January 9, 2026
A New Way to Travel
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to wo/man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
Iris Murdoch
On Monday, we will be taking the ferry to Vancouver where our packed bikes and panniers are waiting at the home of fellow-cyclists and good friends, Donna & Werner. Not wanting to leave our car parked on the street or at the airport for 7 weeks, we were able to send everything ahead with them, and will head over as foot passengers the night before our flight to Lisbon. It feels unusually relaxed having everything ready to go. I just did one last trip to town to pick up some euros, and that's it. Ready to launch!
This will be our third winter cycling trip. The last two were to Spain - Andalucia the first year and the Ruta de la Plata north through the interior to Salamanca last year. We loved both trips which began and ended in Malaga which we also love and may return to at the end of this trip. Last year, we were away for 9 weeks; this year 7 weeks.
We are flying Air France again with a connection to Lisbon in Paris. We hope our flight from Vancouver will leave on time this year as it was delayed last year and we had a miserable 12 hour wait in the very crowded Paris airport terminal for the next flight to Malaga. It's actually a bit of a journey from Terminal 2E where were arrive to Terminal 2F involving a bus and immigration so there is little time to spare. Fingers crossed!
This cycling trip has a new twist - recently purchased folding bikes. We ran into a couple in Malaga last year who have been travelling with folding bikes for years. It got us thinking about the cost of flying our regular bikes over when folding bikes can be checked as regular luggage, and the difficulties we have occasionally had with public transport. We know there are other folding bike travellers on this site who have travelled through many countries on their folding bikes, so we are not pioneers in this at all, just a little late to the party!
So when we returned from Spain, we did some research and decided on the mid-range Tern bikes made in Taiwan. We were able to buy them in Vancouver and had been riding them comfortably ever since with Jim doing two fully loaded pannier trips this summer on his. We have exchanged our two rear panniers for smaller ones like our front ones but that’s about the only renovation to our packing needed. We bought travel bags for them and Jim packed foam around any vulnerable parts. Putting them together on arrival will just involve unpacking and unfolding them, unlike the time spent on our regular bikes.
We have three nights accommodation initially booked in Lisbon at York House Lisboa Hotel but can stay longer if we want. from there, depending on the weather, we may go north to Porto or south along the coast, into the central Alentejo which sounds like good cycling and then south again to the Algarve and along that coast to the Spanish border and possibly back into Spain. Our general route is indicated on the map below. That's about as specific as we intend to get at this point. Jim has been researching routes, we have lots of navigation technology and two good books on cycling routes in Portugal so we will make decisions as we go. So that's the plan as it stands now. Stay tuned for more as we head out to see beautiful Portugal in the "Folden-age of Travel"!
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