Last night we have found a cunning loophole in the Spanish 'no dinner until midnight' laws. Our apartment is close to a shopping mall which seems to have some sort of exemption from the normal rules of Spain. On the upper floor is a food court where we found restaurants open and happy to serve us food at 6:30. We had pizza.... not very Spanish but did I mention it was open at 6:30? Nick rocked up at about 9pm. Lorraine, we now discover, is pushing 74 and looked like she had wafted here from Luton Care Home rather than paradise. So we are now at gang of four until David joins us on Saturday. Today we went for a ride. It was a simple 'there and back' ride along the coast with a loop up into the hills which, on paper, looked like a piece of cake. Getting out of Malaga requires 5 fairly poor miles, with the same on the return. The other 40 were nice BUT there was a bit of a hill. It was 5 miles long and mostly bottom gear...not...
We went to the Brazilian and it was magnificent. There were hot dead animals of every kind and we ate lots of them. Our new arrival, David, is not entirely aligned with corporate policy vis a vis drinks. We all ordered a large beer but David went for a Pina Colada.....yes, I know! I will take him on one side tomorrow and explain that this sort of nonsense just isn't acceptable, even if he does like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape. Today we did a 60 mile ride with clear blue skies and highs in the low 20s....which was nice. Slightly less nice was the ruddy great hill we had to climb right out of the door. Distance, grade and total climb are numbers that won't convey the true horror of this bastard so let's describe it in simpler language....2 hours in bottom gear at walking pace. David redeemed himself after his big drinks faux pa by being slower than me. Cresting a hill in anything other than last place is an exp...
Although I love to travel I am pretty agnostic about where I go. I have a 'bucket list' but it is modest and mostly reflects the places I can't justify the high cost of visiting on my own dollar. Northern Scandinavia is a case in point; but I now have an opportunity to tick it off my list at somebody else's expense. I am sitting in Oslo Airport waiting for a connecting flight to Bodø to meet an international group of cyclists in order to support them on a 1 week charity ride up to Tromsø, through the region known as Lofoten . The ride is entirely within the Arctic Circle and, judging by Google Street View, the scenery should be off the scale. Sadly I won't be cycling but I will have plenty of opportunity to admire the view from the comfort of my rental van. There are 22 riders, from the UK, Ireland, Canada and Norway, plus myself and four non-cycling WAGS and we will be doing a relatively mo...
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