Sunday 17th June

I was up and away early as I knew it was going to be a tough day battling the headwinds that were forecast to be even stronger than yesterday. Early morning photos give no hint of the struggle ahead

Even Google Maps seemed to be against me, routing me along this ‘road’ shortly after leaving the own of Salles;

Since coming across the border from Spain, I’ve noticed that drivers are not quite so respectful of passing clearances for cyclists. In the strong wind conditions of the day – cross winds being particularly bad – this gave me some cause for concern. Luckily – if that term is appropriate – the gusts tended to push me off the side of the road (on more than just a few occasions) – rather than into the path of overtaking vehicles.

 

South of Narbonne I actually caught up with another touring cyclist and for the next hour or so we rode along together, sharing the leading and wind-breaking duties and attempted to communicate in a mix of English French and German

Angel was from Spain and two years younger than I. He had a very casual approach to his cycle touring. With no real idea where he was headed, he was happy to just follow along on whatever route I took. He had a cycle helmet, but it was hanging off the back of his bike. When the pace was increased a little and he got hot, off came his shirt and he rode along bare-chested. He said he never used campsites and I don’t think he had a tent. I got the impression he just pulled off the side of the road when he’d had enough and slept in a bivvi-bag. At Narbonne, my route turned North-West. Angel knew enough that he didn’t want to go that way. I attempted to buy him a coffee, but the establishment at the junction marking our separate ways didn’t want to serve us – that was a first for me! We said our goodbyes and wished each other luck.

Without my intermittent wind break in front of me, I was now back to facing the wind on my own. It was tough and thirsty work, but when I pulled off the road to take a milk-shake break at a fast food establishment, I didn’t expect to suddenly come across this scene;

Eventually, after 85.5 kms and 6 and a quarter hours of pedalling, I arrived at the campsite identified by my niece as being the closest to where she was staying and I attempted to check in; “votre passport s’il vous plait”the receptionist requested – “bien sur” I replied, followed very quickly by – “merde; pas de passport!”

My passport was not in the only place that I ever keep it! The site manager checked me in without seeing it, but now I had a potentially huge problem. I pitched my tent, made a cup of tea and had a think about it. I rang last night’s campsite. The friendly manager that I’d had a long chat with answered the phone. “was my passport in reception?” I asked. She went to check…….and……..it was still in the photocopier!! She was most apologetic; I felt most stupid. So, now I knew where my passport was, I just had to work out how to get it back.

I toddled off to meet my niece. Emma had been in France for a few months now and she would have some clues as to a solution I was sure. We laughed at our initial meeting – normally we would only ever see each other at a family gathering in one or other of our familiar English family homes, yet here we were in very rural France, both arriving on bicycles at a very local restaurant to spend the evening in solely each other’s company. It was a really pleasant meal and – as I’d hoped – she helped come up with a practical plan. We ruled out the French postal system (both of us had prior reliability issues with it) I ruled out cycling back to get it on psychological grounds. There were no French trains running tomorrow because of the ongoing national rail workers strike. The nearest car hire location was miles away. Solution = cycle into and sight see in Carcassonne tomorrow, return to Salles by train (accompanied by bike) the day after, collect passport, get back on train (with bike) and go to Toulouse to be in a position to get to the aunt & uncle’s for our pre-arranged lunch the day after. Meal finished, plan decided, I accompanied Emma back to her vineyard for a quick look-see and then reversed my route in the dark back to my campsite.

A long, tough-cycling, drama-filled, pleasant-family-socialising, plan-formulating day.

85.6 kms / 53.2 miles are the bare statistics.

Saturday 16th June

Johnny and the majority of his team were leaving pretty early, so I was up to say goodbye to them all. There were a lot of sore heads and quiet tongues around the breakfast table and I was not immune to those afflictions. After they had all left I returned to my hotel room – it was available to me until midday and I was going to make the most of it.

