Euroloop

So it’s now September, where did that come from? I’m sitting in my hotel squeezing in as much wifi action in as I can before I set off for the day and enjoying the air conditioning. I’m staying on the outskirts of Tarragona, a little west of Barcelona situated right on the coast. Yesterday consisted of the same as always on a day off, trying to cram in sorting out my route for the coming weeks, washing clothes in the sink, updating all my internet stuff, looking around the town and eating heartily.

This week has been tough, one of the hardest I think. On the first day, I left my mum and dad really late at 11am, mainly due to me not getting up early enough and then getting dog crap all over the front wheel in the garden. Nice. I needed to get past Marseille that day and unfortunately hit the city centre in the evening. This meant some night riding as I needed to get out of the city in order to find somewhere decent to sleep and Marseille is massive, it took ages. I finally managed to find somewhere to stop up from the road on top of a small hill at 10pm. Unfortunately, my choice of spot was rubbish in that it got seriously windy during the night. I had to get up at 2am to re-peg the tent and the wind then kept me awake the rest of the night. On day 2, the wind was still there in the morning and was coming right at me, a massive headwind. I couldn’t get more speed than about 8km/h until the afternoon. Once I changed direction out of the wind, the going was much easier and I popped on my new mp3 player, tunes at last! (The one I bought originally for the trip never worked). However, a headwind was to become a standard feature for the rest of the week working my way down the French coast to Spain. Total nightmare.

Coupled with the headwind, I managed to somehow get my distances badly wrong. Before I set off for the week, I worked out I needed to do about 140km a day to get to Tarragona from Toulon. However, I got this distance from my rough calculations that I’d done before the start of Euroloop back in July. This was because I only managed to get an hour internet access whilst staying with mum and dad, leaving me no time to do a detailed distance calculation on Google Maps (the easiest and best way to quickly plan routes and get distances - been using it all the way with great success). What transpired was that it was way more than 140km a day, I actually did 70km more than anticipated during the 5 day week and that still left me 40km short of Tarragona at 7.45pm on Tuesday eve, the final day.

The day before, I’d put in 180km to try and make Tuesday easier. I’d then set off early on Tuesday morning at 7.45am. However, Barcelona is massive and it took me ages to get through, slow going with all the traffic lights. I got lost a few times on the way out due to not being sure whether I was allowed on this road that looked incredibly like a motorway but wasn’t. The coast after Barcelona is full of steep ups and downs (the motorway next to me annoyingly had tunnels cutting all the way through the mountain!) and to top it all off the Spanish sign posting on the coast is bad, bad, bad. The signs lead you so far and then disappear and you haven’t got a clue where to go. Plus, I was asking myself to do 200km in a day to get to Tarragona. Anyway, on the Tuesday eve I phoned Colin, my wingman, to discuss options and to have someone to talk to. We decided I should get the train for the last 40km to Tarragona, there was a station nearby. I could then get the train back after my day off so I don’t miss out any miles. So off I went to get the train. The guy in the ticket office told me to get the wrong train so I had to change once on the way. Then trying to find the hotel, I discovered there’d been a mix up. Colin had booked me a hotel and sent details but Google Maps thought it was somewhere where it wasn’t. I walked round for ages trying to find it, and after phoning the hotel and Colin, found out it was in a completely different place! Anyway, I got here eventually at 10.30pm and was welcomed by an enormous plate of burger, egg and chips.

Enough of my moaning. I spent ages yesterday figuring out all my miles, how much I had left to do and what my route is right up until Glasgow. I’ve been able to shorten my course through Spain quite a bit and the good news is that it is now possible to take it easy for the next two weeks. Comparitively speaking of course, but 110km a day is a lot  better than 140-160km, which is what I’ve been doing quite consistently.Tell you what, looking at the route and timescales to Glasgow, I feel close now. The countdown in my head has begun.

I also wandered around Tarragona yesterday and the centre of town is cool actually. There’s an old walled city with a cathedral and loads of wee narrow streets. There’s also a big walkway or Rambla through the town with lots of seats, trees, sculptures and ice cream shops, I couldn’t resist.

That’s enough of that, need to pack up and hit the road, or rather the train tracks first of all. Until next time.

Blogged in Spain