beercyclers.com

Olá!

Brock — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:19:04 +0000

That’s Portuguese for hola!

We had a fantastic time in Galicia, cycled right round the rugged coast and came into Santiago from the West, ate pilgrim cake and octopus, drank Alborino wine and enjoyed wonderful deserted sandy coves tucked away in the rocky coast.

The going has become much easier now as we head down the coast of Portugal, straight and flat roads but sometimes bumpy cobbles jar our teeth and rears. We’ve spent a couple of days in Porto, drinking port on the waterfront and munching barbecued chestnuts from newspaper cones, enjoyed a funicular ride up to a temple overlooking Viana do Castello and are now somewhere south of Figueira Da Foz.

erm Oh yeah, hello!

Brock — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:19:52 +0000

Hello folks, Sorry about the lack of updates but it just became too much of a chore having to look for a net connection when we had serious lazing around to do. I have continued writing the journal which will be dumped on the net at some point when I can face the tedious task of typing it all up.

By way of a quick update we spent a week in a lovely hotel in Bilbao with Ange and Kerry’s Mum Sonia who flew out to be with us for a while, we had a great time visiting the Gugenheim museum and enjoying the sights and sounds of the yearly fiesta ‘Asta Negusia’ which had the streets heaving. We ventured into the wonderful Picos de Europa mountains in Asturias, and I developed a completely unprecedented taste for their famed ’sidra’ or cider.

We’ve continued Slowly West along the coast and are now in Viveiro near the North Western tip of Spain, soon to head South toward Portugal, probably dropping into Santiago de Compostela since we’ve seen many pilgrims trudging that way as we’ve repeatedly found ourselves on the coastal ‘Camino de Santiago’ along our way.

Thanks for your attention and apologies again if you were enjoying the witterings of our blog, there will be more to see presently!

12 miles Donostia-San Sabastian to Zarautz

Brock — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:21:30 +0000

We treated ourselves to a wonderful continental breakfast, excellent coffee, fresh orange juice and apricot marmalade on the first toast we’ve had since leaving England.
The Spanish lads that had returned noisily to their tent at 5.30 in the morning slept fitfully as we packed up, carefully making as much noise as possible. I managed to find three or four things to throw into the bin next to their pitch, having to repeatedly slam the lid to make sure it was shut. The sun was shining as we left the site but the peak of the mountain had cloud rolling across it above us. I joked with Kez that our road was going up there and we laughed at the absurdity of the notion before realising a little further on that our road was indeed taking us directly up to the top. We cycled some and pushed some as masochistic health nuts puffed their way past in sweaty lycra, but before too long we were high up on the peak of Igueldo in a completely different climate from two hours ago. Clouds swept across the ridge driven by the cold wind sweeping up over the craggy coastline from the Atlantic. Horses with thick manes huddled against the weather as we passed, and occasionally through the rolling grey murk we could spy little points of glinting light that were sunlit yachts floating serenely in the ocean to the North, like faint apparitions from another dimension. We continued along the ridge enjoying the dramatic views and introducing ourselves to furry faced donkeys before the descent started. Pretty soon our brakes were being tested to the limit as we carefully cruised down out of the cloud, around hairpin bends, past noisy streams rushing down the mountain, through cold dark rocky clefts and views across the valley to the South where the motorway took the more sensible route around the mountains. By the time we reached the bottom my hot brake pads were squealing like a sick violin hurting my ears, and our hands were aching from holding the brake levers. Soon we found the turning to our camp site which hilariously swept steeply up to the high cliffs above the town. Halfway up, taking a breather, we spied the towns other camp site far below, just round the corner from where we’d started the climb. We decided to continue up anyway having come this far, and we were pleased with our pitch once we’d finally checked in. A sheltered grassy corner with a wall just the right height to sit on with a bottle of wine.