My plans for the next few days centered around meeting up with extended family. I had an invitation to stay with an aunt & uncle on my wife’s side in their house to the west of Toulouse, my sister-in-law & husband were also going to be in the same area visiting their daughter, (my niece) wbo in turn had just started working on a vineyard just east of Carcassonne. I toyed with various combinations of routes, sequences and dates to come up with a cunning plan. I established that my niece would be available to meet up on Sunday evening, so that became my first aiming point. An afternoon of around 40kms today should put me in a decent position to effect a rendezvous on the following day. Now 40 kms in an afternoon would normally not present me too great a challenge, but today, with a thumping headache and a howling headwind, it proved a stiff challenge.

I only managed one photo of the day – an unremarkable image of a rather unremarkable 15th Century monument; the Fortress of Salles

The fortress was originally built by the Spanish to guard the border between Catalonia and France and it changed hands 3 times in 150 years before the borders were re-drawn in 1659 following the treaty of the Pyrenees. It has remained in French possession ever since.

Just up the road from the fortress I came to my campsite. As I checked in, I started chatting with the site manager. It was one of those occasions when you just hit it off with someone; we chatted for ages over kids, football, nationalities, travel, the weather, food…….However, as pleasant as the conversation was, it was to have some unfortunate knock-on consequences over the next couple of days (to be revealed in subsequent blogs) Eventually I was shown to my pitch, set up camp, cooked, showered and crashed out for some much needed sleep. The wind was forecast to be even stronger for tomorrow and I had a long day ahead of me if I was to make my rendezvous  with my niece – I needed the rest!.

42.8 kms / 26.5 miles for the day.

Friday 15th June

My neighbour (Johnny) and I had arranged to meet for lunch at a restaurant in the Pyrenean foothills. It looked to be about two and a quarter hours away uphill from my campsite, so I was packed up and ready to go fairly early. Two small Cols later;

and I arrived at the lovely restaurant;

although, as it turned out, I was almost 2 hours early – and it takes a lot of coffee to fill that amount of time!

Eventually Johnny and his team arrived in a mad dash and, after they all had a good giggle at my bike, we all settled down for a lovely lunch.

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Johnny’s trip was so well supported; 3 minivans followed and led out their small peleton of 10 riders, with luggage, spare wheels, spare bike frames, energy gels, biscuits, water and cameras all held at the ready. One of the vans was always ahead at junction points to indicate the correct way ahead. After lunch all my heavy luggage was offloaded from my bike and transferred to one of the vans; I now stood a chance of keeping up with the flying carbon fibre machines up the hills – as long as they took it easy. Going downhill I was all over them!!

The foot-hills gradually gave way to the flatlands and we sped into Argeles sur Mer and the end of the Pyrenean traverse for Johnny and his group.

The boys (a really great bunch of very welcoming blokes) had done exceptionally well; a lot of miles, a lot of climbing, taking in all the well known Tour de France cols and a lot of atrocious weather to contend with. I was delighted to be able to join them for the relatively easy last half a day

And then it all got a bit messy!! A random, non-repeating sequence of Gin & Tonic, beer and wine prefaced, accompanied and book-ended a lovely meal. At the point approaching midnight where the Cognac and Scotch were purloined from the bar, I became a party pooper and retired for the rest of the night.

84 kms / 52 miles for the day.

Thursday 14th June

For many years I’ve had my eye on a particular adventure trip and it had come to take its place on my ‘bucket list’ of things to do. It only takes place once a year, is only available to about 50 people and normally sells out within minutes of becoming available. It is unique of it’s kind. Lasting 52 days, without the travel to and from the start and finish points, it is not the sort of trip that you can easily do whilst holding down any sort of normal employment, or long-term responsibility, so until now it had not been a serious proposition for me.

Whilst in Nepal last year, I had discussed the adventure with a fellow traveller who had close professional knowledge of the trip and his advice had been to do it as soon as I possibly could. As I was now in a position to do exactly that, I had been bugging the travel agency and trip operator for months to find out when the trip was ‘going live’. That information had not been available when I left home, so I had come away with the application form already completed and attached to a draft email, a copy of the application form deposited with the travel agent and an agreement from the trip operator that the agent could submit my application if I was not in WiFi contact at the point the trip became available. A couple of days ago I was informed that the trip availability was going to go live at midday, Central European Time, today.

