Categoria / Category Cycling tour

Carnival 2018: cycling and paddling

After having enjoyed a few days of pre-carnival in Salvador – Palhaços in Rio Vermelho, De Hoje a 8 with the friends of Canoa Bahia and Gravata Doida in Santo Antônio – we decided to run away from the city on carnival days. The selected place was Imbassaí. It is near by, there was not much traffic and is an escape into nature. We rented a cottage away from the center of the beach and with a lovely pool surrounded by green and birds.

The first day was relaxing, just reading on the beach and swimming pool. I, finished reading “Cem Dias Entre Ceu e Mar” by Amyr Klink and Marcelo read “Os Robôs Vão Roubar Seu Trabalho, Mas Tudo Bem” by Federico Pistono. On the second day, we decided to move our bodies and pedal to Praia do Forte. We woke up late, so we left at the worst time, 10.30am in the morning. It was a 29km round trip. The road was very busy, cars on both sides all the time.  It was a relief to arrive at Praia do Forte, to have a secon...

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Cycling trip: Itaparica – Salinas da Margarida

  • 1st day: Bom Despacho – Salinas da Margarida 61 km
  • 2nd day: Salinas da Margarida – Barra do Paraguaçu 36.58 km gpx

Since I really enjoyed the experience of the Mangue Seco – Praia do Forte trip organized by Lúcia Saraiva from Amigos de Bike, I decided to take another cycle tour with them, this time it was Itaparica and Salinas da Margarida. We woke up very early to catch the first ferry to Itaparica. We arrived in Bom Despacho and had a break for a breakfast with orange juice and hot sandwich. Right after, we faced the road.

We went by the shoulder of the road BA01, I found it comfortable to pedal. Every time there was a little hill, I was left behind. Everyone passed me and they went ahead. Lucia selected a gentleman from the group to accompany me, not leave me alone behind. Unfortunately, it is dangerous for a woman to be alone on the bike in these areas… As soon as we cross the Funil Bridge back to the mainland, we stop to eat lambretas, a typical dish of the region...

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Cycling: Mangue Seco – Praia do Forte

  • 1st day: Mangue Seco – Sítio do Conde 52.51 km
  • 2nd day: Sítio do Conde – Baixio 32.69 km
  • 3rd day: Baixio – Porto de Sauipe 40.93 km
  • 4th day: Porto de Sauipe – Praia do Forte 25.18 km
    Download here the gpx of this trip

Cicloturismo: Mangue Seco – Praia do Forte from Karla Brunet on Vimeo.

I had already seen photos from this cycle trip organized by Lucia Saraiva (Amigos de Bike) and I was very interested. This year, luckily, I was able to go. I loved the idea that it would be 4 days of cycling on the sand at low tide. It reminded me of my teenager years when I would go with my “Brisa” from Capão da Canoa to Capão Novo, alone on the beach (about 25/30km in total). My boyfriend would meet me there for a snack and I go back down on the road.

In this edition of 2016, we were a small group of 4 cyclists (Lucia, Dora, Paulo and me), plus Zena who was our support car and the official photographer. The cycling was beautiful, miles and miles only of sand and sea. Every day, we had to cross...

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Cycling: Uithoorn – Amsterdam

Route of the 6th day: Total km/day: 32.48 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel near the airport

  • It was our last day of the cycling trip. Well, my father’s last day, I would still have many days of cycling through the Netherlands and Germany until I arrived in Strasbourg, France.
  • The road was calm. It was Sunday morning and the road not crowed with cyclists going to work or school. We passed by training cyclists, with race bikes.
  • We stopped at the airport hotel to leave our bags, check in and headed for the city center. There, we returned my father’s rental bike and left mine in a public parking lot. It gave me a little pain in the belly to leave her there alone in the crowd of bicycles for a week
  • Our bike trip ended well, we had no accidents, nor did the bikes got damaged, no flat tire, everything went really well. Relief.

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Do hotel onde estávamos em Uithoorn, podia-se ver (e ouvir) a passagens dos aviões chegando no aeroporto de A...

