Goat goes for peasant look

In a superb day of riding to the border the Goat has gone for the peasant look after spotting an old Zamoran cap lying discarded at the roadside.

Having knocked the dust out of it he put it on and then wondered why I was riding at some distance in front of him.

Shortly afterwards an old farmer stopped his tractor to talk to us, obviously mistaking the Goat for one of his drinking mates.

He offered us a drink from the bottle of wine he was swigging as he tractored along and he was probably responsible for at least some of the squashed wildlife on offer on the road in the morning which included 2 barn owls, a fox, a lynx and a snake.

One thing that the Zamorans seem to be very proud of is their displays of junk.

A smallholding or garden without neat collections of rusting metalwork, piles of sand or other sundry building materials simply would not be allowed. One imagines that they must enter these collections in local shows from time to time to see who can win, for example, best arrangement of old hammers.

Now we are in a rather pleasant hotel in Miranda after a dramatic descent into the Douro Valley followed, of course, by the traditional monumental climb up to the town.

ROAD FATIGUE Road fatigue has now set in caused by the efforts of the day (fuelled on a lunch of peanuts and olives), the heat, which is now repressive, and by the practical difficulties of checking into a Portuguese hotel with bicycles and pannier bags and wearing shoes that are not conducive to the act of walking.

The landlady barks contradictory instructions at us in a language that neither of us understand and doesn't like the look of the Goat's passport for some reason.

And all we want to do is to wash away the grime of the day and get a cold beer.

As a result simple tasks have taken on a magnitude that would have tested NASA. I open a pannier and stare into it vacantly - not sure what to do next. Then for some reason Martin asks me how big Porto is.

"It's exactly the same size as Reading," I say and that's life on the road.

NEVER EVER LISTEN TO THE LOCALS It was a last minute decision to come to Miranda, based mainly on the recommendations of a number of inebriated Spaniards who said that Martin absolutely had to try the bacalao and french fries.

So we changed our route to cross the border further north and were assured that the run into Porto from Miranda would be flat.

Of course it turns out that we have come 25 kilometres out of our way so that the Goat can have a plate of cod and chips!

Added to that a barman's description of the road to the coast seems to be at odds with that of our Zamoran friends. "No it's not flat," he says in very good English, "There is a big, big mountain."

We should have known better.

Ever since an Irishman sent us to a hotel that was closed in 1929 back in Donegal, and his fellow countrymen directed halfway across Ireland in search of bike shops that didn't exist, the locals have been giving us duff information ranging from a little exaggeration to downright lies.

This year's prize goes to the proprietor of the bar in Arnedillo who told us that the next 15 kilometres would be flat before reaching the mountain.

About 400 metres around a bend the road soared into the Riojan sky like a startled owl and continued soaring more or less continuously for the whole of the 15kms!

DAY 7 - FUENTESAUCO, ZAMORA Fuentesauco is a beautiful place to stop. There are no tourists but the place has a vacation feel to it.

The streets are hot and sleepy and, from the rooftops of a magnificent church, sixteen storks look down on life in the plaza and clack to each other about the day's events.

In the bars there is the usual mix of locals, mostly Zamorans with a couple of Catalonians and a bloke from Argentina as well. One of the Catalonians hawks around a plastic bag containing a splendid collection of CDs that he has obtained free from the Sunday papers.

He's not selling them, he just displays them to anyone who is interested. Nobody is.

The Argentinian, Carlos, who was born in Cordoba (the birthplace of Che Guevara), owns a bar in the square and a couple of the Zamorans take us there in the mistaken belief that we want to reminisce about the "hand of God" incident when Argentina knocked England out of the World Cup.

As it happens we had already been there a bit earlier.

"It's our local," explains the Goat as he does an impersonation of Peter Shilton and Diego Maradona and Carlos waves around his Boca Juniors flag.