Half an hour before the appointed time, having cycled about 25kms, I was sat outside a cafe, WiFi connected, draft email on screen and an accurate clock countdown visible to me.

At one second after midday I pressed ‘Send’. Moments later I received an email indicating that my travel agent had just done exactly the same thing on my behalf. I had done all I could and now just needed to wait in order to find out if my application had been successful.

In the meantime, it was time to get on with my other, slightly less important, task of the day. Whilst I had been back in the UK, I had been chatting to a neighbour who was about to cycle the entire length of the Pyrenees with a group of mates on an organised and supported week-long ride. It appeared we might be able to meet up for lunch and the last few miles of his final day – which was tomorrow. To achieve this I needed to position myself at a campsite along his route for this evening – and that was going to make it a long day.

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Fortunately the scenery and weather made for an enjoyable one also. In this corner of Spain, close to the French border, the visible desire for Catalan autonomy was as strong as I had seen throughout the region. Catalan flags, colours, banners and the yellow symbol representing the independence movement were to be seen everywhere;

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By mid afternoon I had an acknowledgement of my adventure application. After 88kms of cycling I came to the French border;

but what came as some surprise was that the Catalan culture and influence did not cease at the border. Place names and street names were indicated in both French and Catalan (not Spanish) and support for independence was still very evident. It was only in latter days that I would learn that this part of France was historically known as Northern Catalonia.

Two hours and 20 kms of largely uphill later, I arrived at my campsite. Immediately upon entering through the gate of the site I was met by the owner with the following series of questions; “would you like a beer?” “would you like a small or large one?” “would you like chips with it?” – you can probably guess what my responses were!

This friendly welcome capped an incredibly exciting few minutes as I had just found out that I had gained a place on the trip for next year. So, on February 8th 2019 in Ushuaia, Southern Argentina, I embark on this:

52 days later, via the Antarctic, South Georgia, Tristan de Cunha;

and a crossing of The Southern Ocean:

I arrive in Cape Town, South Africa.

I am so excited!!

I have no idea how I’m going to get to Ushuaia, or home from Cape Town.

I’ll work it out!

Back to the here and now – my day involved seven and a half hours of pedalling, covering 109kms across two countries. In map format it looked like this;

 

Wednesday 13th June

I arrived back into Girona airport in the early afternoon and walked the short distance to the hotel I had left 3 weeks ago. My bike and all its luggage were exactly where it had been left and there was still air in the tyres. I added my single pannier to the racking, grabbed a quick coffee and then hit the road for the short distance into town and the hostel I had booked to stay at for the night. Oh my goodness, did it feel good to be back pedalling again. The sun was out, it was warm, it was calm; I felt all the negative emotions generated by the recent past begin to flow from my body. The process seemed to start at the top of my head and then, by the time it passed my shoulders and they relaxed and dropped, I let out a huge sigh and a smile reappeared on my face. An awful lot had changed; my mum was gone, all the anniversaries generated by the loss of my wife had passed, the aim of my cycle ride had drastically altered. Despite it all, turning the pedals on a heavily-laden bicycle still felt like the right thing for me to be doing.

I dumped my bike and kit at the hostel, headed out to the recommended Tapas restaurant – there was a great selection of food on offer

– and then went for a long walk around the town as the sun began to set.

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Girona is an interesting looking town, but quite how long it would hold that interest I don’t know.

After just 13.2 kms today, the cycling proper re-starts tomorrow. Up to this point however, I can tell you I’ve covered 3645.1 kms / 2265 miles.

 

Tuesday 22nd May

The prospect of writing about this day has delayed the publishing of my blog for a month. Now I feel I just have to write it and get on with continuing the commentary on the next stage of my cycle adventure.