20 miles Hondarribia to Donostia-San Sebastian

Brock — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:19:50 +0000

we took the main road out of Hondarribia and over Monte Jaizkebel. Being Sunday the traffic wasn’t too horrendous, and the steady gradient of the highway made the long climb more manageable. Even so Kez was less than ecstatic about reaching her first proper mountain pass, demanding breathlessly that it should definitely be the last. The long descent did nothing to cheer her as we coasted at fair speed down the dual carriageway taking heart from the fact that other cyclists were taking the same route, but still a bit unnerved at having to negotiate sliproads with traffic joining from the right. Things got worse when getting confused by the signs, lane changes and flyovers we coasted merrily through a tunnel and found ourselves at the start of a motorway with no obvious way to get off. The crash barriers were too high to lift the loaded bikes over so there was nothing for it but to remove all the panniers, roll them underneath, throw the bikes over the top then squeeze through ourselves, and down the spikey slippy verge beyond. The place was a maze of new roads and roadworks that left the GPS totally confused, but the mild peril of finding ourselves on a motorway seemed to cheer Kez up a bit as I took us back and forth on a cycleway trying to find our way down into the streets of Donostia-San Sabastian. Eventually we made it through the industrial outskirts and towerblocked suburbs finding ourselves in the smart bay area and stopped on the busy promenade to gaze at the beautiful bay. Kez had had enough of the traffic and hubbub though and the realisation that camp site was near the top of Mount Igueldo didn’t really sink in until we’d heaved and pushed our bikes upwards for three miles, albeit with wonderful views of the dramatic rocky coast and sparkling blue ocean that heaved and foamed around inaccessible boulder strewn beaches hundreds of feet below us. Drinks and tapas in the camp site bar were well deserved after a tough day. A short one tomorrow, hopefully all downhill.

0 miles Hondarribia

Brock — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:17:16 +0000

The night wasn’t one of the best apart from teenager racket, the annoying noise of squeaky airbeds and snoring from tents right next to us, there was some very heavy rain that caused various commotions as campers tried to batten down their hatches at around 3am. We tried to lay in since we weren’t leaving today but the sudden loud woosh of an airbed being uncorked in the tent next to us woke Kez with a start that made her swear out loud about peoples lack of consideration for others. We cheered ourselves with superb espressos from the bar and were just eyeing up two large glazed and chocolate dipped croissants that were sitting on the bar next to us when someone beat us to them, and we sadly watched them being carried away to a table at the back of the bar. We walked back into town and spent some time looking at the items and prices in the ‘Dia’ supermercado before finding the rest of the town busy with open shops and heaving cafés. A small bookshop had our camp site guide and we sat on the side of the bay to study it while people swam, sunbathed and tried unsuccessfully to net the fish that swam around them. We walked up into the old town enoyed views of the mountains through ruined fortifications and lunched on a nice salad with an assortment of Iberico meats in a restaurant at the top of the town. We managed to avoid sitting in our tiny pitch with the noisy campers all evening by making full use of the camp site bar until we were too tipsy to care.

16 miles Socoa to Hondarribia

Brock — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:14:54 +0000

The cycling was lovely along the cliff tops this morning. Fantastic views of the Atlantic, craggy rock faces and striking violet blue flowers as we trundled towards Hendaye and Spain just beyond. We shared the road with quite a few racing cyclists out training in the hills and enjoyed a descent with views over the Baie De Chingoudy, the huge bay that seperates France and Spain at the atlantic coast. Our arrival in Spain was a fairly low key affair. No flamenco fanfair, border photos or free straw donkey, we just bumped over a dodgy patch of road that presumably neither administration consider their problem then I noticed the signs were different colours and that I didn’t understand the road markings. We stopped on the pavement of a tree lined avenue to work out where we should be heading.
‘Are we actually in Spain now?’ Kez asked.
‘Errm.. Yeah’ I replied.
Being the land of siesta at around lunchtime the place was very quiet. Shuttered shops and silent offices mainly but I managed to find a small corner shop that was open and bought a carton of Don Simon grape juice and a packet of chocolate biscuit things that were like eating a large mouthful of sawdust covered in a micro layer of chocolate that served only to make your fingers sticky. Still without a camp site guide we decided to head for the nearest indicated on the GPS hoping it would be suitable. We heaved our bikes up a narrow concrete lane that wound us needlessly over a good portion of Mount Jaizkibel before arriving at the site which thankfully had space and was a reasonable price. I say space, but actually we were shown to a narrow strip of grass crammed with tents and managed to pitch in what could only be called a gap. Noisy drunken Spanish teenagers sought the attention of everyone by being generally annoying and messy in the corner, but it was the weekend and the site had a bar we could do some sitting in later. We took the shortish walk down into the town of Hondarribia where we enjoyed the view across the bay to France and discovered that we could have saved ourselves a lot of effort by catching a small ferry boat across the mouth of the bay for pedestrians and cyclists which might have been a nicer way to cross the border, but hey ho.
The girl in the tourist office explained that the town was having some kind of fiesta to do with fishermen, so all the shops would be closed today. We didn’t find any sort of festivities that would force shops to close, but I like their style anyway. We decided to eat in the bar tonight and stay tomorrow to explore the old part of town and find a camp site guide if the shops could be bothered to open on a Saturday. The site bar provided cheap beer, a relief after the extortionate price of a small frothy lager in France, and we ate a good ensalada mixta with patatas bravas, albondigas and redondos de ternedo which wasn’t too bad considering the overworked, curly haired sweaty barman did all the cooking.

