Well… Like I said above… I’m not Bear Grylls. Unfortunately that means I suck at packing. Some people who I’ve told my plans to will have noticed how silent I’ve been. Well, the long and short of it was the rush to get everything done and packed before I left. This was what I wanted to pack:
And this ultimately got left behind:
It turns out 58 l plus a tent isn’t a whole of space. Who knew?😂The vacuum bags are the big surprise here. I tried to put my clothes in them, but they all but filled one saddlebag each, but since they become rigid after taking the air out, they weren’t really filling up all the nooks and crannies in the saddlebags, and their closure ended up wasting lots of space.Unfortunately, all this fiddling about meant that I missed my departure date. Now, normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. However, two good friends were supposed to meet me on the way, at Mora.New plan: take the train to Vila Franca de Xira at an ungodly hour and start from there.
06:30 at Lisboa – Oriente
Crossing the bridge at Vila Franca de Xira. That… turned out to be wildly optimistic.There were lots of dirt roads with tractor marks and with bits of sand that made it really slow going. I’m the end, I didn’t even get to the meeting point, and there’s still around 40km to go from there. Hopefully things will go better tomorrow.Here’s a selfie to wrap things up:
The Lazy Cyclist 