Port-oh! (and route to Salamanca)

No matter how old one becomes we never stop learning.

In the last post I mentioned about splitting from the group but it was only for a few hours so they could do their thing and I could do my usual routine of wandering aimlessly. We reconvened after lunch and squeezed in a fifty minute river cruise before our visit to one of the port houses.

Jenny is an unassuming kind of lady, quiet and not the type of ‘Yank’ Rachel seemed to have preconceived ideas about, they would have connected so well! Initially for two reasons, firstly Jenny is amazing with crafts, and secondly she knows how to manage money, hence why she is holding the purse strings for this trip, thankfully. But on Sunday Jenny would have scored a hat-trick with Rachel. After the usual history lesson at the port house came the tasting, white, ruby and tawny. I’m no slouch when it comes to sampling liquor but the contents of those three glasses never touched the sides with Jenny, whilst I was only halfway through! She has definitely found her drink, and therefore on our way back to the hotel we picked up a couple of bottles.

Lesson number one, Jenny is Idaho’s secret port queen.

Lesson number two came as Ernie, Jenny and I sat outside the hotel in the garden doing the best we could to savour two bottles of port. Spot the warning signs: About 28c, sunny, 8pm on grass, me wearing shorts. I didn’t, until I was riding east this morning and thinking “there’s some itching feeling on my legs and ankles’, yes the dreaded mozzies! A schoolboy error, but it comes with the territory, and in four or five days all should be fine, unless the Dordogne gives a second helping!

Porto to Salamanca

After a heavy night on the port I woke with Danielle, well we all did to be honest, but before you allow your imagination to run wild it was actually Tempest Danielle that we were warned about on the tv screens as we had breakfast.

To the west the sky was a blanket of purple/black cloud, everything was wet and we expected the worst as we packed up and headed east towards Spain. As it turned out we were like surfers on the crest of a wave for the ten hour journey. As I rode in front the headlights of my biking buddies shone brightly against the menacing dark sky behind. During the whole journey we barely had any rain and could therefore enjoy some stunning roads and scenery along the Douro Valley.

But on the occasions when the road was wet I thought of the Beatles song ‘A Day in the Life’. I have never seen so many manholes along a road, it’s meaningless to car drivers but to motorcyclists riding on a wet surface we really need to avoid them if at all possible. It defies logic to have them every 50 yards, it’s as if they’ve been strategically placed to make life as challenging as possible for us bikers! So, the Beatles lyrics I sang to myself along that long section of road?

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all

I didn’t count them all as our three bikes tried to pick an unconventional path between them, but I reckon four thousand wouldn’t be far off the mark!