until the rain found also me and so my day would turn into a windy, cold and rainy one.
In between I stopped to make some coffee and heat myself up a bit.
I was intrigued again by the new architecture that you would find in the smaller villages. They were already very old and mostly made from stones.
When I cycled through the next city I was finding myself in an area where many poor people were living. Many people in the cities lost their ability to finance their life’s during the times of corona and couldn’t afford their flat anymore.
I finally arrived at the ‘border’ to the Serra da Estrela national park and was very happy I made it this far.
This summer a huge fire, the longest one Portugal has ever endured, was raging in the region and burned down about 20 percent of the nature reserves land. I was encountering the first marks of it.
It was intense to cycle up these mountains, I had been hiking and climbing here before and it made me cry to see so much burned land.
I was warned before that it would not be pleasant to come here and that I might go somewhere else.
It made me thinking about it many times how much we need to wake up to the reality we are living in and to bare witness to what is happening. The spaces of powerful nature are getting ever more rare and the effects of our society leave no corner of this planet untouched. I was crying many tears and believe it is a necessary step for us to get in touch with the reality we are living in. It feels a bit like leaving a wounded friend alone if I hadn’t come here.
With all that new and moving impressions I finally found the open municipal campsite I wanted to visit, the fire stopped right at its borders.
I was greeted by a local and very friendly shepherd who gave me some tips where to set up my tent and to get water for the night. He could have been a great character in a movie.
Besides the fact that everything around was burned it was amazing to see the power of resilience and protection a mixed forest has and what it does to keep the water in the ground.
After a restless sleep I enjoyed still the atmosphere of an amazing sunrise and was happy to be in this familiar region – I knew already what was coming next.
Still in confrontation with burned area I reached Manteigas and had my obligatory coffee in a local Café and I was wondering a bit through my old memories of the place and the adventures I had here with my great friend Ludwig.
After a bit of shopping I jumped on my bike and cycled up the Zêzere valley, to climb up until 1993 meters and enjoy the highest point of Portugal mainland.
It was great to be up there and to enjoy that 360° view and to celebrate my last bigger summit. It was great to be there without any time pressure and I was rewarded with a stunning sunset.
I had decided to sleep up there as it wasn’t going to be rough or windy for the night. Unfortunately I had a second restless night but was then getting creative with some night photography.
The next morning I was so happy to wake up with the sunrise, when I got out of my tent I had some people meditating towards the sun close to me, I didn’t know I had set my tent in such a prominent place. So I took it all down and enjoyed my sunrise morning coffee and got ready for the day.
It was mostly downhill and I found again this beautiful lakes and decided to take my ‘morningshower’ there.
Since a few days I started to recognize that my backtire had started to scratch at the brakes, which must have appeared after a heavier bump and I decided to have it checked at a local workshop after my descend from the mountain.
It was devastating! My backwheel was broken and I was very very lucky that it didn’t desintegrate during my descend, where I was driving up to 50 kilometers per hour. The mechanic also said he had no other wheel to offer and we decided he would do some calls and I had a coffee to digest and see how I could move on.
You can imagine I had many thoughts and questions in my head, would this be the end and I would need to take the train home?
Luckily they found a solution that was not too expensive and we attached a racing bike wheel so I could at least cycle home, but would need to get a better solution once I would like to travel again with more than my bodyweight.
I then could finally with a bit of delay continue to cycle and finally reach the project if my dear friend Rita, project kamp.
It was amazing how I was welcomed, a big group of people celebrating a birthday were cheering and clapping when I came, they knew I had made it this far all the way from Germany. After a hug and a few words I was so happy I could take a warm shower and was the first time after 5 weeks that I was meeting a person that I knew.
It was a treat to sleep in a proper bed, have a kitchen with good organic products to make dinner and to then have a nice guided tour on the property the next morning.
This place holds a lot of potential and I am curious how it will develope over the next years.
After I had to cancel my next visit in Coimbra because my friend there got sick I decided to stay for another night and to use the moment of calmness and this oasis to take a break. I did a lot of bodywork and had a lot of beautiful talks with Rita and some of the volunteers here. I am very glad I came by and am very grateful for their hospitality.
Tomorrow I will start the last part of my journey and I am starting to calculate already when I would arrive back home. It is exciting to feel how fast the time is moving by and that this journey is already seeing it’s destination on the horizon.
Thank you very much for reading and I hope to see you around here soon again.
dusty road stories 