The German guy, Marvin, told me that it’s nice to have jar of chick peas for dinner, even better with cottage cheese, so I thought I’d try it. Got myself a huge 1 litre jar of chick peas, they didn’t have cottage cheese so I went for cream of brie, and to spice it up a bit I added some cherry tomatoes. This probably could have been quite tasty, but the chick peas were in some kind of jelly, not dissimilar to what you get around minced beef. It smelt like dog food. Secondly the cream of brie really didn’t add much flavour. It looked, smelt and tasted horrible, but the tomatoes were lovely!
I woke early to the sound of thunder. I’m dying for a good storm to take some of the heat away. Unfortunately it was off in the distance. I’d had a lie in because of the hour I gained the day before, but this just meant I was getting up when the sun was higher. So I was sweating before I’d even left the campsite. Then I sliced my arm on the corner of the pannier clip, this didn’t look like it was going to be a good day.
As I’d suspected it wasn’t. It was so humid I was pouring sweat more than the day before. I knew I’d be climbing some hills later so I was hoping the storms would come back.
The towns around where I’d camped were quite bizarre. They were made up labyrinths of tiny cobbled streets that didn’t seem to go anywhere in particular. It was like the place hadn’t been touched since time began. Got back on the main road and made my way to Porto.
I didn’t need to go into Porto so I cut through the outskirts and headed east. I then started to climb some really steep hills. It started to rain but it wasn’t enough to drop the temperature. I was struggling. It’s not like I was tired, I was just too hot!
I could see thunder storms building and this made it even milder and sticky. I then started to climb the biggest hill of the day (unknown to me). It went on for a lifetime and was completely open to the sun. It was becoming unbearable, there was no breeze and even the shade didn’t cool me down. I don’t think it was helped by the fact the road had been cooked most of the day. I reached the top only to find a diversion because of road works. Up I continued, even further than before. I had to keep st
opping for a drink and catch my breath every couple of kilometres. This was by far the worst day of the entire trip. The picture I’ve added is one I took from the top of the hill.
I finally reached Baiao. A small town perched up the hill I had previously climbed. It’s really quite pretty up in the hills. The sky is thick black in the distance and you can see the rain falling, but it doesn’t seem to want to come over by me.
I know I’ve got another hill-ridden day tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to it but if it cools down overnight it should be more comfortable.