Cabo da Roca on a sunday, busy biker hangout

[Pedro]

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

[XTreme]

Great shots Pedro......what's the attraction for them to hang out there?

[Pedro]

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.
 

[Pedro]

8 minutes ago, XTreme said:

Great shots Pedro......what's the attraction for them to hang out there?

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.

[Buckster]

15 minutes ago, XTreme said:

Great shots Pedro......what's the attraction for them to hang out there?

Gingers are banned.

[boboneleg]

Superb Pedro, looks like a great day out.

I reckon the Portuguese must be like the French where it doesn’t matter what you ride, everyone’s welcome no matter what they ride

[Catteeclan]

Bloody marvellous, and look at that sunshine.

[skyrider]

2 hours ago, XTreme said:

Great shots Pedro......what's the attraction for them to hang out there?

yes i used to have an nc30 in red and black , the tiger blade looks clean too

[Pedro]

2 hours ago, boboneleg said:

Superb Pedro, looks like a great day out.

I reckon the Portuguese must be like the French where it doesn’t matter what you ride, everyone’s welcome no matter what they ride

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.