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Cycling: Gouda – Uithoorn

Route of the 5th day: Gouda – Total km/day: 46.04 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel by the Zijdelmeer lake

  • We had a good part of the trip on the countryside, we just stopped to eat some nuts and drink water in a park.
  • This time I peed on the road. Since it didn’t stop coming people from all directions, I made a “v” with the bikes and asked my father to stand closing the triangle.
  • We got a bit lost again because they changed the number 90 of the routes… It was visible the change, they just pasted a new number on the sign. We went on and it was wrong. As I mistrusted the way and checked the GPS. So we were able to get back on track with no major laps.
  • After that, part of the course was on the edge of the Kromme Mijdrecht river and Amstel river. Beautiful and peaceful. There were not as many people on the bike path as in previous days.
  • The arrival was super relaxing, the hotel was on the edge of Lake Zijdelmeer. It was a beautiful late afternoon.

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No dia seguinte, estávamos...

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Cycling: Delft – Gouda

kb_eu16bike_0890aRoute of 4th day: Delft – Zoetermeer – GoudaTotal km/day: 41.56 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel

  • We got lost at Zoetermeer’s exit, there was no or we didn’t see one of the signs at a road junction. I really wanted to go to the bathroom but there was no toilets around. I even knocked on a house and asked if there was a bathroom nearby, they told me to go to the train station. When he got there, there was nothing, no attendant, no bathroom. As it was all very populated and without an open filed, only beautiful houses with perfect patios, I had nowhere to pee … It was stressful, simple things of life can be stressful. The relief was when we arrived in a village that did have a bar with a bathroom. Before I had stopped at a bakery and said that the bathroom was only for employees …
  • I got scared at one of the junctions on the road, I almost got hit by a car. I stopped on a traffic light and had no angle to see the green or red. My father, who was behind me, said to go and I went but a c...
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Cycling: Leiden – Delft

Route of the 3rd day : Leiden – Total km/day: 38.19 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: private room at Hélène’s (Vrienden op de Fiets) place
Link to trip map: http://u.osmfr.org/m/93840/

  • Our third day of cycling began being driven by Ap (host in Leiden) to leave the city. He kindly guided us to the first point of the route.
  • As I love the sea, I took the advice of our hosts and rode through the dunes to the North Sea and from there we went to The Hague.
  • In Delft, we stayed right on the historic center. In market in the central square I ate my first herring of the trip. As always, I loved it. My father did not even tried.
  • One of the peculiarities of Delft are the crooked buildings, falling to one side. The most impressive is one of the great central churches, it is visibly fallen to the side. We did a boat tour and the guide explained to us that the main church has already begun to fall in the construction phase. Many of these buildings have several supporting str...
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Cycling Haarlem – Leiden

Route of the 2nd day: Total km/day: 40.33 km – (gpx)
Accommodation:  Private room at  Berna Zwinkels (Vrienden op de Fiets) place
Link to trip map: http://u.osmfr.org/m/93840/

kb_eu16bike_0302Our second day:

  • As usual, we did not leave early. We left about ten o’clock and soon the rain started, I was worried about my father because his jacket did not seem to be reliable.
  • Around noon, we stopped to buy dry socks and drink a coffee.
  • We passed several flower fields, but we arrived two weeks late, all of which had already been picked. In the middle of the green, you could see one or another lost flower.
  • I wanted to get to know Keukenhof Park, but my father was already tired of the rain and preferred to move on, not go to the park. We did not know if there were flowers there, so we continued our trip to Leiden.
  • Shortly before arriving in Leiden, we stopped at a bench on the way to eat nuts and watch the cyclists passing by. We should only get to our a...
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Cycling: Amsterdam – Haarlem

Route of the 1st day: Amsterdam – Total of the day : 25 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hostel private room

Our first day of cycling started near the Amsterdam airport and the final destination would be Haarlem. Here I write are some points of the day and below it is my father’s testimony:
  • In Amsterdam, I chose a hotel close to the airport because it was easy to get out the bike bag since it had an airport transfer. And it would also be much easier for my father to go cycling straight on the road and not having the city’s bicycle traffic. This was his first bike ride, better off on a quiet road.
  • For the first two days, we strolled around the city, rented a bike for my father, and set mine up. I dismounted almost all of it to have the least risk of damaging the flight.
  • My bike got damaged, the frame tightened on the flight and did not enter the wheel. I called a mechanic I found on the internet, instead of tidying up, it spoiled more. As th...
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Berlin, street art and cycling

Sorry, this entry is only available in Português.

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