"We have two power bars, 68 miles to cycle, it's raining and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it"

We fought the law and, as the Clash said in their 1979 seminal song, "The law won". To clarify, we tried cycling across a bridge that was part of a highway/motorway/autoroute and as we we got to the halfway point (having had several vehicles toot their horns at us in dissaproval) we heard a Police siren behind us. Being pulled over by a Police car whilst one is cycling at approximately 4mph lacks some of the adrenaline-induced fear displayed in Hollywood movies, instead it makes one feel slightly ridiculous. The two Portuguese Policemen seemed slightly incredulous to find us pootling along the hard shoulder, oblivious to all the lorries zooming past us at 120kmph. One of them said to me: "We have to fine you, both of you" to which I replied with a slight whimper: "But we're doing this for charity....". He then told me he was joking, ah, the Portuguese sense of humour! They then escorted us off the bridge (a real Police escort!) and gave us directions to get back on the minor roads.

Our second road incident that day came when a previously quiet, little road suddenly morphed into a major four-lane highway, in the space of a few hundred metres. Where we had just been cruising along admiring the Atlantic coastal scenery, we found ourselves dodging traffic which was overtaking us at incredible speeds from both sides and it was extremely scary. I couldn't believe how the road had just changed with no warning. It was the first and only time so far on this trip when I thought we may both be in genuine danger of becoming roadkill. As I made the decision to get the heck off the road, a lorry undertook me at high speed, I accidentally knocked into Zeina with my bike as a result and she wobbled in the path of an oncoming truck (sorry Gaby!), it was pretty terrifying. The only way off the road was to physically lift our bikes over a divider onto a disused piece of road, thankfully free of traffic. Believe me, sounds simple right? Well our bikes weight over 40kg when fully loaded and dead-lifting them over a concrete divider with traffic whizzing past our backs proved a bit of a challenge!

We had our first major bit of good luck of the day when we arrived in Porto and were helped into the city centre by a young man called David (Michaelangelo's David actually as he was a bit like Derek Zoolander, as in "really, really, really Good-looking"), David was a friendly and very helpful young local guy on a mountain bike who had seen us looking a bit confused about which way to head and offered to take us into the Downtown area. He proceeded to cycle with us for over a mile,leading us through the busy city streets and taking us all the way to the very centre of Porto. We thanked him profusely for his kindness and we also tried to buy him a beer, but he told us he didn't drink and left us with a smile and took off back to whence he came. A top bloke and a lovely introduction to the city! We then looked aorund for a Pension or some such as we decided to treat ourselves to a room after three straight weeks of camping and putting up our tent to sleep on the floor every night (see video). We are delighted to be in Portugal, the weather has been great, the coastal roads are flat and the people we've met are really friendly and helpful. Added to that, food is ridiculously cheap and tasty and it just feels like a good place to be after the mountains of northern Spain.