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This is the story of two events that came together, in a happy, match on the first days of January 2023: I turned 50 and did my first Moto tour! The idea to combine the 2 started a couple of months ago, when my friend Barbara said she would love to come over from the UK for my birthday, I immediately thought it would be great to do a test run of my Motor tours and organise the very first one! She was up for being a guinea-pig and it was decided to start in Lisbon and end in Faro, to be even more special and try to find the better weather! As it happens, December was full of work and stress and by the time I picked her up from Lisbon Airport on a dark and gloomy evening of January, my head was in bits and I felt like I had been run over by a train!! 3 days before “launch” and I hadn’t organised a thing, not even dog seating so we could actually go away without the dogs! I motivated myself somehow and called the Bike rental company the day Barbara landed and secured a bike from this lovely guy that laughed at how short the short notice was! Hey-ho, someone with a good sense of humour is always a blessing!! He was amazing, bringing the bike to us and collecting it from us in Algarve, offering for us to use it more days free of charge if we wanted saying January is slow for his business, make the most of it, he said! The company is MOTORENTOUR - Motorcycle Rental & Tours and I highly recommend it. We will work together in my business endeavour @Turtle_Mototours, a great partner to have. So we had a bike, check, I then booked the Hotel, check, and after that got a dog sitter, with even shorter notice, to look after the pooches, everything checked!! NOTE: Thank you @trustedhousesitters for being the best thing ever when it comes to pet sitting while we go on holiday. And on the 7th of January, we were ready to go but not before I had to see a doggie with an inflamed eye on a last minute call... because I cannot say no and because I am a one woman band and have to work on all fronts. The weather had been great the days leading up to our trip, only somehow it turned spectacularly on a downward spiral and we set off under all sorts of warnings, of all colours and descriptions and we sure got it!! Fully kitted up in several layers of water proofs, we used up all my extensive gear resources between us, and being made of stern stuff, we faced the big storm, with its heavy winds and lashes of sideways rain, the rivers of water on the motorway and the sliding drains across it, Barbara on the rented Benelli TRX 500 with its 45 HP and me on the solid Speed Triple with Michelin 2CT Sports tyres. The tyres were the least of my worries, Michelin does rain like no other, even Cup tyres stick somehow (!), my issue was the darkness, seeing I totally forgot to put the clear visor on..., not only IT IS clear, dahhh, but also has a pin lock, very useful in damp conditions and it was damp! Anyway, after 1 hour and a half of rain pounding our spirits, undeterred as they were, we were in need of refreshments and something nice in our bellies. The service station toilets had Dyson hand dryers and we took great advantage of those magical machines as much as possible, warming up our hands and drying the gloves insides. This is me next to the Dyson feeling delight to be out on the bike with my best friend!! I really was!! We hung our jackets on the chairs and by the end of lunch I am sure some ducklings could have swam in the puddle under the chair!!! We got a break in the weather after refuelling our stomachs, the rest of the afternoon, dark as it was ( although it could have been my visor!!), the weather relented a little and we reached the winery estate safe and sound and with just the odd spot of rain. Its a place I absolutely love, those of you that follow mine and @pedros reports, have seen it before, a few years back I made a video there for your annoyance/entertainment! Its called Herdade do Sobroso, a very nice hotel, in a traditional Alentejo farm house and the wine they make there is absolutely divine. The food is off the scale delicious! The room had underfloor heating, so we spread our gear on the floor, taking advantage of some serious hot spots and the next day there was no water in sight!! The Dinner was great!! Nothing like overcoming difficult conditions to make us feel superhuman and chuffed with ourselves! Plus a bottle of gorgeous wine also helps! They brought us the starters, just little things they said… in reality that could have been the meal already! Wonderful scramble eggs with wild asparagus, grilled cheese in a coquette, mini chicken pies and tempura prawns were “the little things” before the main meal. For me came a soup made from a fish that is a “cousin” of the shark, delish, and for Barbara pork cheeks, something her grandmother used to cook, but somehow those survivors of WW II rationing didn’t pass-on the knowledge of using and cooking every scrap of food and modern Britain as no idea what a pork cheek is or how it tastes, unless its in a sausage! Barbara, being a lady from Cheshire and farming background, loved it!!! #noveganshere Dessert were 2 deceivingly small cakes, specialities developed in Convents where bored Nuns converted their lust into the sweetest of sweets using kilos of sugar, eggs and almonds. Not for the faint hearted ( or diabetic!), on a normal day not ideal after such a meal, but in that setting, with that wine and after the giddiness of the day, another 1000 calories was not going to harm anyone! OK, maybe the liver got slightly harmed… That house is, for me, the perfect kind of home. The one story building, with high ceilings, showing the inside of the roof and its wooden beams, the enormous fireplace, made that way to smoke the chouricos and salamis in the olden days, now burning the most lovely fire and giving us a hug of warmth and comfort that only a real log fire on a stormy night can give. The staff did a great job of keeping us topped up while we melted into the sofas and I felt like my Grandmother was going to pop round the corner at any given moment, that's how much I felt at home! Dolce far niente… We woke up on the day of my birthday and, unlike what is normal on my birthday, it was very gloomy and actually raining! It never rains on my birthday!! On arrival the day before, we had encountered the owner of the Estate and on knowing of my special birthday, he requested us to stay fora birthday lunch and kindly offered me a bottle of bubbly, so we were already half way to staying... Again