4th October 2004. Monchique, the Algarve.

I've done 2 days off the drinksh after a week of debauchery in Lisbon. It's 6pm and the sun has got an extremely fetching hat on. I think it might be Super Bock o'clock.

At precisely mid-day today, the dreaded oh-please-don't-let-it-be-true event... a puncture. 90 degree heat, no shade to fix it under, and I'd run out of water. Had I, as the book of how to do this properly suggests, practised puncture-fixing before leaving home? No I had not. I couldn't be arsed.

There are worse things that can happen. Your engine can explode; the frame can snap in two. But a puncture (the first time at least) is certainly in the top 5 of motorcycling bummers.

So - to work. Unload all the luggage. Spend a while levering machine onto mini-jack. (No centrestand). Then try to work out how to get the front wheel off. If you've ever fixed a bicycle puncture, it's very much the same except everything's 5 times heavier and there are disc brakes to contend with.

Eventually it's off and I get to work with the tyre levers. 30 minutes of grunting and sweating and cavalier use of the F-, C-, S-, W- and B-words follows. My shirt is soaked and filthy and my mouth is parched and even filthier. A number of absolute bastards on fully-functioning mopeds buzz by.

Then an angel of mercy - a German angel, St. Gunther of Bavaria - pulls up in a jeep to tell me that not only is there a bike fixing shop just up the road, but that he will take me and the wheel up there. The tyre is one third off the rim and so is my sanity, so off we go.

The little Portuguese fella in the shop has the job done in minutes, and another, different angel of mercy drops me and the wheel back at the bike. Now all I've got to do is get it back on. Oh look - I can't. Just as I'm about to start swearing again, a young chappie on a sportsbike stops to assist. Thanks pal! Between the two of us it's on in 10 minutes, and I manage to shear off only one of the four retaining bolts. The front brake doesn't work, but that sorts itself out after a mile, and my lower back seems to have some sort of issue with the tasks I've set it today, but I'm back on the road...

My brother Rob, a committed Portuphile, and not, unhappily for alliteration's sake a convicted paedophile, has recommended Monchique as a place that is both lovely and nice in more or less equal measure. I check into the Residencia Miradouro, have a chat with bro, eat lunch (octopus and pears) on the balcony and grab a slice of siesta.

I'm 38 years old and I have to shave my ears. Where will it end?

Lariam (mefloquine) is an anti-malarial drug. Like all anti-malarials it has two downsides -
1. It doesn't necessarily stop you getting malaria.
2. It has a variety of possible side-effects.
What makes Lariam so controversial is that, in some people, it produces depression and vivid nightmares.

In a smaller sub-section of people, these can become psychotic episodes - tearing your own guts out and so forth.
1 week ago I took the first of 3 test doses, and I'm fine. GRRAAAGGHH! Only jokin'. No side effects of any kind so far.

5th October 2004.

*BURRRP*! Oh Mary what a beautiful everything. Up at dawn to see the sun rise over the mountains (not as early as you might think, given that there are some mountains in front of the sun). A great breakfast served by a fat man in pants. A strenuous walk around the Hanging Gardens of Monchique. A thrill-packed morning ride to the highest point of the Algarve, with a stop-off for lubricants (for the bike). Coffee in, er, a cafe. Then pork chops and vinho de casa for lunch, halfway up a mountain. Ain't life absolutely terrific? It's 80 degrees here and grey and wet in the UK. Je ne regrette rien, baby.

Second Lariam test pill last night, a day late. Still haven't gored anyone to death with a pencil. But I did have a dream about Sonia's (imaginary) sister who had 3 foot long nasal hair. I somehow borrowed her nose and set to work with the scissors; the end result looked like a second set of eyelashes growing from the nostrils. Could have been the Lariam - could have been last night's Tagus lager, which is very good indeed.

Stir the pot of destiny!
Tousle the hair of Dame Fortune!
Interfere with the tail-feathers of Arch-Duke Happenstance!
Er... perhaps one more Super Bock and then bed.

3rd October 2004. Sines.

I wobble out of Lisbon at 11am and hammer south for a hundred miles. Sines has a quite-nice beach, a port and an oil refinery or something. On the way an American dude comes over to chat by the pumps.
"What is that, man? Did you build it yourself?"
He's ridden across the US on a Harley-Davidson. His "Good luck, man" words of encouragement fill me with good cheer and make me remember what this whole nutty scheme is all about. Thanks man!

Oh brother - pork and clams... The pig loves the clam. The clam loves the pig. I love them both. The three of us are very much in love. We are to be married in the spring. If you were able to inspect my handwriting at this point, you would see that at first I wrote "marred". I think I may be marred already.