My mum had not been in good health for quite some time and had been admitted to hospital with a suspected chest infection at the back end of April. Fortunately, in a way, this coincided with my last pre-planned trip back to UK, as the downturn in her health turned out to be late stage lung cancer. She was determined that her illness shouldn’t unduly impact on my plans and was most insistent that I return to Spain earlier in May in order to continue with my ride. This I did, whilst planning another return home for a few weeks at the end of the month. I’d managed to speak to her in her hospital room every day, but last night she was not well enough to respond.

This morning I rode into Girona and explored the town for a while, before grabbing a coffee.

Just as I was about to leave the cafe, I received a phone call from my daughter; my mum was really poorly and the advice was to get home as soon as possible. I headed off on my planned route in the direction of Perpignan with the thought that the airport there would provide the best route home. In the meantime I tasked my daughter with researching fight options to get me home and agreed we would speak in 2 hours’ time. At the appointed hour, whilst sat in a transport cafe in the midst of a thunderstorm, she told me she had found a flight from Girona into my home town airport of Bournemouth for the next day. I booked the flight there and then, arranged a hotel at the airport which could store my bicycle for an unknown period of time and then got back on my bike and headed off in the direction from whence I’d come.

Shortly after arriving at the hotel my brother phoned to say that my mum had just passed away.

The intervening month or so has not been easy, to say the least. However, following encouragement and advice from the rest of the family, I have been back on the bike for a little over a week. The nature of my ride has now changed and that will become apparent over the course of my subsequent blogs.

 

Monday 21st May

I left Barcelona with my bike sporting a flag from last night’s game. I thought my rig looked very jaunty, but to my surprise and slight disappointment, I generated very few comments, waves, or car honks;

After 25kms I stopped at a beach-side cafe for a coffee and food. As I was manoeuvring my bike to rest against a wall, a couple sat at another table started asking me questions. They were just setting out for a day’s mountain biking and were curious about my bike and what I was doing. The conversation progressed and I shifted from standing by my bike, to standing by their table, to sitting at their table, to eating and drinking with them. We chatted for an hour or more; he had been a professional footballer with Alaves, but now worked in IT (a clue as to why the Spaniards play a more intelligent brand of football than us Brits?) – she was a PE teacher. When it came time to leave I discovered that they had already paid my bill. Humanity – go figure. Saturday some scummy little toe rag nicks stuff off my bike, today somebody is interested in what I’m doing and, completely unbidden, buys me brunch.

Thank you Oscar and Ilum.

Faith and mood restored, I continued heading north. At Lloret de Mar, I said goodbye to the sea for what I thought was going to be a very long time and turned inland. Circumstances, however, were to bring me back to the sea sooner than I anticipated.

The first part of the day had been very flat as I followed the coast, but now I was forced into a fair amount of climbing and this caused me a dilemma as I needed to buy food. I was heading for a campsite, but not knowing whether they had any eating facilities, I needed to make sure I had sufficient supplies to cater for myself. Do you load up the bike with what could be a couple of kilos of extra stuff a long way away from the campsite and then drag it up the hills, or do you chance that somewhere nearer to the site you’ll find somewhere to stock up when all the climbing has been done? I bottled out and bought early. I know I can drag the food up – I know I can’t survive an evening without eating! It was a good decision – the campsite had no facilities at all and was very isolated. I’d just finished setting up camp and eating when a Dutch couple wandered past and invited me for a glass of wine or two at their motorhome. My arm twisted, I headed over after clearing up. It was a good job for them that they had plenty of time on their hands; driving down the motorway at 100kph earlier in the day, their motorhome door had opened up and had then been ripped off. The first they knew about it was at a peage stop about 80kms further on when a police car turned up with their door in the boot of the police car!! The insurance company reckoned 5 days before they could get a replacement to them. It made for an interesting conversation starter!

 

115.4 kms / 71.7 miles for the day.

Saturday 19th – Sunday 20th May

It is Thursday the 14th of June. I am back in the Spanish town of Girona and waiting to have breakfast in my hostel. I last left this blog on the 18th of May when I was ensconced in a bar with friends in Barcelona; an awful lot has happened in the intervening 4 weeks and this is the start of the catch up.