14 miles Ilbarritz to Socoa

Brock — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:13:43 +0000

We slogged our way up the rest of the hill and after a couple of tough miles I spotted a sign for a tourist office and left Kez at the top of the hill while I cruised down towards the coast to try and find a cycle route map. The girl in the office said there were no cycle ways because there were too many roads which made sense to me, so I slogged back up the hill, stopping briefly to watch some youngsters learning peloté, the game where the players wear wicker hook shaped scoops on their hands to launch a small ball at the wall with frightening force. Something like squash maybe, but scarier. Realising the only way around the coast to Spain was going to be the busy roads we pressed on through the traffic, delightfully cruising past long lines of cars and motorhomes in a narrow cycle lane on the main road. I was nearly forced into the verge as a bored driver decided to swing across the cycle lane to try and get out of the queues, but my squealing brakes alerted him to my presence and he wound down his window to shout an apology. I waved it off as we cruised on past and enjoyed the views as we coasted down to St Jean de Luz, round the huge bay before hitting some evil hills the other side. The fact that our little GPS doesn’t understand hills may become a problem as we get round into the rockier coast of Spain. Today was a good example as we followed its suggestion along a small road to lop off a corner of coast, but had to push and sweat our bikes up an evil incline to get over a ridge we could have avoided mostly by following the coast road. It hasn’t really been a problem up until now but with the landscape becoming a bit more serious I think I’m going to have to invest in a contoured map to help us avoid pain in the future. A few miles before Hendaye we came across a cheapish camp site opposite some fantastic rocky cliffs being some distance from the town and beaches meant it wasn’t packed, had proper grassy pitches and hedges and no cheesey disco, so we stopped. I had become quite exhausted for some reason and Kez managed all the chores while I lay on my back uselessly. Later we strolled along the cliffs marvelling at the crumpled layers of rock jutting up out of the sea to form huge smooth sections of cliff face that you could probably slide down relatively painlessly until you hit the jagged broken edges amongst the waves a hundred feet below. We managed to avoid that though, luckily.

19 miles Labenne to Ilbarritz

Brock — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:59:51 +0000

Traffic filled streets, fast roads, nasty hills, roundabouts and traffic lights for us today as we continued South. Fighting our way past queues of slow moving traffic was actually quite a refreshing change as we cycled through Bayonne and Biarritz. We stopped to unwind at a small park with a war memorial and I had a quick walk around the streets looking for a camp site guide for Spain. Of course, being still in France the book shops only seemed to have guides to France so I gave up and returned to Kez with a baguette to eat with the large pork sausage and juicy melon in our food bag. It was hard work today with the heat, hills and stop start traffic taking its toll, and having got out of Biarritz and past some beautiful coastline, we gave up half way up a steep hill with a four star camp site sitting there invitingly. At €26 it was the most we’ve spent on a camp site but it was a relief to be shown to a grassy shady pitch bordered by colourful hydrangers and without any of the dusty sand we’d been pitching on lately. Free wi-fi, a pool, restaurant and excellent showers made us feel a little less guilty about the expense as we relaxed into the rest of the afternoon. The evening entertainment turned out to be a pretty decent pop rock band playing some good covers, albeit with a French accent. We’d probably stay a week if it wasn’t so expensive.

