Blogs from Cantabria, Spain, Europe - page 9

Anecdotal Tripe To add to the lessons learned from my first trip: 1. Bungees linked together and stretched out between trees make an excellent washing line, assuming you had enough bungees. Never a problem for me, I always have an absurd amount - I could string a line across the Millau bridge. 2. Petrol is 30% cheaper in Spain. OK, so on the thimble sized petrol tanks on most bikes it is not going to realise considerable financial gain but by the same token it's hardly worth filling up in France just before you cross the border. Fuel prices seemed consistently 1.38E and 1.05E respectively. 3. OK so three pairs of gloves was ridiculous - I admit it I never used them all. 4. For hot countries summer kit and poor tex was definitely the right ... read more

Reinosa with Rob... read more

Since the last blog the weather (I'm sorry to say!!) has got much better. While in the Pyrenees we had an awesome day that involved a cable car, a chair lift and a 12 mile walk to a glacier and back. The scenery was absolutely fantastic and it was so bizarre to make a snowball while wearing boardies and no top (the males that is!!). It was possibly one of the best days of the hoiliday so far. The next day Suze and Ben chilled out whilst Jake and I got a cable car upto 2500m and biked back down again. It was quite hard going as we chose to do a 'red' run but it was a good challenge for us both. The only problems were Jake breaking a chain and then (luckily closer to ... read more

When the person in the tourist information described our chosen walk as 'straight up there, turn left at the little house and follow the path back to Fuente De' you are led to believe that it will be pretty straight forward. With our detailed map and having given the terrain the once over for signposting we felt confident. However, The Picos de Europa with its copious shear rock faces is not walking territory for the faint hearted. In fact we think to describe its high peaks as walking terrain is totally misleading, challenging hiking or mountaineering more accurate. So we embarked on our chosen route with its mild difficulty rating. We ascended quickly away from our base camp careful to keep orientated and on track. We kept to the most substantial populated path (three other couples) ... read more

Today we’re sat on a beach in Comillas. Things have moved on somewhat since our last entry. Our testing and ultimately abortive day attempting to return up the Camino del Norte gave us only one realistic option to that plan. Abandon it and commit thoroughly to memory all the stories and circumstance of that challenging day for future telling and embellishment. For those without a world atlas in front of them open on the Southern Europe page Comillas is in Cantabria on the Northern coast of Spain about 50 kilometres west of Santander. This is some 500 kilometres from Melide where our previous update was penned. Having used only our feet as transport for six weeks we unfortunately had to succumb to more mundane methods resorting to motorised vehicles. We were not going to be defeated ... read more