Pilgrims Progress
The Camino De Santiago de Compostela is one of the most popular pilgrim routes in the Christian world. It starts all over Europe in various places and is marked by a yellow sea shell symbol. We’d cycled some of the southern Spain route northward toward Santiago de Compostela earlier in the trip, but at Burgos we joined the main route that starts near the French border and heads West. Naturally this puts the price of everything up and makes accommodation harder to find and makes everywhere much much busier. We were heading the wrong way along the route as we began our climb into the...
Read MorePlain sailing
It’s very odd to be cycling in a relatively flat landscape surrounded by corn fields in bright sunshine yet be at around 800m. As you climbed up to the Plains (albeit in a taxi for some of it) you just don’t expect to get to somewhere flat at the top. It’s like a rolling Lincolnshire or the Canadian prairies with almost all the landscape being farm on top of the alps. It’s actually a bit dull, but it does mean when there’s a wind behind you you fly along – easily doing more than 20km each hour on some occasions, which for a fully loaded tandem isn’t...
Read MoreSlipping past the mountains…
We’ve been gradually climbing up to the Plains in Spain where apparently the Rain Mainly falls and reached 600m when disaster or a stroke of luck struck depending on how you look at it and Linda (who’s already headbutted a plate glass door in a hotel) managed to slip over in the bathroom of a hotel, bang her head against the shower screen and end up sitting on the loo, which may explain why, when she changed her toothbrush head she threw the new one away instead of the old one! Ever since returning from Korea Linda has had dizzy spells which amazingly vanished when we flew into...
Read MoreWellingtons footsteps…
Lisbon to Badajoz (Spain). 6 days, 256km, 1848m climb. Total 1569km 8200m climb We are always surprised at how a line on a map that separates two countries can make so much difference to lifestyles. Crossing from Portugal, where the restaurants closed around 9pm in Alves to Spain where they hardly opened before 9pm less than 15km away just seems so odd. And of course it’s much harder to get used to if you’re not used to the whole siesta and stay up late thing. We’d got used to eating at (for us) a normal time and getting to bed early so we could start cycling...
Read MoreFood
As with all our travels, combining vegetarianism with Jon’s interpretation of it (vegetarianism without the vegetables) is always a challenge. The Portugese though like their Tosti’s, and on our previous visit we loved them too. The bread is always what posh people call Artisnal and so we tucked into our first one eagerly in a village cafe. Well, I have to say I really don’t think that what they call cheese is cheese, it’s the Artisnal bread equivalent of Hovis white loaf – pap. It has no flavour and is basically a way of clogging your arteries without any of...
Read MoreToo old for this….
Monte Gordon to Vila Nova de Millfontes – (5 days 110km, 783m climb) It’s a bit worrying when you ask in the tourist information about the EuroVelo 1 Atlantic Coast Cycle route that runs right outside the tourist information office and they’ve never heard of it, but hardly surprising as we’ve seen two signposts for it in 100km. Apparently we’re the first people ever to cycle it, which can’t be right, but might explain it’s state, which is poor to non existent. Some of the route had been a challenge for a 4×4 let alone us on Tilly. It’s...
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