Spanish review

With this cycling lark, one tends to get a bit more up close and personal with the local culture and on the whole, the Spanish are rather an agreeable bunch and seem very benevolent to us Brits on the whole. This is particularly impressive being as we have been shipping our criminals and hooligans out to them to live or holiday for such a long time now. Basically since the Australians got all nimby on us and stopped accepting them like they used to.

The roads between the towns were very good although a little too steep for my liking when lugging kit along. The town roads were a bit more English esque with a healthy collection of pot holes and pretty tired infrastructure in parts.

From a cycling point of view, the mountains tend to funnel all modes of transport through fairly narrow channels so we have tended to use a large proportion of main roads and go from one conurbation to another with no chance of going around, at least not in our timescales.

The whole area is very green which looks very nice, particulary when looking out at the views across valleys - always an excuse to regain our breath when cycling upwards. The green comes at a price - rain, and lots of it. This is my second stint of cycling in Spain and both times, I have been blighted with infernal precipitation.

The culture change of the drivers was quite pronounced when cycling across the border, with Spanish drivers more than happy to wait for four, usually lost, English cyclists to wobble past whereas the French flavour seem to be much more Anglo Saxon in their driving habits, based on one afternoon anyway.

Overall, the Spanish leg was a bit of a slog in retrospect although the euphoria of the inital stages of the trip carried us through this so was still enjoyable. The days have been longer than planned with the days cycling finishing about 6 o'clock or later generally, this is mainly because of the time taken getting through the towns.

Anyway, we are hoping for the highlight of the trip now, going through the Aquitaine area with long roads with few navigation decisions to get wrong and relatively town free.

Bring it on !!