«Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live»

Mark Twain once wrote, in a vivid account of his experiences learning to master a bicycle.

It is with this, very appropriate, quote that begins the beautiful text by Laura Alves that opens this book of adventures (or adventure in the shape of a book).

An edition that, as João Mariano writes in its afterword, reports « (…) the epic story of a group of friends (old and young, men and women, Portuguese, foreigners...) with a common passion: mountain biking – MBT. Not the classic mountain biking but something much more alternative, unusual, less conventional and extreme. Something we call MPMTB – MULTI-PURPOSE Mountain Bike. For about 12 years we have been known as madmen (healthy madmen) who, with a bicycle (on it or it on us), ride the most dazzling and unknown trails of the Portuguese SW. There is no mud, sand, cliffs, brambles, gorse fields, streams (full of water or full of pebbles) through which we have not passed (…)»

«(…) the variety and succession of situations occurred and landscapes travelled is a faithful portrait of the passion for the bicycle and for these lands. It is a vehicle that promotes, in a less conventional and more humorous way, a region and a different way of using a bicycle. The infinite variety of landscapes and places travelled are an ode to the exclusive diversity and landscape of the region. (…) The photographs (collected on location over more than 12 years) are the key element because it is through them that we can immerse ourselves in this unique universe of dust, water, mud, sand and ... good humour.»