Picos de Europa

15th May

We are staying in a fantastic location. The site is excellent, well laid out, very clean and tidy, quiet and calm. The town, which is an easy walk away, downhill, is quite popular with tourist buses, but has a range of shops and eateries which we may go and try later. The Menu de Dia is widespread and at a standard price of 10 Euro looks good value.

We are to the south of the Picos so the early morning sun is good. Overnight it can get quite cool so the morning is chilly. Happily there is no wind at that time so it begins to warm up reasonably quickly. However, as the day wears on so the wind increases, blowing gustily along the mountain passes. This made cycling even harder!

Yesterday I decided to ride back along the road to the north and I discovered several things. The wind! It was hard work cycling out as it was directly into a northerly wind that gusted quite a lot.

The flat gorge. Of course it was not flat. As I got to the gorge and I went about 6 miles along its tortuous route I kept on having the impression that I was going downhill so the return ride would be uphill. And of course it was. It wasn't steep but it was always uphill.

There really wasn't much traffic. Only one idiot of the type, 'I have a fast car so let me show you what I can do'! As he charged past, he had to brake hard as the truck in front was turning right. Fine, then he rushed on again but suddenly he slowed, now 4-500 yards in front of me: why? Ah, yes the police!

Anyway the ride was actually not to bad but the last 900 meters were really hard as it's a steep hill up to the campsite. Just made it but it was a struggle after a hard 23 miles or so. Now for a rest!