A cycling adventure

Living in Portugal since 1986, Evelyn got inspired by her Portuguese husband and his marathons that would take him along the countryside.

“I always enjoyed cycling, my husband was doing marathons, not just any marathons, trail runs. He told me how beautiful the countryside is and the places he’d been running around”, said Evelyn.

“I thought to myself, what can I do?”, she questioned.

After her husband passed away in 2014, she decided the following year that it was time to finally set off on her journey.

“I decided to cycle around Portugal. I had no idea how long and how far it would be, but he inspired me”, Evelyn told The Portugal News.

In the summer of 2015, her adventure began, accompanied by her oldest son, they took off from Peniche. “I set off without a GPS or anything, I just knew that if the sea was on the right-hand side, I was going in the right direction”, Evelyn stated.

The next day her son’s bike broke and unfortunately, he had to get a bus back home. “There was no way I was going back, I had my bike and decided to do it by myself”, she said.

Evelyn then proceeded to cycle from Vimeiro to Cascais, approximately 100 kilometres, “I figured if I could do that by myself, I could carry on”, she added.

In the winter of that same year, she suffered a biking accident that broke various bits of her leg and ankle, “I recovered as well as you can, it was actually the cycling and thought of cycling that motivated me to get better”, recalled Evelyn.

It wasn’t until the year 2020 that she set off again, after a 5-year break. “I remember first getting onto the bike and there’s this little cycle track, near Guincho, Cascais, it became my ambition to do half of that”, adding that it took a lot of confidence to get back to what she was before.

Evelyn’s oldest son intended to finish what they had started, taking a flight from Vienna especially just to accompany his mum to the end. “Because we started together, he took a flight just so that we could do the last 3 days, it just happened to be when we had that awful weather, we just had to keep going”.

In total, the journey took 55 days, with an intended 4-day maximum cycling period followed by rests at accommodations along the way. The trip in its entirety was about 2833 kilometres and 26305 meters uphill. “I wouldn’t have continued if I hadn’t enjoyed it so much”, she concluded.

The journey ended on the 30th of October 2023.

Evelyn described her experience as something worth the time and effort, while she appreciated the different sights, foods, people and discovering unknown parts of this beautiful country.

A journalist that’s always eager to learn about new things. With a passion for travel, adventure and writing about this diverse world of ours.

“Wisdom begins in wonder” -  Socrates

Kate Sreenarong