Biking Around In Cascais

8.30am and Vincent had us up scrubbing the decks. Ha ha ha! Joke! 11.30 we got up that morning. Eleven-thirty! Mind you, we had got back really late and had a lot of marina fences and gates to climb over because we only had one entry card amongst all of us, which we'd left on board Brigand in the marina. Even so, an eleven thirty wake up call was fair enough since yesterday had been a long day - 24 hours of travelling and drinking!

Despite my joke about not halving to scrub the decks at 8.30 we did set to and do some work. Brigand did seem (smell) like it had not been looked after properly (the water from the tanks tasted like wee), so I attacked the galley with a cleaner and cloth. I just can’t keep away from the kitchen, can I?











In the afternoon the four crew walked into Cascais and got our hands on some municipal bikes (one gear, with baskets, no grip) for a couple of hours, free of charge. Johnny and Dave took us out of town and down onto the harbour wall, which ran all round Cascais and back to Lisbon. With a high tide and strong winds the cycle ride became a very wet fairground ride as huge waves battered the sea walls, splashing up to 20ft high and spraying anyone in its path. Like four hung-over pratts on bikes. The trick was all about timing, something that Tim didn’t have, unfortunately for him and his clothes. Getting soaked by one wave he had the bright idea of stopping to check his wallet.......and a second 20ft wave completed his soaking, much to the amusement of everyone. Except Tim. Johnny and Dave then cycled off down to the end of a low pier to play chicken with some very big waves. Fortunately I caught this on camera....check the picture out, it’s a classic.













In the evening we hit the cinema to watch Kill Bill, which was all very well and good except half the film was in Japanese, which was subtitled in Portuguese.