Love Exists in Many Forms

Kate on the Road: Day 31

Date: 22nd April

Day: 31

Location: Aveiro, Portugal

Weather: Sunny and warm

I arrive to a bike rental place on a side street in Aveiro and ask to hire one for the day. The lady shakes her head, they’re all out. I ogle at her, all of them? She nods, there’s an event. Turns out the event is a group of school children. She talks to her colleague in Portuguese and she turns to me again, we might have one you can borrow. This all felt very strange, she led me down a corridor to a garage, and opened it to reveal an entire room full of rental bikes. What do they mean they’re all out?! She lends it to me with a helmet for €20. She asks for my drivers license as collateral, I hand it over and she says incredulously, is this your drivers license? My god, does she want my business or not?! I shake my head in disbelief, but say a friendly obrigado.

Off I roll down the canal towards the wetlands which are supposed to have flamingos. After 10km over the marshy boardwalks I’ve seen a handful of seagulls, a few wrecked boats, and a dog. The smell of eucalyptus trees permeates my nostrils and sprints straight to the part of my brain where nostalgia lives. It lifts a handful of memories from the shelf and opens each jar simultaneously. Like a ribbon from a clown’s mouth, a never ending stream of freedom, wild young girls, paddocks, mud, bonfires, treehuts, sheep, games of darts and jugs of beer appear. I’m back in Fielding where my grandad lived among paddocks of sheep filled with eucalyptus trees. We built a treehouse in one, and hung a rope swing from another. Us four girls — my sister and two cousins — ran wild, barefoot or gumboot-clad through the long grass to make up games where we were brides or lions or whatever else. We dressed in net curtains and doilies, we lit bonfires and made up plays. We raced homemade go karts, we played darts in grandad’s shed while he smoked and drank beer and we drank lemonade and ate chips. I long for those days now when I was little and wild and free — where my small world was a playground and my parents were always there for a hug. Young girls, when let loose into paddocks, become who they truly are. To have feet in sheep poo, to be dressed in flowing lace curtains, to wear a paper tiara, to swing on a rope hollering like Tarzan — a millions wants and needs collide and girls exist in their purest form. I’m alone now at the end of the boardwalk, the memories returning to their jars but the feeling lingering. I’m 24 and wild and free. I’m halfway across the world alone and on an adventure.

I decide to head for the sea, because I get to make the decisions. Out to Costa Nova. Google maps draws me a slightly dodgy route as I weave through an industrial port area, cross a motorway overpass, pass a stinking fish factory, and ride through some dilapidated residential roads. I cycle over the last overpass (on a fenced off footpath luckily) and stop in my tracks. The marsh beneath me glitters and the flamingos drag their beaks through the water. A few storks peck at the mud. A couple of people in waders pull shellfish from the ground. Flamingos! Fricking flamingos! In the wild, right in front of me. As a bird nerd I can’t believe my eyes. I stop for a while to watch them, but invariably I end up watching people too. Because although birds are a marvel to me, people seem to be more-so. The arched backs of 7 men and women in waders take shell after shell from the marsh, placing them in buckets after giving them a rinse in the murky water. I make it to the beach still thinking about the fact that days for those people will be the same. Up, breakfast, bike to marsh, waders, bend over for hours, bike home, shower, bed. I’m assuming. It could look very different. I sit on the beach for a while, I eat the peanut butter sandwich I made, I watch a class of Portuguese teenagers learn to surf. There’s only a handful of us on the beach and I feel at ease. A striped lighthouse peers down, and a few streets over striped houses line the road. When my craving for the ocean has been satisfied I wind my way through the sleepy village. I pass a lady tying string between two stop signs, I pass another lady hanging clothes on a string between two give way signs, I see sheets hung between two power poles flapping in the breeze. Washing is a public affair here. You choose two free poles, you tie some string, and you lug your basket of wet laundry onto the street. I remember living at home as a child and mum telling me to hang the undies behind things… We lived at the end of a quiet cul de sac down a long driveway, and our washing could be seen by nobody. I wonder how she’d get on if the entirety of Costa Nova saw her undies on the line. I’ve talked before about it, but privacy is less of a concept when you live tightly packed, even in villages.

I begin the ride back to Aveiro and I stop again on the overpass to watch the people. They’re finishing up for the day and a weary lady leans her arm on a bent over man who has his hands in a bucket of water and is carefully washing the mud from her waders. She then takes her turn, bending down, the man leaning, and her washing mud from his waders. Love exists in many forms. This is why I like the back blocks, the small places, you see the threads that hold the tapestry of a place the tightest. It’s not all Lisbon and trams and big beaches. It’s waders and mud and leaning on each other.