Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Stop Circling The Outskirts Of Lisbon

October 10, 2007 by Mike

Lisbon

Route: Guincho - Cascais - Estoril - Lisbon

As the crow flies I've covered about 30 miles in the last three days - curly roads and back roads to royal palaces mean I've travelled a fair bit further but.. I haven't had to fill the petrol tank in days. Have I been scared of Lisbon?

It's the first capital city I've reached on the trip since Copenhagen. My brother isn't going to be here to hold my hand this time. The biggest city since.. Den Haag? Copenhagen? St Petesberg, even? The largest concentration of (terrible) Portuguese drivers in the history of the known Universe, certainly. Is that scary? Well, yes, is the answer, to the last bit. The drivers are *bad*. But I should be OK with big cities -- I learned to drive and to ride in London, fergoodnesssakes.

And guess what - when I finally made it to the city I happily ended up riding many miles more than needed, just carrying myself through the streets, along the bypasses, round the abouts and across the tracks of railway and Metro -- not quite sure where I was going and not worried in the slightest -- loving the zip and vibe of A Big City once again. Scared? Nah -- turns out I've been missing it all along.

That long ride through town wasn't planned. My entry in was straightforward enough as I took the coast road, as you might expect, as far as the Tower of Belem. Pull out yr handy road map of Lisbon and notice what appears to be a straight road from Belem to the campsite at Monsanto. Ha ha ha.. I can laugh now, having singularly failed to find a left turn when I needed it and ending up miles away and across the other side of 'centro' -- which, I'll have you know, looks lovely seen from the saddle of a big British motorbike.

Reverse a moment to the Tower of Belem.

Amazing sight -- amazing site. Tucked on a broad bend of the river Tagus and guarding Lisbon from the sea. All of five hundred years old. Looks like it's been made from icing sugar. Yet again, Portugal manages to produce something ancient for us moderns. What I hadn't realised was that the other symbol of Lisbon -- for me -- the Monument to the Navigators -- was just a couple of hundred metres up the road.

Way back when, Portugal was one of the great powers of Europe -- based more or less solely on its maritime prowess. These days, despite a couple of decent players, they can't even qualify for major football tournaments. I'm reminded of something that my date Vitor talked about back in Villa do Conde. Portugal considers itself small, he said. Portuguese men consider themselves small (-- oh, and by the way, they have a point. I tower over about half of them. It's disconcerting.) Vitor raised the subject in order to dismiss it, but there's a truth in it. This country feels itself to exist on the edge of Europe; added on to the side of Spain; forgotten, ignored, overlooked, small. They have the Presidency of the EU at the moment and lots of political big cheeses will be rolling in to Lisbon next week. It will make Portugal feel very important for a moment. But.. in general.. small.

It wasn't always like this -- as the Monument to the Navigators testifies. Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeo Dias, Ferdinand Magellan, the Infante Don Henrique... OK so they aren't household names these days (well, they are in my household) but the achievements of these pioneering explorers brought great great wealth to Portugal, vast knowledge of the world to Europe. And by extension huge terrors to many of the peoples of the world, in Africa, Asia, South America. But they made the world a smaller place, and did it with extraordinary heroism and endeavour. Hats off to them.. or a motorbike helmet, in my case.

The Monument is fitting - huge, confident, white, sitting next to the Tower of Belem at the watery entrance to Lisbon. My only gripe: it was commissioned and built during the strange, not-quite-Fascist dictatorship that throttled this country in the middle of the last century. The remnants of Salazar's regime were only swept aside in 1974 -- I confess that's within my lifetime but I'm going to pretend I can't remember it happening. Like Franco up the road in Spain, Portugal opened its arms to the world -- to British tourists, for example -- when it was anything but a democracy. (British business has always been here: no surprises there.) That's the kind of thing that gets me about this new, squeaky clean Europe that I'm riding through. We've all been so quick to forget some of the heinous crimes of the recent past. Just as we've been too quick to forget the monumental contributions of 'little' Portugal in centuries gone by.

I was guided in to the campsite by a biker called Felipe, who pulled over when he saw me at the side of a small street in the Benfica district poring over a map. There are precious few roadsigns in Lisbon. Most of them contradict each other. Felipe liked the fact I was on a Triumph. "My friend is the official importer for Triumph in Portugal," he told me. "He can't sell any. He makes no money!" Any friend of Felipe is a friend of mine, so good luck to him.

I was only a couple of miles from the campsite, but it would have taken me a month to get there without Felipe.

When I did arrive I discovered two important things:

- that a four-star campsite is one that has loo rolls -- but not loo seats;

- that my tent has broken. My cheap tent. Specifically, my cheap tent poles. Unusable. Damndamndamn.. and thank goodness for my hammock and the trees of the Lisbon campsite.

And I haven't even mentioned the road in to Lisbon: Cascais, with a small and almost interesting Marine Museum, a beautiful lighthouse, more stately aristocratic villas and the 'Mouth of Hell' - what is at times a tumultuous coming together of Atlantic and cliff face was, today, as mild as Michael Palin; Estoril, the St Tropez of Portugal, I was reliably informed, with the largest casino in Europe: well, somewhere has to be. There are so many mediaeval forts guarding this vital shipping lane that the eyes grow jaded. And the Portuguese have run out of ideas of how to present them as historical buildings. At least one of them is now a disco.

Cascais was also the first place on the *entire* journey besidetheseaside where travelling anticlockwise around Europe has worked against me.

Picture the map of Europe. From Murmansk at the top right, to Sochi at about 3 or 4'clock over on the far right, I'm travelling anticlockwise.

Because everyone bar the Brits drives on the right, that means I'm on the outside, closest to the sea, as I ride. It will probably add a couple of hundred metres to my total ride at most -- I have no idea how far I'll be riding in total, nor do I want to know.

But psychologically, it reminds me that I'm that little bit more besidetheseaside than the people on the other side of the road.

It also means the views are usually better.

Until Cascais. Where, for the only time so far, the clockwise, northwest-bound traffic was routed outside me, closer to the Atlantic. I ws effectively riding on the left. Perhaps the road planners hereabouts were trained in the UK?

Inside, I fumed.. and thought, They won't get away with this. I'll write about it on my blo-- I mean diary. Then they'll regret not routing me on the outside, closer to the sea.

That'll learn 'em.

A strange one. I've met three women in this campsite this evening: one in reception, one in the supermarket, and a Japanese camper who spotted me struggling with the tent. All three have flirted with me to a huge degree. Crackling with it. I haven't seen anything like it for.. a long time. I have no rational explanation for why a woman might want to flirt with me. Perhaps the grime accumulated by riding through Lisbon is concealing my face?

Three images of Cascais:

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Stop Circling The Outskirts Of Lisbon

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