This one's shorter than the last - 500km - and I'm not doing it alone but with Rory, a friend and fellow bike fiend. We're cycling from Madrid to Santander.
This trip is a lot harder than the last one. Day 1 was very hard. 134km and over a mountain pass which topped out at 1,850km. We hit the worst of the climb at lunchtime so it was either eat then climb or climb then eat.
We chose to climb first, which was a mistake. About 250 vertical metres from the top I started feeling light headed and shaky with hunger. Eventually we got to the top and ate an over priced lunch on a surprisingly cold sun terrace and chatted to a pair of mountain bikers and a roadie riding with a club from Valencia. The way down was fast through hairpins but we got stuck behind a caravan. I wasn't bold enough to pass him on the hairpins so we just followed him down. We got to the bottom at 20 past six in the evening and still had a good 50km and 2.5 hours of riding to go. We'd been on the road since 10am.
Soon, though, the riding became very pleasant. We turned off the main road at San Ildefonso and took smaller roads though rolling farmland and scrub to Cantalejo. We finally rolled into the campsite just past nine in the evening.
We ate barbecued chorizo for dinner and slept like the dead.
This trip is a lot harder than the last one. Day 1 was very hard. 134km and over a mountain pass which topped out at 1,850km. We hit the worst of the climb at lunchtime so it was either eat then climb or climb then eat.
We chose to climb first, which was a mistake. About 250 vertical metres from the top I started feeling light headed and shaky with hunger. Eventually we got to the top and ate an over priced lunch on a surprisingly cold sun terrace and chatted to a pair of mountain bikers and a roadie riding with a club from Valencia. The way down was fast through hairpins but we got stuck behind a caravan. I wasn't bold enough to pass him on the hairpins so we just followed him down. We got to the bottom at 20 past six in the evening and still had a good 50km and 2.5 hours of riding to go. We'd been on the road since 10am.
Soon, though, the riding became very pleasant. We turned off the main road at San Ildefonso and took smaller roads though rolling farmland and scrub to Cantalejo. We finally rolled into the campsite just past nine in the evening.
We ate barbecued chorizo for dinner and slept like the dead.
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