this place wraps itself around me like a snake and enchants me to stay!! We looked at the sky, not looking good… We then headed to the breakfast table and it didn't take us long ( not even 5 minutes!) to decide we would have the lunch, the bubbles, the afternoon tea and also the diner!! We were definitely staying another night and celebrate my birthday in style by doing nothing! Not something that comes natural to me, but it was exactly what was needed and I accept, there is something very nice in the Dolce far niente way of life, must practise it more. Breakfast was delicious and very well presented! After breakfast we had a leisurely stroll around the house, not straying to far, not wanting to exhaust ourselves!! Lunch was wild boar roast with vegetables and migas, a unique speciality of this region that I will refrain myself from explain, it needs a post of its own!! What followed next was the loveliest of surprises, organised in secrecy by the two best people in my life, Barbara and @Pedro. They colluded together to organise a birthday cake, with candles (!!) and the staff made a chorus of 2 singing the happy birthday song! I was beyond embarrassed and also very grateful for all the thought and care they had put into the whole thing. As birthdays go, it is very hard to have a better one. We proceed to eat the cake and drink the sparkling wine all afternoon, next to the fire, dragging ourselves for a little walk before dinner to say hello to the bikes and laugh at everything, funny or not so funny, in a way that only a whole bottle of bubbles can do! Especially considering Barbara actually paid a lot of money to rent the bike and we did around 250 kms in total so far! We laughed at this realisation and our motorcycling achievement, the best thing for it really! They had promised us a light meal for dinner, after 24 hours of solid eating and drinking, and one might say it was… lighter…fair enough! Delicious yet again and followed by fruit, not the infamous Catholic cakes intended to make celibacy a little more bearable! Morning came with heavy rain but the Weather App was adamant that it would clear after 10am, so we took our time with the great breakfast, ordering scrambled eggs and bacon and filling ourselves with bread with tomato jam, very traditional in the South of Portugal, and more orange cake, my absolute favourite. We somehow managed to get into our trousers, a difficult endeavour I have to say… packed, loaded the bikes and, as forecasted, blue sky forced its way between the dark clouds and we set off totally and utterly like new people, feeling relaxed and years younger, , which in my case, was a great way to start a new year, a new decade even!!! We were going direction South, to Algarve, searching for its famous Winter warmth, soft light and general pleasantness all round. There is a reason Brits have been moving there since the 60s, following Cliff Richard, the very first to buy a Villa and spend Winter enjoying the delights of this stretch of land, many times more akin with the other side of the Water in its mannerisms, architecture and personality then with the Continent it is solidly attached to. You can feel Northern Africa there, the sand is different, the houses have flat roofs, the people are darker and even after almost 8 centuries of Christianity, you can easily confuse the typical Algarve chimney with a minaret from a mosque. Algarve comes from Al Garbe, meaning Occidental, because it was the Westerly part of the Al Andalus, the moor Kingdom in the South of the Iberia peninsula. It has a geographic border with the rest of Portugal, 2 ridges of mountainous terrain that made it hard to capture from the moors and give it a distinct ambience, so marked that until Portugal become a Republic in 1910, it was always referred to as “The Kingdom of Algarve”, so the Portuguese Kings were titled as “King of Portugal and the Algarve”. Never had a King of its own, but throughout the centuries it always enjoyed a deference no other part of Portugal had, not even Lisbon! Algarve is also defined geographically by water, in the East the River Guadiana that separates it from Spain, in the South and West the Atlantic Ocean in all its force and glory. While the East side of Algarve is mellow and romantic like the River Guadiana, a strong favourite of the Arab Poets that populated Al Andalus before it was destroyed by the Christian Conquest, the West is Wild, windy, salty and unforgiving. Sagres, where the land ends and the Sea begins, the most Westerly point in Europe, could not be more fierce and violent when the Gods of the Sea so decide, a magical place with the always enchanting and alluring energy of all “finis terra” locations. Algarve is by no means my favourite part of the small country that is “Portucale”, but it's aloof nature and the influence of a culture I like to study and understand, fascinates me. Unfortunately it's become a one trick pony to the majority of visitors that only do the beach, the bars and the hangover, overlooking its amazing history, visible in its castles and roman ruins and in the writing of erudite moors that studied the stars from their Sheikh Palaces, where they also wrote beautiful poetry. In fairness, the beaches are the best and we enjoyed good walks on them on our last day! @Pedro has a specific point on the road entering Algarve via the mountains where he feels like Africa is calling and the wind feels warmer and everything gets better! For us it was a little like that too, we travelled down avoiding the majority of the rain, going between downpours and drying out pretty fast and once over the ridge, indeed the temperature went up and the rain stopped, letting us enjoy the views and taste the Sea in our mouth even if we could not see it yet! The lovely people at the Wine Estate made us a “pack lunch” each and we stopped at the entrance to Algarve to eat and relax a little before heading to Triumph Algarve to look for some gloves for Barbara. Unfortunately when we got there it was closed, so we proceeded to meet a friend of mine that has moved to Algarve and kindly invited us to stay at her house. For those of you that do Golf, we stayed right next to ( inside even…) one of the most famous Golf Courts in the World! Famous why, you may ask?! Because it's on the cliff and one can Golf right to the edge and if one misses the putt, the ball either lands on the beach 30 metres below or it actually goes in the Sea! I find that particularly funny!! As nice as it is to enjoy a day in a super luxurious place, with the greenest of