We awoke to Tim coughing and I feeling more coldified. At this point, we should have gone back to bed, but we didn’t, a big mistake. Packing bags onto bikes was going well until I couldn’t find my bungee to secure my backpack. A trip back to our room revealed it hiding by the bin; it didn’t want to go out, either. It was drizzling, but a pleasant 12C.

Off we went out of town and after 7kms clouds had cleared and drizzle stopped.I pulled over in a bus bay to take my rain coat off and then there was an expletive from Tim his chain was stuck and he couldn’t pedal.The chain was well and truly jammed tight. We couldn’t free it all.I phoned the bike rental company who gave us various strategies.Eventually it was decided that we would have to break the chain and put a new link in.It was then we realised when you hire a rental bike you get no support.Although I’d bought a local sim card for an old phone for making calls it wasn’t enough as they wanted a video of what had happened.Why did I bother with a local sim I ask myself? Then I had to activate my roaming to send a video.

So there we were by the roadside with noisy traffic going by for 2 hours trying to watch u-tube videos on how to break a chain apart and yes the tool kit that they supplied did have a chain breaker in!Tim’s knees didn’t allow him to sit on the ground that long so my hands were covered in oil.Having managed to break the chain, the pin of the chain breaker got stuck, much wiggling and sacrificing a sock to get a better grip it became free.Fortunately a cyclist passing stopped and said the chain might have had it and there was a good bike shop back in Vendas Novas where we had just come from.This conversation was a lengthy process as it was done by Google translate.We had a few more calls with the bike hire shop BikeIberia who said it was very easy to put a new link in, however we still couldn’t break the other half of the link which we had split.At this point we decided we really didn’t want to learn bicycle mechanics any more.

Tim said he would walk and free wheel the bike back now the chain was off. I cycled back to the hotel asked if we could stay another night , dropped my luggage off and cycled to the bike shop.Fortunately the owner spoke English but he was going for lunch at 1pm and it was 1220pm.He did suggest if we had any long ties I could tow Tim back fortunately we didn’t have to attempt that because as I left town Tim was arriving.Apparently it was more downhill on the way back so Tim free-wheeling most of the way.It was back to the bike shop quickly before the owner disappeared on his 3 hour lunch break!

It turned out when Tim had put his long bulky panniers on he had pushed the shift changer out hence the chain had got jammed. He suggested changing the chain to an ebike chain so it would be less likely to jam which we did. The derailleur had also got bent which he sorted out. So if we had continued on utube trying to fix all those problems I guess we would still be by the roadside.

Will we get to Spain one wonders at this rate. Anyway the local Chinese restauranteur was happy to see us again!IOur hotel had also asked if we needed help so all good!

TELE BIKE -VENDAS NOVAS 934 231 976 if you ever need a bike repair shop!