>>1945785Also, if you travel along most of Europe, you'll see fields, fields and more fields, then suddenly, hidden in the middle of those, a small packed together settlement, followed by more endless fields, till the next one.
In Portugal, zoning is (very) recent (and then, change at the whim of anyone with connections), so settlements sprawl along roads and you'll see isolated houses pretty much anywhere and everywhere, since people would just build them wherever their inherited plot was.
All this means is you likely won't just ride within town, where a city bike is obviously at home, no matter how small that town is, and will have to travel along traffic on open roads as well.
Despite all this, bikes were everywhere back then, because it was the cheapest, most available means of transportation.
Incidentally, bike industry still is the biggest in Europe.
