Day 1,506
Hola España, de nuevo
Once upon a time, way back in the 1960s my mum and dad would take us on an annual summer holiday. We would drive from Yorkshire to Tenby in Wales. It was a long and meandering journey, and for a young hardworking couple, with 5 children all aged under 10, plus one slightly older niece, it wasn't a joyful experience. One year my dad had what he felt was an inspired idea. Instead of battling busy summer roads with us kids asking ‘are we there yet?’ every five minutes, between bouts of car sickness, endless games of eye spy, and arguments, we would set off late in the evening and would ‘gently drive through the night’, a sentence that is now burned into the minds of myself and siblings, even typing the words brings me to a state of zombie-like shock. He put the seats down, popped a lilo in the back and we all squeezed in, no seatbelts or health and safety concerns in those long ago halcyon days. I will spare you the details of the journey but it was never attempted again. We never learn though do we?
When Tom and I booked our flights to Spain we decided to ‘gently fly through the night’, sleep on the planes and with a 10am arrival in Barcelona could build our bikes and soon be on our way. This meant hanging about, bikes and bags packed until 11pm. Then a taxi to the airport and a couple of hours of more hanging about, no seats to rest on waiting for check-in to open. It took hours to get through to departures, but at 2.30am we were on board ready to sleep. Except they immediately brought us breakfast, and by the time the plane load had eaten, gone to the loo, tipped seats back, it was time to land in Istanbul. By now it was about 7am and we had a 3-hour wait. Which turned to 4 as our flight was delayed.
Airports designers never seem to consider that people who use them ever want to do anything but spend a lot of money in duty free and maybe buy some very overpriced food. Somewhere comfortable to rest seems not to be a consideration and so we wandered about, spraying ourselves with free samples of scent whilst looking for somewhere to sit, or maybe even lie down that wasn't already occupied. There are comfortable seats, but they hide them, they really do. You usually find them, unoccupied, in a random corridor, but always just as your flight is called. Finally we were in the air again. Yet another breakfast. No crying children, just one very unhappy cat to keep us all awake. So, still without any sleep we landed in Barcelona and made our way to customs. It took forever to get there, about 5 plane loads had arrived together and there were just two staff on duty. Fortunately after about 30 minutes of slowly queuing more staff arrived, and in just under two hours after landing we were reunited with our bikes. Naturally we were hungry. No, I don't know how that's possible either, but we were. Eventually, fed and watered, bikes built, kind airport staff happy to take away our bike boxes, we were ready to depart.
Except it was nearly 4pm. Gently flying through the night had left us sleep deprived and a little grumpy. The airport designers in their wisdom had hidden the entrance to the bike lane to exit the airport in the middle of a carpark with barriers to get past to enter. Eventually we found it and we were on our way, on wonderful empty cycle lanes (well I'd be surprised if many cyclists actually ever find them). Tom had a wild camp spot picked out about 20 miles away, but we soon abandoned that idea and after 5 miles booked into a hotel. We were hungry again (I know, hard to believe), except in Spain no one wants decent food before about 9pm at night, so we joined the screaming kids in KFC, ate a tasteless meal and then finally fell asleep. No more ‘gently flying through the night’ for us, ever again.
After a night's sleep we were happy and ready to start our journey to join our family on holiday in Toulouse. I can hear you say ‘But that's in France, it has an airport, why didn't you simply fly there?’. Hey, the Pyrénées are in the way. Crazy! Except remember it's Tom planning the routes and he wants to cycle over the Pyrénées, not only that, but he wants to cycle over the highest col in the Pyrénées and by landing in Barcelona we can do just that.
First though, we had to get there. The journey took us close to Montserrat, along beautiful quiet roads, we passed our not needed wild camp spot, a long abandoned castle. We stopped for photos, then on we went. We were riding close to a river, passing through many small villages. It was idyllic. To cross the river we had the option of a modern bridge or we could use an old medieval one. It was beautiful to look at, and as it's impossible to actually ride on it we had plenty of time to enjoy it as we half pushed and half carried our bikes over.
Not a bridge made for cyclists
Ahead of us, high above loomed Montserrat, we could make out the monastery, fortunately, being Sunday it was closed to visitors, so we cycled on without the need to scale a mountain.
We eventually found a wild camp spot on the edge of a small piece of woodland, no views of the monastery but we had the majestic mountain range as a backdrop, so we had no complaints. It might not be the Silk Road and the Pamirs but we were happy and keen to explore more of Spain.
Not a bad wild camp at all
