Day 1: Valença – Barcelos

About the destination:

Barcelos is a historic town in northern Portugal, famous for its colorful ceramics and the iconic “Galo de Barcelos” rooster, a symbol of Portuguese culture. The town features a charming old quarter with cobbled streets, markets, and medieval architecture. Every Thursday, it hosts one of the country’s largest traditional markets, attracting both locals and tourists.

Before we started on our first ride from Valença to Barcelos, Steve Weston, gave us a walkthrough of there route and things se should be aware. Steve is our main support guy and he is the one that has planned the tour in detail.

Before we head off towards Barcelos there will of course be a prologue, this is 1 km from our hotel and two the old town where we took a group picture with the Spanish border behind us.

… and off we went

… everything was going all right, then my seatpost was starting to squeak and then was gradually getting lower and lower on the bike

Long story short – we weren’t able to fix it and I have to join in the car and we will stop. We were starting to look for a bike store nearby the place we going both Steve and I thought it might not be possible to ride the bike and further we found will be dealer in Barcelo. Probably the only one in the whole Portugal and he actually found the missing part and put it together on tomorrow ready again for the next stretch..

so it became a shorter trip today, but I tried to take some more photos of the others that day.

Here are a few examples