Category: Personal

Yet another excellent days biking. I must be getting fitter or the going is easier as I seemed to be going over 16mph most of the time and I only had to go into lowest gear once for one of the hills. OK the first 30 miles I lost 1000 feet in altitude so maybe it was gravity making me feel fit 🙁

The breakfast at Hotel Felix was very basic a coffee and croissant only 🙁  The roads were very quiet and I only saw a couple of cyclists all day. Just outside Purias there was a white van pop up market so I grabbed myself a banana later on I found a cafe and had a bocadillo & queso (I had to write it on a napkin because they just laugh at my attempt at saying it).

I eventually hit the sea at Playa Quitapellejos where I had a smile at the enormous camper homes parked with their huge trailers. I will now be doing the ‘Costa’ all the way to Tarifa. My first experience of meeting the ex-pats (UK represent 0.6% of Spains population apparently) where a couple where doing their sunday shopping – a bag of ice, litre of gin and litre of tonic water, maybe they had lemons in the garden! I don’t think I could ever live in an estate like Los Marinas but a flat in Garrucha city centre…

After Macenas the climbing began with a couple of peaks over 500 feet, I love these climbs 🙂 the only problem for me is getting down my mind is constantly working out what would happen if the brakes failed going around the hairpins 🙁 Fortunately I made it down OK into the quiet pretty village of Carboneras and the Pension Las Palmas and its very jolly lady who had a good laugh as I tried to follow her Spanish instructions where to put the bike.

The Garmin Etrex and Strava made it 58.2 miles and 1,757 feet of climbing all done at an average of 12.9mph, understated as I pushed the bike around the market and beach car park.

The Strava app and the Moves app just do not like each other at all, Strava cuts itself off and then draws a straight line whilst the Moves app cuts off at very frequent intervals. But who do you report it too? impossible to get email addresses to file reports too 🙁 I guess it’s beginning to expose the limits of having one device do everything.

The days pics are on Dropbox here more to follow, its a painful WiFi connection

Apologies for the 22 day hiatus due to my very pleasurable weekend with all the family in Skeggie, so enjoyable I booked it for next year too. A first 🙂
Plus a week of the time was pleasurably spent introducing Sally to the delights of biking around Ibiza 🙂

Yesterday I started my tour again from Valencia,and its excellent  Hotel Valencia Center, I liked it so much I stayed a couple of days extra after dropping Sally of at Valencia airport.  In fact I could easily see me returning for longer 🙂

It was a very tough day too, with a huge climb according to Strava of 6,423 feet over 67 miles with a wind direct from the West and yes I was heading West 🙁  It was cold too and I was dressed for the sun not high altitudes :-(. Finally arriving at the delightful Hotel Jalance with it’s very steep driveway 🙁 frozen and totally wrecked.

This morning I dressed in every bit of cycling clothes that I had, the wind continued and perhaps I should have stayed, that’s the problem with booking a hotel the night before 🙁

The day was pretty murderous climbing up to 3,000 feet and then, due to the strength of the  wind, having to pedal down the hills in a low gear 🙁
The day finally ended with a climb, as the name suggests, to Chinchilla de MONT Aragon and the freezing cold bedroom at El Volante with it’s very tepid warm water shower (I didn’t bother as I would never have warmed up again 🙁 You can view the Strava here.

I think I will be sleeping in my clothes but I guess for €25 what else do you expect. My slowest average speed ever according to Strava of 8mph and not a speck of sun all day.