greens around you wherever you look, it's very “resortie”, not very genuine and hard to walk a dog when they keep knicking the golfers balls from the Ts or jumping in the Golf Course manicured ponds and lakes!! Funny, but not for long, those golfing guys get very angry ( look at Trump!) and they have weapons in the Golf bags and buggies to chase us!!! The last thing we did together was to visit the beach in Faro, where I had been previously with Pedro and once at the famous motorcycle meet that happens every year around June/July time. Barbara also became a little in love with Algarve and must have really missed it, flying home from Faro to a very cold and snowy Manchester!! The 2 of us have been friends for 21 years, we have shared so many amazing motorcycle trips together and also not so amazing life events, we can talk non stop for hours and now that we travel with intercoms, the chat can continue on our travels, amusing on the onlookers when 2 women go past gesticulating while riding a motorcycle!! We said goodbye at the airport and 1 hour later her rented bike was collected and thus ended my 1st moto tour!! It was a test run of the bike rental, the hotel booking and the invoice making, and it all went really well, so I am a lot more confident Turtle Mototours will kick off in 2023 and will be successful! I stayed in Algarve for another night and the next day set off relatively early with the intention of reaching Estremoz!! I have a lot of roots in this town, but more than that, I have a 2nd family as well. Before moving to the UK it was where I settled working in farm practice with a great vet that was already 76 years old when I started working with him! He retired at 92 and now, carrying 98 years on his shoulders, he is still as mentally sharp as ever and a joy to be with. I visit as much as I can, every minute counts when the journey has been that long… In 1999, when I started my life there, I just fitted in like a jigsaw piece that was missing and in spite of wandering off to the lands of Northern Europe and the years that have passed, it's still the same and so I just turn up unannounced and there is always a seat at the table and a bed ready to sleep in. Life is good to me!!! Had to fill up before starting the day and the Hipster in me actually asked the owner of this beauty if wanted to swap!! Luckily he decline saying his drivers licence is only up to 50cc!! To reach Estremoz was a full day's riding, all little roads over the mountains in Algarve first and they are stunning at the moment!! Again there were some serious showers that gave me a good soaking because I had no waterproofs determined as I was my optimism would beat the rain and it did!!! After 2pm no more rain, my non waterproof clothing dried out and I was happy! And hungry!! Decided to do a Pedro and go into a little village looking for some food and BUM! Found a cool, mega traditional restaurant. I went in and there was that moment of a Cowboy movie when the stranger walks in the Saloon and everyone goes quiet and stares at the unknown character standing at the bar!! In my case the staring is more intense given I am a woman, alone, ON A MOTORCYCLE!! This stuff doesn't happen in these parts, where men are men and women are, mainly, in the kitchen!! It's the interior and south, a very small village and like anywhere, a smile goes a long way, so I smile and it's all good. Turns out the owner also has a Triumph and, inevitably, bikes brought us together and we discussed motorcycling and motorcycles for a while. The food was simple, but gorgeously home made! This is a land I know well and I absolutely love! I even start talking with their accent without realising it, which used to leave Pedro, and others, a bit baffled, but, my roots are in Alentejo, it's like I go back in time!. So after smiling and asking for my food, I sat down next to 2 old men and we talked about sheep and cows and crops, because deep inside I am a countryside lass!! After, 2 doggies came, an 18 year old, must be tough as old boots to survive so long in a place no one will ever take her to a vet (!) and after that, a 1 year old gorgeous Collie, with whom I shared some food and that for sure had fleas… Made me think next time I will take a vet kit with me! That was one of the most beautiful afternoons riding I have ever had. The fields are so, so beautiful… Thanks to the miraculous amount of water that has blessed this land of constant drought, the fields are green with grass and peppered with yellow, purple and white from little flowers blooming, a little early in fairness, making the whole thing look like Turner painted it himself!! No one does countryside like Turner, fact! The funny moment of the afternoon, stupidly I did not stop to photograph, was finding a game of Cricket in the middle of a small village buried in the Portuguese deep South! I almost fell off the motorcycle in amazement!! And laughing! Good or bad, not sure yet, we now have in Portugal a lot of intensive production of vegetables in greenhouses. In the South some towns, previously empty and abandoned, have found a new life with this industry and the manual labourers it hires. Well, I hope they hire and pay them, not enslave like in other parts of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly in Spain!! They come and they settle and they play cricket, which is so extraordinary and nice!! These are people from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South East Asia and I have nothing but respect for them and for the, mainly very old, locals that were sitting around the ex-football field watching this impromptu game of an incomprehensible sport for anyone in the World other than British or Countries where Britain left a flag! At this point I was racing the Sun, trying to arrive before it set, because after that my visor is woefully inadequate and it goes bloody cold!! For that reason there are no pictures to show you and no amount of words will ever transmit the beauty of a January evening and its soft light illuminating the mountain I had to cross, bringing cork trees alive in oranges and greys and kissing the earth goodnight till the following day. I do have some photos of the next morning on my way home for your enjoyment! Sometimes all we need is a friend; Sometimes all we need is a change of scenery and a challenge; Sometimes all we need is to do nothing for a day; Sometimes all we need is love and kindness; Sometimes all we need is a great day-ride alone; And sometimes life gives you all of the above in 5 days!!! Thank you for reading.