26th September - 2nd October 2004. Lisbon.

Sagres or Super Bock? Your lager of choice in Lisbon marks you out as either a salt-of-the-earth son-of-the-soil or a fat cat toff. Almost everywhere sells only one or the other so you rarely have to make the choice. Other ways of getting oblivious in Lisbon's steep, shiny-cobbled streets include Ginginha and Maceira. One tastes nicer than the other and has booze-saturated cherries in it, but both will give you a hankering for a long lie-in followed by a pastry hit followed by a siesta the next day.
A week off the moto, for a holiday with Naz and Kev and Marie.

*The Beach at Estoril!
*An Oceanarium!
*A ride on the Tourist Bus!
*A climb up to the castle for a view over the city!

It's quite literally all good.
On the first morning I see I've had the first theft of the trip; a cargo net and bike cover. My fault for leaving them on the bike.
N & K and me go for a night at Lux, Europe's most happening nitespot. Cameron Diaz doesn't show up, but we're joined by a great Portuguese lady who we all love and is far too lovely and nice for the grubby likes of us.

Sweaty panic exercise - riding an overladen motorcycle through Lisbon's tram-tracked, near-vertical streets. Wobble! Slide!

24th Sept 2004. Abrantes.

I rolled into Guarda 3 days ago, butt-sore and dry as a bag of crisps. Rolled out this morning well-fed, well-watered, well-slept, reconnected (thanks to Guarda's free internet cafe) and with a mild hangover that was blasted away by hammering down the IP2 to Abrantes. 90 minutes of two-lane blacktop that winds through the hills all the way to Lisbon if you fancy it. There's too much scenery to bother concentrating on the road. Luckily the traffic is thinner than Gandhi's ankles.
I'm only here for one night, so I pick the first hotel I see, using Dr. Fitzpatrick's Portuguese Pleasure Principle, which states that everything in Portugal costs exactly half what you expect.
The hotel has the finest balcony bar I've ever seen, from which it feels like you can see the whole goddamn country. The universe obliges with an eye-wateringly magnificent sunset, the Super Bock is ice-cold, and breakfast - gratis - will be served in my room at 10. Ain't life grand?

Equally grand is iPod shuffle mode. Dear Richard Ashcroft - quit whining and eat some mushrooms. The tiny robot monkey inside the 'pod who chooses the next song realises that The Verve may be putting a damper on proceedings, so he follows "The Drugs Don't Work" with "Big Balls" by AC/DC ("Bollocks! Knackers! Bollocks! Knackers!"), just as the audience is reaching for the bleach bottle. I could go on but it just becomes a list of what's on my iPod, and you don't wanna know. Bloody hell though; Sonic Youth's version of The Carpenters "Superstar"! That's beyond maudlin. It sounds like Thurston Moore is lying in a bath full of bloody water with two open veins and five minutes to live. Ain't life grand!

Who remembers the name of Reggie Perrin's dentist, who painted terrible pictures of the Algarve? Not me, for starters. Unless it was Dr Snood...

Eight miles high baby. If you're going to go to the trouble and expense of taking psychedelic drugs, for God´s sake make sure you take enough to butter you over the lawn. Pin you to the wall, chisel off your skullcap and Moulinex your cerebrum. Peel off your face and suck out your eyes and tonsils, ram a fist into your thorax and yank out your pulsating solar plexus. Otherwise, what's, like, the point?

23rd Sept 04. Guarda.

How come the Portuguese get satsumas the size of melons and we get crappy, pathetic, shrivelled little affairs? And don't give me that "Mediterranean climate" drivel either - these babies are flown in from Uruguay.

AM - Dawdled in the square.
PM - Dawdled in the internet cafe.
In the evening, had a day off the booze and watched "Casablanca" on Turner Classic Movies. What a pile of crap! Not really - what a teeth-clenching, brow-tightening, leg-crossing piledriver of a film. The best bit - ahem - is when someone asks Humpty his nationality, and he replies "Drunkard", and the French police dude chips in with "That makes Rick a citizen of the world..."
I´m going to be in Casablanca in about 5 weeks, and I *raises right hand* solemnly do swear on the fly-blown grave of Rod Hull and the hollow, foetid corpse of Emu to get drunk there as a mark of respect, because I wouldn't have anyway.

24th Sept 2004. Guarda.

Graaaaagh! I am so angry I could bite my own teeth off. I want to kick myself upside the head and punch my own brain out. Nnnngh! Mnnnff! Whack my eyes in *splut* and mash up my legs to a thick paste. I've spent the whole day - and I mean literally 9am to 5pm, with an hour for lunch, (ok - 2 hours - this is Iberia) in an internet cafe, trying to resize JPEGs so I can put some photos on this thing. And I can't.
Brrraaaaagggh! I simply must stab my own face in. I am a horse of hate. A giant reptile of dismay. A huge, wallowing sea-cow of gasping, weeping frustration. Never mind, eh? I'm outta here in the morning. Time to saddle up the old mare and hit the dusty trail, i.e. the IP2, to - who knows where? Not me anyway.

