A watercolour exhibition showcasing some of Portugal's most famous sites, which was inspired by a bicycle ride around the "limits of Portugal", will be on display at the Sines Arts Centre until the end of this month, the Sines City Council has shared. The exhibition entitled "Cycling across the border", was created by Pedro Gil, a Leiria-born artist.

According to the municipality, the endeavour is a part of a project that the cyclist and artist began in 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to fulfil his dream of cycling "the limits of Portugal”. Pedro Gil went on to say that while on his expedition, he took pictures of the "most emblematic places he visited" and landscapes, which he immortalised in the little watercolours that comprise the exhibition.

In 2022, he repeated the adventure, this time along the coast, connecting Moledo, in the district of Viana do Castelo, and Vila Real de Santo António, in the district of Faro, for 25 days, for a total of 1,100 kilometres. On the trip through the interior of Portugal, he covered 1,300 kilometres over 21 days. It was his turn to 'cycle' throughout the Azores archipelago in 2023.

As the artist shared, “During my travels there was the enriching part of the images and the spaces I was going to visit, which I was unfamiliar with, and then there was the physical part for which I was not at all prepared, because there were many kilometers”. With "most of the 116 watercolours" he put on exhibit, Pedro Gil's project offered him the chance to experiment with the medium while attempting to "showcasing Portugal in a different way”.