Ideas for a ride near Villamoura?

[Some Gump]

Evening Forum,

Looks like we're going on holiday to Villamoura this year. I've found a place that seems to rent road bikes - so would fancy a decent (100k?) day out at some point.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a nice route with a few hills? Ideally 4-5k feet over 60 miles would be awesome...

Cheers

gump

[airsafari87]

What kind of riding do you want to do?

You could do worse than ride around the town itself,
Start off down the marina (where I assume the bike rental place is located?) head out of the town towards the fairly new Hilton hotel, along to the old village and loop around from there.

Sorry I can't give you any specific routes, I didn't ride around the place myself when I used to visit there, I ran instead. It is a fairly Simlple place to navigate though and the area away from the now hateful marina is quite nice and pretty in places and also reasonably hilly to a certain point.

One thing to be aware of before you go though is the traffic is a total butch to what it was 7 or 8 years ago. Villamoura has seen a massive boom in tourism and driving around the area now is a pig, and don't even think about parking.

[anonymous-user]

Strange. The marina was as nice last month compared to 5+ years ago & parking is free & easy!
Some nice routes towards Loule, away from the main roads. Some good cafes there too near the old market building, for the mid-way pit stop ..

[RammyMP]

Be careful on the main roads especially the EN125, another 3 people died in a car crash at the weekend. They all drive like dicks.

[airsafari87]

Jimboka said:

Strange. The marina was as nice last month compared to 5+ years ago & parking is free & easy!
Some nice routes towards Loule, away from the main roads. Some good cafes there too near the old market building, for the mid-way pit stop ..

That's encouraging to hear.
I used to stay in Villamoura a couple of times a year between 2005 and 2008 (ish) I hadn't been back until I drove there at almost exactly this time of year back in 2013 and I really could not believe how much the place had changed, if I'm honest it was so far removed from how I remembered it I hated it and stayed as far away from the marina area as possible.
To be fair though I'm sure a first time visitor to the area would love it, it is a nice resort.

Back to the cycling though.
From what I can recal the area is pretty well geared towards the cyclist, iirc they had various fully painted white 'Boris Bikes' scattered around the resort. So I assume that cycleways etc are pretty well catered for too??

[C0ffin D0dger]

If you like climbing then there were a lot of people riding up Fóia the day we drove up it. Nearly 3000ft but get to the top and you can pretty much free wheel back to the beach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B3ia_(mountain)

[Some Gump]

Thanks for the tips everyone, I'll see if I can get a route together =)