Day 21: Getting there

I awoke early to see Igor packing his tent and heading off. For some reason we don´t think it will be the last time we see him, although we hope it is.. not being mean, but he´s a proper nut job!


I replaced the broken spoke, and made a decent enough job of truing the wheel as well, although after my last effort I wasn´t confident it would hold out so we headed on to St Julian, a town about 5 miles down the road to the nearest bike shop. Fortunatly it was open, which in this part of the world is a bit of a bonus!! The guy looked like he had been fixing bikes for years so I was happy to let him true it. He did just that, although then pointed out my back wheel was slightly egg shaped due to the amount of weight on the back of my bike. Not the biggest problem in the world but that will need to be addressed when I finish.

After all that I felt absolutley shattered. It´s the first day I´ve felt really tired and was struggling to keep up with Nick and Lucy for the first hour or so. We had decided to try and make it as far as Biarritz, or there abouts to make the final day into San Sebastian as short as possible.

The roads are getting alot busier, and we spent less time on bike paths and more time on roads than we had for a number of days. Again most of the towns are surfer towns, and they seem to be getting swankier the closer to Biarritz we are getting. 

We eventually made it to a town called Tarnos, where we knew there was an open campsite. Arriving just in time to get our tents up before the biggest downpour of the trip hit us. It abated after a while and we managed to get some food for the night (the usual pasta, bolognese sause and cheese, with a couple of veg). We were all pretty tired and knew that the hill before San Sebastian rose at a rather steep 500 metres so called it a night.

56.27 on the speedo, and our highest average of the trip at 13 miles per hour. Quite happy with that considering I was knackered!!

Can´t think of a pickles quote for the day, although we did calculate she had probably eaten somewhere in the region of 60 chocolate mousse´s over the trip, which is impressive to say the least!