21 miles Messanges to Labenne

Brock — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:57:46 +0000

An early departure saw us heading Southward again on fastish roads until Lac Marin D’Hossegor, where we took the ‘Avenue Tour de Lac’ down the West side of the lake. We began to wish we’d stuck to the main road as the avenue dipped and climbed its way through multiple exhausting hills offering glimpses of the pretty lake between the affluent real estate and forcing cyclists from both sides onto a dangerously narrow cycle lane presumably so the well to do residents could play in their 4×4s without having to consider anyone else. We rested on a waterside path in the smart center of Cap Breton that ran along the river into a marina full of yachts while joggers and cyclists passed before finding our way back onto the main road and the decent cycle path that ran along it. Decent except for the narrow gateways at junctions that forced us to wheel through awkwardly and caused no end of problems for the cyclists with double child trailers.
We found the smart looking municipal camp site in the touristy beachy part of Labenne but were told they couldn’t take us until 3pm, and only then if a booking didn’t turn up. The receptionist in a three star site round the corner pointed at a dusty square near the gate when we asked for a night. We looked at each other and politely declined. It looked like the place where the bins should be, but strangely, as we were leaving she called us back and after some discussion in the office gave us a nicer larger pitch with a tree, which we accepted, sandy though it was. The beach was packed with people enjoying the hot afternoon sun and we gazed across at the jagged mountainous looking coast of Spain looming through the distant haze. Once again we watched the sun set over the ocean before a late dinner while a petanque competition on our site entertained the guests and a cacophonous disco at the expensive four star site across the road thumped techno beats through the evening air until late.

27 miles St. Julien to Messanges

Brock — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:50:31 +0000

The morning was cloudy so we decided to press on today. Kez had a bit of a stressful time as our decamping disturbed a couple more spiders of the type that had ambushed her from the toilet roll yesterday. Luckily though I was available this time to leap on them with my size 11s as she squeaked and pointed out the unfortunate stripey forest dwellers. We took the road South deciding to leave the piste to the pootlers and pootled our way through Lit-et-Mixe and Vielle Sainte Girons. Although we were once again cycling with the traffic it was nice to be seeing the goings on in the towns instead of bypassing it all on the quiet pistes. We made good time and stopped for lunch on the shores of the Étang de Léon, another large lake with beaches and watersports, and more to the point, a very handy picnic table. We found our intended camp site and for the first time on our journey we were refused entry. ‘One tent for one night?’ I asked as usual in my best French.
‘Non’ came the simple reply. Apparently they were fully booked and I could quite believe it looking at the amount of kids running around. We sat down on one of the benches and decided on a new destination. The area was smothered in camp sites so it wasn’t a problem, but finding a cheapish one wasn’t so easy. We cycled a mile or two down the road and found two camp sites directly opposite each other. A three star charging €26 or a two star charging €15. We’re definitely more the two star types so we booked in and were lead to our pitch by a tired faced woman on a creaky bicycle. ‘Follow me please’ she said.
‘Are you fast?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Sometimes.’ she replied as we followed her inappropriate black lacy g-string up the dusty lumpy path. We were shown to a reasonably sized pitch with a shady tree which is good, but we were bordered by five other pitches with tents and a large caravan. One pitch had noisy French youngsters who were drinking some kind of spirit, clearly to excess and we felt like we were camping in a gipsy slum. Thankfully the boozers had a drunken tiff before passing out quite early and were quiet from then on. With our washing line adding to the shanty town atmosphere we decided it wasn’t so bad, just for one night.
We strolled down the road towards the beach which took us past noisy funfares, other crammed camping sites with mobile homes packed inches from each other and a noisy circus ring called ‘Toro Piscine’ which we’d seen hundreds of posters advertising for the last week or so. ‘Bull swimming pool’ didn’t sound much fun to us so we walked on over a huge sand dune just in time to watch the sun dip sedately into the Atlantic.