Saturday the 19th began in a bar in Barcelona; the live band were pretty good, but that’s the only photo of proceedings you get to see!

If I tell you that we were awake at 8am after three and a half hours sleep, you can perhaps fill in the blanks yourselves! The rest of Saturday was slow; a bus tour of the city sights with plenty of hop-offs for coffee and sustenance;

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was followed by a tour of Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece – the Sagrada Familia.

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Watching the utterly boring FA Cup Final was a complete comedown from the architectural delights of the city, despite it being accompanied by Guinness in an Irish bar, (as you do in the Capital of Catalunya!) before we grabbed dinner and an early night.

Our AirBnB apartment was absolutely fine, but it was in a very scruffy building in an old part of town;

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Securing the bike was a tricky task. The only place I could put it was in a little alcove halfway up the stairs of the very narrow entrance hallway;

Despite thinking I’d cleared everything off the bike; despite the front door being double locked at all times; despite there only being 3 other apartments in the building – I suffered the Barcelona tourist inevitability and had a couple of things stolen out of the very small storage pouch on the frame. I’d just overlooked the fact that I’d left anything in there. I was so upset and annoyed – to the point of having my first ever thought of abandoning the whole ride there and then. The things that were stolen were not worth much money, but they were very personal and very much part of what was making the whole experience so special up to now.

Sunday was much better. We decided to walk down to the beach, swim in the sea, sample tapas and mojitos for lunch, walk around some of the city sights not fully appreciated yesterday and then make our way to and from our main event of the weekend. In total we walked 15 miles – amazing how much ground you can cover, even when you’re not trying too hard.

So, the main event; Mark had managed to get us tickets to the Nou Camp stadium for Barcelona’s last game of the season and their captain Andres Iniesta’s (in my opinion one of the best players I have ever seen) last ever game for the club.

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The game of football was better than the FA Cup Final, but it was certainly no classic. However, the atmosphere generated by 84,000+ spectators and the significance of the occasion guaranteed that the experience was an absolutely fantastic one.

Barcelona – great place to visit, take care of your valuables!

 

 

An Update

A compelling reason to return home has arisen, hence the sudden stop to the blog. I and the girls are all OK and I’m hoping to resurrect the cycling and the blog after the 13th of June. Many thanks to all of you who have already expressed concern.

Friday 18th May

Dawn coincided with a few drops of rain falling on the tent. The combination of light and sound – allied to last night’s pint of beer – caused a reaction familiar to many; I was suddenly desperate for a pee! Dressed, relieved and able to take in my surroundings, I noticed an intense rainbow in the sky. Rushing back to my tent for a camera, I then took a gentle jog down to the beach;

With an early start under my belt, I managed to get going at a decent time and headed off in great anticipation for my weekend in Barcelona. My route for the day was going to be a smidge under 80 kms and largely along the coast. Although flat for the most part, there was a section between Sitges and Garraf that looked like it could be a bit hilly; and so it proved. Below is a view looking back down at Sitges;

From the same spot, my route takes me across the hillside up there in the direction of Garraf;

At the highest point on this section, I stopped in one of the very few lay-byes to have a drink, a bite to eat and a launch of the drone;

Thereafter it was a downhill then flat run into Barcelona. Passing the airport I had a car pull out on me in a slightly concerning way (although nothing desperate) – the first time I’ve experienced anything like this in over 2000 miles of cycling. I take my hat off to the Spanish drivers; they have been especially courteous to cyclists. It was the same on my run in to the city centre. Friday afternoon in a busy city and I felt totally at ease manoeuvring my bicycle around the traffic and the road system.

My accommodation had a washing machine – joy! Two loads done, electronics charged, calls made, Uni friend Mark arrived, arrangements made to also meet up with school friend Steve who just happened to be in town for a conference, out for a beer………and then it all gets a bit ugly – as these occasions are wont to do! There are no presentable photos left for me to post for the day!

 

78.5 kms / 48.8 miles for the day