OFF THE BEATEN TRACK IN PORTUGAL

Do you ever go riding with the aim of getting lost? I love it. Birgit and I did that just about every day on a recent trip through northern and central Portugal

- Sam Manicom 

I think we are all prepared to accept a motorcycling fact. Once we are past the first nervous riding miles, the hunt for new, exciting and challenging places to ride never stops; it’s an itch isn’t it. Out of the corners of our eyes, Birgit and I had been looking at Portugal and that itch needed scratching.

Portugal is now an almost bankrupt country that’s held a place in history in a way that few but history buffs are aware of, and that was part of the fascination for us; we knew so little. Portugal was one of the world’s major powers and its colonies once included countries such as Brazil, Angola and Mozambique; even a part of India.

Portuguese explorers had sailed off the shores of Australia way before Captain Cook ventured into that part of the world, and it’s also worth checking out Ferdinand Magellan. This man left his mark in more places than the Magellan Strait in South America.

Was a country that was apparently well past the prime of historical life going to be a place worth visiting? Was Portugal going to be a ramshackle shambles of crumbling buildings and roads that not even a developing world would envy? Would its current economic state make it a depressing place to be, or a journey where we would be eyes-wide-open geckos on the wall? The more we learnt, the more intrigued we became. The planning began and so a new adventure started to roll.

HEADING SOUTH