Motos are quite the thing in Guarda, unlike other bits of Portugal I've passed through. I keep seeing the same ones from my pavement bar vantage point. There's a GSX600, at least one V-Max, two Fireblades and an XR400. If it makes a throbby noise everyone looks. There's also a geezer - who I'm almost certain is disabled - on a trike, which he appears to have built himself out of a Boer War-era wheelbarrow and a tumble-drier. Imminent collapse and severe injury seem inevitable, yet he has gone to the trouble and expense of fitting a pair of shiny chrome ape-hangers. Respect is due.
Finally, one gentleman has taken it upon himself to create the most pointless of all vehicles: a 3-wheeled car made out of a scooter. To watch it tumble around the roundabout is to experience terror, sympathy, pity, respect and mirth simultaneously. I raise my glass.

They're showing Portuguese Pop Idol in the bar. You cannot begin to imagine how bad it is.

20th Sept '04. Miranda do Douro, North-east Portugal.

Quick! Get to Portugal! They're literally giving stuff away! 20 euros gets me by far the biggest, best, gleamingest hotel room of the trip so far. A further 10 buys me a basket of food in the supermercato that would feed 4 unusually greedy adults with ease.
The proprietor of the shop, who looks like Charles Aznavour's more ingratiating brother, draws me into conversation about where I'm from and going. I warm to him until he tells me that, having spent time in Africa, he has reached the conclusion that no less than 90% of Africans are "bad people". He balances this rather bald statement by conceding that "small people" are "good". For a moment I think he means that, having lived among Pygmies, he found them both honest and companionable. Then I realise he means "a few".
Expanding on his theme, he goes on to warn me that a similar proportion of Arabs are dissatisfactory in some regard or other.
Oh well - his food is great.

Washed my 800-mile jeans in the sink this afternoon. The water that came out of them was the colour of the urine of a severely dehydrated man who has been on a spinach-only diet for a month.

Later, in Bar Jordao, lager and VH1... How in the name of Beelzebub did Billy Crystal get to shag Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally"? The man is an unadulterated goof, and Meggy, while occupying (at the time) the coveted "America's Leading Pseudo-Virgin" spot, is in reality a white-hot sex monkey of the most frotterrific variety. Gurgle.

Everything But The Girl: Three words - Ow! My! Eyes!

If you're in a restaurant and see "Godley and Creme" on the menu, avoid it. It's a frightening British pudding with a hair garnish.

Oi! Everyone in the world! Stop saying "conclusive proof"! What other sort of proof is there? Inconclusive proof?

21st Sept '04

Beautiful day. Coffee in the square. General dicking about. A small tumble during some off-road larks.

22nd Sept '04. Miranda - Guarda.

Breakfast of bread, jam, coffee, fags and Ibuprofen, necessitated by a bash on the shin and an insulted wrist from yesterday's drop.
Hot and sunny! Hot and sunny! The sainted ghost of Bill Hicks appears on my shoulder and whispers "What are you - a fuckin' lizard?"

135 miles of Douro valley hairpin mayhem later, it's Guarda.

A city on a very tall, very steep hill, with what looks like its only supermarket at the bottom. This means that if you live in Guarda and you don't have a car, you are going to
(a) starve to death within days, or
(b) develop calves like cantaloupes and thighs even Geoff Capes would swoon over.

The Douro valley is a hard, rocky, arid place. To describe the people that live there as "extremely wizened" would be to understate the situation laughably. It's also very beautiful indeed.

There seem to be as many horse-and-cart operators (if that's the accepted title) as car drivers, which suggests that the approx. 10 zillion euros that the Portuguese government receives from the EU each year is not wholly being distributed as equal, per-capita cash handouts.

One thing is certain. They're not spending it on the N221 from Mogadouro to Pinhel, which is surfaced with sharp rocks stuffed into a form of proto-tarmac. Loss-of-control fans might like to look out for the pot-holes filled with loose gravel that have been placed conveniently close to several barrier-less, cliff-edge hairpins along the way.

Joy beyond measure! There is a Portuguese word for "pint", and I have just used it, with thrilling results, in what may or may not have been a sentence. The barman has also bought me a small plate of whitish beans in salty water. New and interesting? Yes. Nice to eat? No.

Drinking beer? Then smoke cigarettes as well! They're Nature's Crisps...