Pedro

Nothing special about tomato and fried eggs, but these “Ox Heart” tomatoes are amazing, and market’s homegrown chicken eggs make it amazing Codfish, oven cooked and then flaked plus small potatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, Portuguese comfort food! Liver slices with baked potatoes, we call them Iscas, cooked with onion and garlic, done right it’s very tasty, also very oldschool “tavern” food:

Historically, this is a big farming region, known for its pears and apples, but vegetables all around too, farming and fishing! Over the last years, though, wine making has been very encouraged and grapes are taking over many of the hills and farms, it is still a minor wine region for quality and history compared to the Douro, but the industry has indeed exploded. I don’t care much for this, though, seems that wherever you go in Portugal most of the worked fields are now grapes or olives using intensive farming practices.

Thanks! My bike wouldn’t squeeze through the fence opening, and also I wouldn’t stand around waiting for a train

Spending a few days in Ericeira, and the weather has been so great it almost feels too good to be true. Getting to know the roads around here, I needed a goal to make me see some new stuff, and indeed this was the perfect plan, to follow the forts of the Lines of Torres forces me to see new things and actually learn stuff. Also took plenty of pictures, most are of hills and grass so not really an Indiana Jones film. After lunch, setting off from Ericeira on a perfect winter afternoon: https://www.rhlt.pt/interactive-map/ Today's ride was along these forts, if you look on the above link you'll see the whole of the lines on a map of the region. A few kms on, about 20 minutes and I reach the first fort, now bare in mind these are not castles with massive walls, just fortifications, you do need to use some imagination to make the best of visiting them. Forte do Passo, very small with a windmill inside, at the time used as a magazine: To one side you see as far as the ocean: To the other as far as the next fort, which is what these positions were all about: Back on the road for another 10 or 15km: And through a farm track and up a vineyard: The Forte do Grilo (Grilo = Cricket) Stopped right by the surrounding pit Surrounding fields were gorgeous green: As I said, with a little imagination, standing on top of one of these you can really picture what went on, with the basic structures providing cover from what came from below, the openings on the walls with a cannon sticking out, and a good viewing point into the distance: Back out through the farm again, and onto some smooth gravel road for another few kms, little distance but entertaining: Could have taken a normal road, but couldn't resist the uphill gravel road with twisties and chose the slightly longer way: Again through a farm road, if this had been wet I wouldn't have wished to go through here: Not on the oficial map, but showing up on Google maps is Forte do Pelicano (Pelican), took a little dirt detour and found it on the way to Torres Vedras, the biggest and most important town in the area: Not maintained at all, you would walk past it without a second glance, and it really takes a little effort to see the flat surface on top of the hill, being covered in thorny bushes I didn't feel like walking around it either: Didn't spend a lot of time there and carried on towards Torres Vedras You probably don't bother to read these, but it helps me structure things, so here's another poster, of the Fort S. Vicente, in Torres Vedras, this one more like a proper fortress and obviously a lot more important being right on top of a major town: Had a good walk around that, not anyone else visiting any of them today, being a Friday, good stuff! No more than 1 km away is the Forte dos Olheiros, basically a small one that served as a lookout for the bigger fort picture before. I almost couldn't resist riding in and around inside it but behaved: Next were two places on top of a hill, places I have visited before but still wanted to pass by today as they'd close the ride nicely, and I enjoy the dirt road leading to them. On the way stopped by a deactivated train station in Runa, just for Pete: The tracks still work, though, but the station no longer does. The badges were prizes for winning 3 first places, 1 second place and 1 third place in the Competition for the most Flowery Stations, such an old school Portugal thing to do. Rode on, and climbed a little, and made it to the Forte da Feiteira, just a couple of kms before the Archeira but a cool little place to ride by on a lovely dirt road: Quite a bit early for these flowers, I think: And on to the final stop of the day, the Fort da Archeira: Although I didn't take that many pictures, this is where I stopped the longest, just enjoying the view and the breeze Starting to go back home, a mere 40 minute ride so let's make it interesting: Just going back down the mountain via the shortest road, a little steep but perfectly fine as long as it's dry: And then on to Ericeira via country roads, with the sun in my face: Stopped by praia dos Coxos, to see if a surfer friend was there, arriving: I stopped way more often than normal, but the light was just so amazing I couldn't help it: Turns out she wasn't surfing as the waves were non existent, but still it made for a great location to end the report: In all, a great 3 hours riding around the place with way more stops than usual.

I thought twice about stopping, it always seems flat and smooth …

I´ll for sure be on the bike either today or tomorrow, maybe visit a couple more fortifications, who knows?

You brits and your tea…

I'm going to be helpful, @XTreme, see the little sun on top of this aircon remote above 28ºC? Means it's throwing warm air:

It's in the second part of his statement...

I can't tell if the person that wrote that was in such a red mist that his imagination failed him, or just dum.

My bike's engine is supposedly assembled in Berlin, I don't know if one should be proud of that

That’s probably because of the netflix tv show that came up a couple of months ago, the portuguese name being “Gloria”. It was pretty unknown history before that.

I have to say, I don’t usually spend a lot of time looking at History stuff, but these Line of Torres forts are obviously in scenic locations, with a little dirtroad to get there after some nice roads, so they are growing on me.

I still appreciate toilets, though!