Say goodbye to ten Euros and crank the heating up. No time to save money in both of your conditions. I’m having some wine, and having roast beef for dinner. Tomorrow I ride!!!!

Well, that was just fucking stupid Drove up the Black Mountain to get some scenery shots, it was full of wankers everywhere blocking the roads so they could play in the snow, soooo I had an idea. "I know" I though to myself, "I'll head up Betws Mountain, that won't be busy", I know a short cut through route I used to take on the dirt bikes when I came off Rhiwfawr and headede up Baran Mountain. so off I set, I very quickly realised it may not have been the best idea I ever had, especially in my Shitroen C3, asx the first obstacle I remembered I always encountered on route was a sheet of ice across that always forms when it's cold, sod that though I know it well enough to get a sensible speed up and skaet over it, job done, this is a very trick and tight single track road with just enough room for one car and in places it has sheer drops one one side and ditches the other, but persist I did, please with myself at getting up some of the snow and ice covered inclines and round some of the 180 tight hill turns on single tracks, I was just 5 minutes from destination when I encountered a long steep hill so I got as much speed as I could muster trying my best to not let the wheels spin but alas half way up it just wouldn't grip any more, FUCK, I had come down similar sloaps to get where I was, I managed to very gingerly revers down the frozen slope and got to a point that was a tiny bit wider but not really enough to turn in, I managed it anyway by reversing the rear end as much as I could up a bank but then had to gather grit from the river in the small valley in front of the car placed the grit in front of my front wheels (its a front wheel drive POS), hit the accelerator so the front end slid round to the right rather than going off down the valley and into the river, whooo hoo, job down, continued back on the road I came down juft to find another hill too steep to ascend, FUCK again, nobody here no phone signal. I began to liitterally scrape the tarmac with a windscreen ice scraper and only had about 200m of it to clear LOL, fortunately before done some other cars got stuck too further down so we all chipped in and got one car up at a time, one of them had been further along the route all night (twat), eventually got home, frozen hands and not one fucking picture. Here's the route, have a ball and do a street view imagining it covered in frozen snow and ice GPS co-ords for start 51.761599, -3.880478 GPS co-ords for stuck point 51.765916, -3.927134

