South Bucks Midweek Cycling Newsletter - April 2023

You will receive an email with the agenda in due course, but please note that the AGM will be held at Prestwood Village Hall, 1 Wycombe Rd, Prestwood, Great Missenden HP16 0NZ on Wednesday 10th May 2023 at 13:00 with refreshments available from 12:00 after the rides.  This is your opportunity to elect the committee who will organise rides and events for the following year and to raise points for discussion. If you wish to propose a motion to be voted on at the AGM, it should be sent to the secretary 10 days before the meeting for inclusion in the agenda. Please do come and give your support.  We need to fill two vacant posts; Chair and Treasurer so please consider if you can help.  Our committee meetings are quite informal and only every two months, but to continue we do need to fill these posts.

I recently had a week cycling in the Algarve with fellow Cycling UK member Rob Bunyan.  Rob had some holiday to use by the end of March and was looking for somewhere warm to spend it.  We planned to take our own bikes and do a moving-on pannier tour as we usually do.  We looked first at flights to Malaga, but there wasn’t a flight from Luton on the day we wanted to travel so we opted for Luton to Faro in Portugal.  Having only previously seen the coast with its sandy beaches and tourist hotels, I didn’t know what to expect inland.

I planned an anticlockwise tour from Faro along the coast and then heading north inland and returning to the coast for the last day back to Faro averaging about 50 miles per day.  Heading inland from the coast would inevitably mean climbing and some of those climbs were quite long and some were steep, but in spring the scenery was lusher than I had expected and the views were great.

I was delighted to see hills wooded with cork trees and the result of cork harvesting much in evidence.  Most trees are killed by cutting off a ring of bark around the trunk, but with cork trees, that layer about 50mm thick, just grows back in a few years.  We also saw large bean pods growing by the roadside with unfamiliar leaves, with what looked like immature peas inside.  Rob tried them, pronounced them pea-like and survived the experiment.

The small inland towns were we stayed, Silves, Monchique and Loule, were delightful and full of character, with narrow steep streets and lots of decorative black and white setts.  Even the road humps in villages were made of contrasting setts, built to last.  There were lots of orange and lemon trees lending an exotic feel.  There were large churches with towers and bells often heard.

The roads, away from the coast, had very little traffic and a good surface, certainly much better than in Bucks.  I took us on some gravel roads which I need not have done and the more minor the road, the steeper the climbs may be.

Every meal had a "couvert" of olives, bread, butter and Sardine Pate.  The menus were predominantly meat or fish so as I don’t eat meat, I ate a lot more fish than usual.  On one occasion Rob had wild boar stew, which had so many chunks of very solid boar meat that it defeated him.  It was good to be able to wash down dinner with half a litre of very pleasant red wine for 5 euros.

Portugal is not a prosperous country, whose tourism-based economy has been badly hit by Covid so the cost of food and hotels was very affordable.  The total cost of our week in the Algarve, including flights, taxi transfers, hotels and all our food and drink was £730 each; a bargain!  It is relaxing to holiday somewhere where you don’t need to think about the cost.

Would I go again?  I would like to explore other areas in Portugal, away from the tourist hot spots and spring is a great time to go.  We had perfect cycling weather at the end of March, though we met a birdwatcher who said the winter had been wet and windy until mid-March.

Ray Bennett suggested I let you know about this change; take your bus pass or driving licence with you when you go to vote!