On the 15th of October 2016, my cousin, Tiago Coimbra and myself, Daniel Coimbra, left Lisbon on our fully loaded bikes. We were headed for the southernmost tip of Portugal, Sagres.

Our path was the ‘Rota Vicentina’, a historical route that was used by pilgrims, travelers and inhabitants on their travels around the west coast of Portugal. The official route begins in Santiago do Cacém and ends in Sagres. But we began further north, in Troia, culminating in roughly 250 km of remote trails, singletracks, cobblestone paths, rocky hills and endless coastlines.

This trip had been on our minds for a long time and it was decided that October would be the best time to go for it. The unforgiving summer heat had eased and gave way to fresh air, perfect for a 5-day ride.

We started our journey with a short train ride from Lisbon to Setubal, followed by a ferry that took us to Troia, an amazing peninsula with miles of white sandy beaches. Thinking that it would be a short ride from Troia to Santiago do Cacém, we started confidently, only to find that we had to make an unexpected, yet very pleasant stop in Melides.

By noon on the second day we reached Santiago do Cacém, the official starting point of the historical route. Making our way uphill to the church gave us a great overview of the trails ahead. In the evening, a clearing in the forest just outside Cercal, turned out to be our shelter for the night. All night long we heard dogs barking. Sounds coming from the farms in the surrounding area.

The next day greeted us with a beautiful blue sky, wide open fields and we even saw a couple of backpackers hiking on the same trail. The path was smooth and mostly rolling, with a few steep treks.

Later, after refueling in a small and what seemed to be impoverished town of São Luís, we found a camping spot in a dense Eucalyptus field just outside of town. This was spider central, but we had little choice as the sun was setting very quickly.

While setting up camp we heard an animal stalking us. Initially, we thought it was a small wild boar or something similar, but it was probably just a field rat because it spent all night right beside us, occasionally making its presence known by rustling against some leaves.

Feeling pretty tired, we ended up eating too much and even drank two whole bottles of wine! This of course was a big mistake for which we paid for the next morning. Thankfully all the hard climbing had been done the previous day, so we started at dawn with a long descent down the mountain leading us into Odemira.

Here we treated ourselves to a real meal to fight the hangover. While everyone around us was still having breakfast at 11AM I ate a ‘Bitoque’, which is probably one of the most known traditional Portuguese dishes, consisting of a thinly cut steak accompanied by rice, fried potatoes, salad and an egg on top. Tiago had the grilled ‘Febras’. Thinly cut steak, grilled with potatoes and rice.