Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

Cold As Ice I believe I have previously shared my 'ultimate cycle touring tip' with you and yesterday afternoon we put it to good use.  The little grocery store near our hotel sold good beer or cold beer but no good cold beer.  So...grab a few cans...hide them in the freezer behind the choc ices and head to a bar.  Sip a cold beer at bar prices then return to the shop, liberate the (now cold) beer and retire to the hotel. I make no charge for these incredible life hacks but if you want to show your gratitude please lodge some money in my name at the nearest bar to the Holiday Inn, Gibraltar. Spice Up Your Life While we sipped our cold beers and patted ourselves on our backs for our cleverness we scouted the local restaurant scene and concluded that our best bet was Indian.  It got very good reviews, was nearby and, crucially, opened at 7:30.  Actually, if I'm honest, the big draw was that it also appeared that the waiters wore funny costume...

Tears of joy....a real gem of a day.  But first to wrap up yesterday:  the local public holiday in Bejar meant that our choices for dinner were limited and we settled on a small local's bar/restaurant for no better reason than it was open.  The place was busy and we stuck out as strangers rather more than I would have liked but we settled in and as soon as the waitress had served us each a generous bucket of Rioja we started to feel at home.  We had another fantastic, inexpensive meal and we are becoming real fans of 'ensalada mixta' as an appetiser...a groaning plate of fresh salad items with olives, tuna, eggs and a generous pour of olive oil with white wine or balsamic vinegar.  So....today.  I had plotted a road route of about 50 miles with 3500 of climb but, at the last moment, I noticed what appeared to be a bike path running the entire way.  Some research established it was a converted railway line, unpaved but traffic-free and sa...

Last night we were really big brave boys and went to a proper Spanish restaurant for some proper Spanish food.  I ordered in my best Spanglish and was pleasantly surprised when food turned up that almost exactly matched what I thought I had ordered.   The meal was excellent, substantial and inexpensive. This morning we had decided on a late start to wait for warmer temperatures, and this turned out to be a good plan as we woke to find we both had flat back tyres.  We pissed around for an hour fixing those, taking the opportunity to replace Plum's broken spoke while the wheel as off, and it was almost 10:30 before we turned a crank.   There is a point on these multi-day rides where I start to find my rhythm and I think, for this trip, it was today.  It doesn't get any easier....I just become accustomed to it being hard.  It was a short day (46 miles) but with plenty of climbing, including a vicious 14 per center at the very end.  I p...

If you thought the American diner was a poor eating choice you will be appalled by where we ate last night.  Villalpando is a small place with very few dining options, the best of which was our own hotel.  However, the restaurant wouldn't open until 8:30 and nobody spoke a word of English and we decided it would just be too much work.  So, we went to the motorway service station.  In our defence this is a superior experience to Watford Gap (an infamous UK equivalent for my readers from the colonies) and we had a very nice chicken and chips washed down with a glass of tinto.  Those of you who like to pass an evening in a foreign town strolling in a pair of chionos with a jumper draped casually across your shoulders before mingling with the locals in a charming little place the hotel recommended will not understand us.  But then you have no idea what it is like to have a big calorie deficit that needs repaying lickety spit. Today we set out on our big ...

Since we are in Spain where else would we go to eat than an American themed diner?  This is not (quite) as stupid as it sounds: 1/  We needed calories and nobody does calories like the Americans 2/ The place was so authentically American that it ignored the Spanish dinner laws and was open at 7pm We were finished so early that we called into the hotel bar for a glass of tinto on our way back to bed.  We had a glass of very good, and extraordinarily cheap, Rioja and the waitress presented these with a generous plate of Tapas which we duly forced down despite already being pretty full.  Our bill for this extravaganza?...  5.7 euros! This morning we had industrial trouble with the Amalgamated Legs and Related Cycling Parts Union.  The ALRCPU shop steward informed us that his members were not happy with their working conditions vis-a-vis yesterday's monster hill.  I explained that his members were, technically, OUR members....which didn...

This is the obvious lazy pick for a song but for our newer readers I should remind you that sometimes the connection is to the artist not the song. Last night we ended up at the pizzeria immediately next door to the hotel....an easy, lazy option. The pizzas were large enough to use as bus steering wheels and the house Rioja was inexpensive so we were happy.  We even managed to save a little pizza for today's lunch. This morning we rode up a hill.  My sex wasn't on fire but my legs definitely were.  It was a 16 mile climb but the really horrible bit was the last 8.  These 8 miles started with mostly 6-8% grades, which fast became 8-10%, then 10-12%, then 12-14% and, as a final grand kick in the testicles, we had a bit of 17-18% before we finally reached the top.  Hardest hill I have done in a very long time and done hauling full touring gear.  I didn't walk and I didn't cry but it wasn't pretty. The remaining 40 miles were mostly down or fla...

Rides in the shoulder season come with the risk of disappointing weather and, as previously noted, Northern Spain gets its share of rain.  Not today!!!!  The skies were blue, the wind was non-existent and the high temperature nudged 20 degrees c.  On top of that the route was, I modestly admit, bloody lovely.  It was hillier than a hilly thing and I got 2 flats but even these irritations couldn't spoil the day. We had lovely coastal bike paths escaping Gijon, some truly gorgeous countryside and pretty little villages with spectacular horrea (look it up) round every corner, and a river path for our last 10 miles into town. We are in Pola de Lena, 50 miles and 4200 feet from where we started.  Our 3* hotel is run by a family whose friendliness is in inverse proportion to their spoken English.  No matter, we are pros at 'check in charades' and even managed to sweet talk (sweet mime?) them into getting us a couple of cold beers despite the bar being c...

The mixed grill didn't disappoint, and we caught up on all the news.  We are men so this just involved Neil telling me the status of his car restoration project while I pretended to listen. We flew with Vueling, an airline I haven't used before.  They are part of IAG, along with BA and Iberia, and positioned as the budget alternative to those two flag carriers.  Some of you will know my opinion of BA so the prospect of flying on their even crappier sibling didn't fill me with optimism.  Fortunately, Ryanair exists to save all other budget airlines from being the absolute worst and Vueling turned out to be just run of the mill crappy rather than spectacularly crappy. When we rocked up at the Enterprise rental desk the guy took one look at our bike boxes and swapped the hatchback we had booked for a cargo van.  170 miles later and were in Gijon...a much bigger place than I was expecting!.  We have now ditched the van, assembled the bikes and procure...

  Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick   During a moment of boredom I wondered when I started with this blogging nonsense and discovered it was more than 15 years ago.  May 23 rd 2011 to be precise.  In the process of looking up this fact my eye was drawn to the readership stats page which informed me that I have had 170,000 page hits.  This sounded quite a lot but a quick bit of maths tells me it equates to a mere 30 hits per day or, more relevantly since I don’t blog every day, about 300 hits per blog entry.  Even this miserable number is falsely inflated due to an entry in 2013 which, bizarrely, has accumulated over 5,000 hits.  Out of curiosity I then researched how many hits one needs to properly ‘monetise’ the whole thing and it seems 30,000-50,000 per month might earn you a very modest income.  Any dreams I had of becoming an Influencer are now dead.   Take This Job and Shove It   May 23 rd 2011 was actually a very big day for ...