Went for a little ride with @Sofia today, to check out the biggest fortification on the Lines of Torres, which is quite close to her home. It was a pretty awesome winter day today, the weather was perfect and we took no pictures of the ride itself because we were running out of day light, but it's a little gem of an area with rolling green hills that doesn't seem to belong to center Portugal but still within the great Lisbon area. I realize this report has too many pictures of embankments and of myself, but bare with it, I'm not one for spending too much time looking at historic things and this really peaked my interest, more so as I didn't really know what to expect nor where we were going at first. The Forte Grande (Big Fort) or Forte do Alqueirão was the biggest fort in the Lines of Torres used by the Portuguese / British army to hold back the French, led by General Wellington. They built two lines of fortifications along the hills from Torres Vedras to Vila Franca de Xira, this is the most important if not only by being the biggest. (I think, look it up if you're interested, I know very little History) There's a couple of kms of sort of loose gravel with a couple of ruts climbing from the road to the fort, so Sofia left the Speed Triple and it's Supercorsa tires down below and rode up with me. Here I am annoyed on a work call, she made herself entertained exploring my different moods through the whole event We rode up next to the old stone road, probably built along with the fort, I was happy to have nice smooth dirt and not those bumpy big rocks, me examining the old road on foot and not really caring much for it: Wouldn't want to ride up this, as always the rocks look bigger in reality than they do in Pictures, bringing supplies on horse carts up this must have been a chore. Give me the right smooth road anytime: Parked right by an embankment There is a geodesic mark inside the fort, and on top of that they built a cool viewpoint from which you get reference point to all the other forts as well as a great view. And then a walk around checking out the defense structures and ruins: Cannon embrasures, and how they look now: To me, the most impressive thing about the Lines of Torres, is how quick they could transmit a message over a long distance: I got a kick out of the drawings, they really made it easy to imagine how the ruins looked back when in use, so I tried to take a picture of some of the ruins from the same angle as the drawing was made, like the below one of a Powder Magazine: Or this one: And my favorite one, the "Governor's House", which was a small house used as an office, with a division for supposedly storing maps and charts, and a room for meetings. I made a point of standing in Wellington´s meeting room, nobody showed up Afternoon was getting on, and we rode back before the sun started to go down, stopping on the way to buy dog medicines by the vet pharmacy. Good little ride, it was today!

Nice to hear, you seem to really be getting along with it. I have to say, there’s nothing green in that mud, more like brown laning!

No dashboard in sight, though, you loose!

It’s just now that people get snobby about motorcycles, not long ago you would be lucky to ride anything bigger than a 50cc two stroke.

Pretty sure they also feel severe for people spending time inside…

Same attraction as any kind of biker meeting, I guess, looking at bikes and hanging out meeting with friends? Also the road leading to there is amazing for racing, and people often misbehave with street racing, so there’s that too, for some that’s the main attraction.

Above there’s a video for the ambiance. someone let a Jack Russel sort of dog loose, and he was running around like an arrrow all over the place, managed to take a shot of him as he’s branding a monument It is a pretty place: Felt like eating something, but the local restaurant was pretty full, and didn’t feel like being in a closed space with lots of people, so rode off to meet Sofia for lunch. The road heading out, about to get on it on the white Thruxton is a brazilian lady wearing the tightest “look at my butt” pants ever, you can even see the roundness from here Traffic heading out was pretty silly and two bikes went down on the single corner with a little water running across the tarmac, so I decided to opt for the quiet and slower way out: Back on tarmac, and you can see why people like to scratch on these roads: Passed a couple of really pretty small towns, but didn’t stop for pictures, too much hassle with sunday lunch crowd arriving at scenic locations. 20 minutes later, and I stop on a cafe and order a pair of sandwiches for Sofia’s arrival: No more pictures as the traffic turned to sunday afternoon and that means annoying and slow, so went home.

Today the morning was bright and sunny, even though a little chilly at about 8 or 10° at breakfast. I had been to the Cabo da Roca a few times before but never on a Sunday, and felt like checking the place out, it’s a very pretty area and the roads leading up to it from Lisbon are twisty with great surface, so it’s one of two places the hordes of bikers from Lisbon flock to, I made my way from Ericeira to check it out, with a plan to explore a couple of places out of the busy “biker’s road”. It’s only a short 45 minute ride from Ericeira but I decided to make it last longer, from the praia da Adraga I spotted a couple of look out points on google maps and the dirt roads were good enough to show up on maps so I went to check it out. A couple of photo stops for you guys: Quite the drop, with an almost straight rock face to the water, which looked amazing today: As always, rocks look like nothing and inclines look flat once you step off the bike and take a picture. in the distance, you can see the lighthouse building in Cabo da Roca: Getting off the cliffs, which I’m not sure was exactly legal, there’s a couple of kms of nice dirtroads up to the cape: Quiet road but if you look up to where the tarmac road passes you’ll see plenty of bikes: The actual road on the cape is a very pretty place, and an amazing place to gather if you’re into crowds: Parked right next to the lighthouse since lighthouses are for some reason my favourite buildings, and walked down to the crowd of bikes: Now I’ll show you a few pictures of portuguese motorcycling, quite diverse and something for anyone, away from the common GS of which there were only a couple: A lightweight Silverdream for the lightweight freaks: Oldschool YZF is such a pretty sportsbike: NC30, classy: Easy rider himself, styling it up with his eight ball helmet: One of Portugal’s more liked current bikes, Honda is a cult brand here and the old 750 Africa Twins were loved, as soon as they released the 1000 it was an instant hit: Oldschool Speed Triple near some italian bling: Some spots it felt like going back 20 years: For @Buckster, complete with rolled up picnic blanket for complete cowboy styles, pretty bike though: For @Catteeclan: Young girl arriving in a clean pink DT50LC, oldschool cool: was going to take a picture of the class act that is a red 1200GS when someone rode past in a new Norden: Always some twat that insists on squeezing past rows of bikes in a car, there’s a car park 50 meters behind there, who still insists on taking a van? Uploads are now failing, and I’m doing this on my phone so will post just a couple more pics in a bit