PEDALING PORTUGAL

SUDDENLY IT FELT AS IF WE HAD REACHED THE END of the world. Rugged cliffs fell away into an unforgiving sea that churned and frothed, throwing a salty mist high into the air, filling our nostrils with the fresh smell of the world below us.

We lay our bikes down and stand gazing out to sea, minds full of visions of greater journeys still to come, of new frontiers to be explored, just as Henry the Navigator must have done so at this exact spot all of those years ago.

In all of the years that I have been cycling and exploring the world Portugal has, for reasons unknown, never registered much interest for me, which would explain my initial skepticism when my friend Axel proposed the idea of a trip there to me over coffee on a dreary grey day in Taipei.

I was on the verge of turning the offer down when he reminded me that at least the weather would be better there in December than it would be in Wales, where I live with my wife and two young children. He had a point,