Look at these nutters ............

I know that when he isn't coughing his spuds up Pete likes an abandoned building. This is a house in Tedder Avenue in Germany where I lived as a small child. Despite leaving it when I was 5, I remember the rough layout, the attic and definitely the basement. My baby brother used to dangle down in one of those boingey baby harnesses from the front room/hall door frame, I called it his Scottish dancing. My Mum used to tell me that once when she had a row with my Dad she locked the door of the cellar whilst he was down there. When she calmed down and reopened it a few hours later she found him sitting in a comfy arm chair, drinking a bottle of beer and reading a book, bothered was he not!

Yes he was fatter and less handsome than me LOL

When my son did his work experience in some posh restaurant he was given a bucket of pigs' cheeks, still with eyes in, to deal with. He said the eyelids were opening and closing like they were looking at him as he picked them up or moved them about to work on. They were a cheap ingredient that made something really tasty he said. He thinks they got him on that to see if he'd run for the door. He went on to cook for a living for a few years afterwards so it didn't turn him off.

I felt a bit better today so we went for a walk down to the river ...................

Somewhere in Portugal there is a giraffe with a guilty secret.

I felt the same with mine but if the weather was good i would have forced myself out for the TRF charismas ride as there were plenty there to carry my body back to the van

Quit bitchin' - that's our high here today

Have you seen Rentokil are bringing in facial recognition for rats?! The rat surveillance will be able to tell if it’s the same rat coming back that’s causing damage and know where which rats are feeding and what place in a building they’re coming from because not all rats cause problems and they can eliminate the trouble maker rats first!

The plan was to walk across the sand bank and around the other side of the small etang. The only problem was that it was blowing a hoolie and the wind was not only biting, but was whipping the sand up like a sand blaster, so we bottled it and walked back to the car to have a hot cup of coffee!

I find it quite sad as we don't have any problems like that here although i wish those rules applied to some people LOL, I do understand as we do have animals that are pests and are legal to shoot and have seen first hand how people react that are totally disconnected from reality, i used to shoot rats years ago up the lane from my house on the weekends for the guys that ran the allotments there, i killed more than a dozen every weekend for months and they would still keep coming, but people couldn't see them as a problem so killing something like a big cat would drive them crazy.

Not for sport - to keep them from attacking livestock and pets mostly. They'll attack humans as well. We've had a huge spike in the number of attacks around here lately. I see their tracks in the snow in my yard all the time - hate like Hell to meet up with one in the yard some night.

Thank you for that ride report Sofia, your beautifully crafted words made me feel like i was there. Some of those places look like a joy to stay in if you like a bit of good food and wine.

Local guy shot and killed a cat in our area. He's a 6'5" tall former football player for the Denver Broncos; so that's a big cat!

Yes, no wonder they’re extint!

You fucked that place up good and proper then Yen?

These are from Thursday night, but it was pretty much gone by the morning. Caused quite a stir here though!

I'm sure that was a stunt double in his aerial bike mounting video though.

Do you kill them for sport, or was he threatening his place? Can't help but not like to see an animal like that shot.

I've been on adv rider for 20 years and probably Horizons as well - I'll try to log in as you did - if I can - and see. Doubt I ever posted there though. edit: Almost 20 years - a few months to go . 3 whole posts too!

Lovely to see you out having fun on the bike. I might venture to those parts tomorrow and Monday myself.

Because I have no personal computer at the moment, only my work one, I am missing loads of bike stuff short cuts and that was one of them, I'd forgotten all about it. So I googled it, got my user name wrong a few times then managed to log in. 21 years and 40 weeks since I joined, probably 20 years since I posted anything.

Why did he shoot it ?

Any port in a storm!

Maybe! Or its a very "artistic" taxidermy artist!! game trophies are not my thing, but they have a natural reserve at the Estate, with African antelope and there is a possibility it is not a deer but another cleft hoof animal... it was dark and I had a lot of wine, can't be certain!! Now that you mention it, it's a very long neck!! I never notice...

Had a better nights sleep last night, and apart from one of two bouts of hard coughing I haven't been too bad. My ribs and back are still painful because of the hard coughing, but the anti-inflammatories are helping a bit. This has been far worse than Covid, or any bout of flu I've ever had, so what the hell is it exactly?

Tuna steak with fried potatoes and carrot/date/almond salad with orange juice and spice dressing. It was a very nice lunch

He might flounce.

Yes you tell him never did a post get me so exited and disappointed at the same time

Probably all covered in suspicious whitetish liquid...

You sick bastard...

No, they're ok