Just a quick one, for the main blog entry this week, click here. After 10 weeks on the road, I’m aiming to get back to Glasgow on Tuesday 22nd September. I should be rolling into George Square around 6.30pm and afterwards there’ll be a little welcome home party at Colin’s flat up at Speirs Wharf where there’ll be some drinks and nibbles. Anyone who wants to is welcome to meet me at George Square and people are warmly invited up to Colin’s flat afterwards. Probably won’t go on that long as I’ll be pretty knackered!
Please get in touch by Facebook or email to get details of Colin’s address and let me know if you’ll be coming so we can figure out numbers. See you soon!
That’s another 5-day block of cycling done and dusted. Where is all this time disappearing to? I’m now in the city of Burgos, about a days ride from the northern coast of Spain, where I’ve had my day off.
This chunk of riding is the first time since Bosnia where I’ve camped wild every night between rest days, it’s been a while. I’m pretty sure I looked and smelt quite interesting when I got to my hotel, but the good thing is that when it’s you that smells, your nose becomes fairly immune to it all. The week has also been quite a relaxed one in terms of the distances I’ve had to do. Since realising I’m quite a bit ahead of target to complete 5000 miles by Glasgow, I put the week just gone and the week coming up onto a distance diet - the comfortable, take-your-time sort of diet. It turned out that that was a very good idea as the whole way through Spain was hilly, some might even say mountainous, with plenty of ups and downs. I don’t know where the little poem/saying applies to, but there ain’t no rain or plains where I’ve just been riding. In combination with that, I had a nasty critter of a headwind for 36-hours which majorly slowed me down.
The week started off badly when I left my hotel in Tarragona late at around 11:30am after trying to finish off all my communications whilst I had internet access. Following picking up some food supplies at Lidl across the road, I came out of the store to find some cheeky bandit had pinched my helmet and sunglasses, which I’d left clipped to the bike. Now, who wants to steal a sun-bleached, sweat-soaked helmet along with some knackered and scratched sunglasses I’ve no idea, but good luck to ‘em. Anyway, that put a bit of a dampener of things. All I can say is that I’m very fortunate they didn’t steal anything more disastrous - I guess they were the quickest, easiest things to take. I then rode down to the train station to get a train backwards 40km to where I called it quits 2 days before. That again was a bit demoralising, not to mention the hassle I had getting a ticket, but that’s another story. Anyway, I eventually hit the road at 1pm after all that. However, I still managed to fit in my 110km despite having to stop to buy a new helmet and sunglasses during the afternoon.
The only way was up from the coast after riding through Tarragona for the second time that day, and I plodded my way through some fairly stunning and lush mountains during the evening, finishing the day off riding into a brilliant sunset. The next day started off well enough but suddenly at around 11am I came out of a town and the big, brute wind hit. For the next day and a half I had to struggle against it, having to pedal to just get down hills. This was at the same time as riding through totally barren landscapes where there was just rubble and scrub, punctuated occasionally by pylons and a road that headed on into more nothingness. The outlook was bleak. I was fortunate to find the only bushes I’d seen for ages outside a town so that I cold put up the tent. I treated myself to some calamares there in the town, my first proper Spanish food to speak of.
Eventually, the next day the wind all but disappeared and the landscape got a bit more interesting thankfully. I went over a mountain ridge, hounded constantly by stupid flies all the way up and coming out onto the other side, I was confronted with quite a crazy landscape of lush valleys and hills with vines and crops growing everywhere. The hills had ledges cut into them all the way down for these crops, which made them look all geometric - reminded me of something out of a Lego set. From then on the riding was a pleasure and the miles disappeared almost effortlessly. I had a few issues with getting enough food as I was mostly passing through small villages and between 1pm and 5pm, although that seems to be up for grabs, everything is shut. Mention this in my video diary taken in Soria, where I fluked finding one of the only food stores open, even though it’s a fairly large town. Probably because it was run by a Chinese chap.
If anyone is interested, I made a note of what I ate the day before this video. Again, I had issues finding food so it’s probably not enough, but it is fairly typical of a normal day. In no particular order:
2 nectarines
banana
tomato
large portion of porridge with sugar and sultanas
muesli bar
5 savoury pastries
4-5 sugary doughnut things
2 chocolate croissants
ice cream
2 yoghurts
bottle of drinking yoghurt
litre of coke
can of ice tea
litre of fruit juice
3 litres of water
I did have a little blip this week where my bottle of shower gel decided to explode inside my pannier bag. It was almost full and so Lidl’s finest yellow, gooey liquid managed to cover all my toiletries, get all over my sleeping bag stuff-sack (thankfully it’s water proof) and a good part of the pannier bag. It took ages to clean up and most of my water supplies for the night as I had stopped to camp at this point. But it could have been a lot worse and nothing more vital like my sleeping bag or stove got soaked in the horrible stuff. I took this video in the morning, don’t know why I didn’t mention the shower gel incident. Obviously forgotten about it by then, or I was too tired to remember.
On the final day of this riding chunk I only had to do 100km to get to Burgos. It was mostly easy riding and got there at an unprecedented 2.15pm. This gave me almost a day and a half off and so I had time to have a kebab and a beer, find out if there was launderette in town and saunter off to the hotel. Very relaxed especially compared to the previous week where I walked through the hotel doors at 10.30pm. Anyway, I’ve had a good day off here in Burgos today. Pretty much every town I’ve stayed in I’ve managed to fluke it coming in high on the cool-0-meter. Burgos has a really nice old part of the city to wander round and a very impressive cathedral.
So I set off on the road again tomorrow for another 5-day stretch of riding. Final destination is Bordeaux for my day off, which is made 10 times more exciting because my Kate is flying in after having just returned to the UK from India, and we’ll be spending a short bit of time together there. Can’t wait. I’m also faced with the prospect of hitting the 4000 mile mark this week, meaning only 1000 miles until I get back to Glasgow. I’m starting to feel very close now and the light at the end of the tunnel is highly visible. Bring it on.
The only thing is I’ve been trying to keep up with a few other British cyclists who are on adventures whilst I’ve been on the road, although their journeys make mine feel very much like a walk in the park and quite unimpressive. If you’re interested, Mark Beaumont, a friend from university and current world record holder for cycling round the world, is currently riding from North to South America and his expedition is fully covered by the BBC. James Bowthorpe is just days away from breaking Mark’s world record after riding for around 9 months. And finally, a chap called Julien Emre Sayarer is also midway through riding round the world in a quest to break the world record - he has ridden 9,000 miles without spending a night in a hotel or camp site, big respect. All inspiring stuff - hope you enjoy taking a look. Right, that’s me off to bed. Goodnight.
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.
Hi follks. As usual, I’m playing catchup with the videos as they take a long time to upload and decent internet connections are scarce. However, my hotel here in Tarragona has wifi so I’m taking the opportunity to get more videos on YouTube. Here goes:
This one was taken ages ago coming along the Croatian coastline. I was flying downhill at the time after a hefty climb, holding the camera out with one hand. Don’t know why I felt the need to keep looking at the camera and also my big head gets in the way of all the views, but you get the idea.
This next one is almost the same deal. Just done a big climb but I’m now on the Italian coast. Some nice seaside towns along there, although a bit busy and tourist-filled.