Our day off was spent seeing other sights of Evora including visiting the chapel of bones with plenty of platitudes like” look on your mortal life is very short “etc.So on that note we decided we would prefer to see the rest of the museum which included hundreds of nativity sets , really beautiful.We also rested up telling our bodies that it was time for our colds to go.

My body was not into positive thinking so Tim had a very peaceful day as I woke up not being able to talk after all my coughing, a common occurrence now if I have a cough which I attribute to 2 bouts of covid upsetting my vocal chords, ok its just old age!It wasn’t long till we seemed to be more in the countryside and with the trees, fields and farms came the hills. It was lovely to press a button so instead of slowly,painfully reaching the top of a hill doing 8kms an hour we could be going up at 16kms an hour however you were ever mindfull that the battery had only a limited range which we yet had to determine.The downhill on our e-bikes was great much more stable then my touring bike hitting 51kms an hour without a wobble,wheeeeee.

With the sunshine came the birds singing and the bugs just as I was thinking I hadn’t been hit by any bugs I get a beetle banging into my cheek and a yell from Tim. He had swiped a bee off his chest, he had unzipped his shirt, but then the bee stung his finger. First aid administered and we were on our way.

We had some lovely turn off’s into old towns ok in search of coffee or food rather than oodles of history because here everything is historic.First one was Sao Miguel de Marchada quite run down but lovely old church and easy to get out of.No coffee though.Second one was Redondo for coffee but we were on the edge of main square so we didn’t see all the cafes around the corner in the adjacent square. So this was a cafe for .locals but we got our order in ok in our limited Portuguese and ordered 2 snacks one turned out to be a mini tuna pie very tasty and all for 4 euros.Cafe inside was very attractive with walls of blue tiles and big shutters.Redondo took some getting out of with all the one way streets but there was no yelling “I told you so we should have gone that way” because I could only whisper.Lunch we detoured into Alondreol and found a restaurant that belonged to one of the local red wineries, we didn’t know how far we had to go so gave wine a miss and it was also quite warm so didn’t want to keel over.After a big breakfast and morning snack we only wanted a light lunch I ordered a veggie soup and Tim accidently ordered a pot of soup tomato based with eggs in it.This meant we both ended up eating 3 bowls of soups .Overfull tummys with soup sloshing around made it tricky to get back on our bikes.It was also a very hard town to get out of with all the one way streets, it was very quiet so Tim said quick we’ll just go down this one and we will be ok. So we cycled the wrong way down the one way street past the POLICE station!!

We cycled past plenty of trees with their cork bark stripped to make cork.Also many fields full of bulls and 2 bullrings just in our short ride. There were posters advertising an Easter Sunday bull fight one of the big festivals of the year. Bulls in Portugal don’t get killed in the ring except in special festivals with government dispensation.They are slaughtered afterwards by a butcher humanely but if they have been an amazing bull in the ring they are patched up by a vet and spend the rest of their lives making baby bulls.Moral in this to all bulls put on a good performance in the ring and you’ll have fun for the rest of your life.

Arrived in good time to Vila vicosa where Tim worked for 6 months and I would pop over and visit.His old pension was fully modernised, double glazing and freshly painted. There was a whole new housing estate and the village itself is so much smarter it was so delapidated when we were there.It was nearly 40 years ago and then there were very few street lights and communist posters everywhere.

We are staying in the convent from the 1500s so much history here. Up to 80 nuns lived here but mainly from rich families so they would bring their maids with them and have whole suites to live in.The last nun from this convent died in 1905.The convent was converted into a pousada in 1995 . Our bikes are loving it they had their own big wooden door to enter by!

lunch at the vintners restaurant where they had huge crock vats in the restaurant once used to store wine

Our accommodation-Pousada Convento

Vila Vicosa Poussada Convento