- DAY 10: Tuesday 12th October 2021 – On Brittany Ferries Galicia
- Distance: 3km
- Elevation gain: 20m
- Accomodation: Galicia Ferry
It was barely light on when we left the hotel for the short ride to the Portsmouth Ferry Terminal which we rode on the pavement having neglected to fit our bikes with lights – hopefully this would be the only day on the trip where that would be an issue. Arriving at the terminal, we were directed to join the queueing cars which is never fun on a bike, sitting just behind someone’s exhaust pipe. It seemed to take forever to get to the checkin booth – in the old days presumably people had to show a paper ticket and a passport and they were through, now everyone was struggling with their phones to find digital tickets, Covid tests and vaccination certificates! We finally got to the booth and rather nervously handed over our US vaccination cards which look horribly inadequate compared to those from the UK with scannable QR codes. We were relieved that they had no problem with them, and because we were vaccinated they didn’t even want the negative test – £300, a cloned credit card and a night in Southampton for nothing – wonderful! We got directed to the front of the queue with a couple of other cyclists and a fair few motorbikes but still had to stand around for over an hour on a freezing cold morning before boarding. Cyclists definitely get a raw deal here – foot passengers sit in the nice warm terminal building, drivers sit in their nice warm cars, we were freezing waiting for the signal to board. When they finally decided to board 2-wheeled vehicles, they sent the motorbikes along a nice flat ramp to the lower car deck and us up the steep slippery metal ramp to the upper deck – thanks Brittany Ferries! The guy directed us to put our bikes next to some metal anchor points and picked up a length of rope looking like he was going to secure them, before apparently deciding that it was a bit much effort, so we tied them up ourselves. After struggling up lots of stairs with our panniers, we eventually negotiated a maze of corridors full of cabins with the most illogical numbering system imaginable to find our home for the night. I have to say that Brittany Ferries “Galicia” was wonderful. Being October in the middle of the Covid pandemic, it was also virtually empty. There were a couple of decks with lovely seating areas and a bar serving great coffee and snacks at a reasonable price – all we needed to while away the day. Our ticket price also included a 3 course dinner with full waiter service (which being a French company was amazing). €5 got us a caraffe of great wine to go with it. Slightly sad to say that this was the best meal out that we had had for years – the same meal on dry land in the UK would probably have left us with not much change out of £100 I suspect. Well satisfied with dinner, we retired to our comfy cabin for the night – the first time we were on a cross channel ferry we slept on the floor under the stairs, so we are definitely going up in the world slowly but surely!
- DAY 11: Wednesday 13th October 2021 – Santander, Spain
- Distance: 7km
- Elevation gain: 50m
- Accomodation: Hotel Hoyuela
We woke up to a glorious sunny morning with blue skies, a few fuffy clouds in the sky and a lovely blue sea all around – we’d been extremely lucky with the October weather in the UK, but we could tell that we had travelled south as this looked more like summer (albeit with a gale force wind blowing across the Bay of Biscay). Our ticket included a great breakfast buffet which we took full advantage of before whiling away a few hours waiting to finally reach Spain. We went up on deck to see beautiful views of Santander as the ferry came in to dock before taking our bags back down to the car deck and loading up the bikes. We may have been slightly over-enthusiastic about doing this as we had to wait for what seemed like hours for the ramp to be lowered and all of the cars to drive off before we could finally cycle off into Spain. We followed a long looping road through the port, through a very cursory passport check (and the new experience of getting our passports stamped going into an EU country – yet another “benefit” of Brexit!) before rather alarmingly ending up on a road signposted as the exit to the autoroute. Not sure what to do, we spotted a small exit gate with a barrier across it that seemed to be for staff only and pushed our bikes through into the streets of Santander. In the process we seemed to circumnavigate Spanish customs, but nobody seemed to care (presumably there is a limited amount of contraband that can be smuggled in bicycle panniers). We then followed some great cycle lanes along the coast around the headland (way better than any we had seen in the UK – Sustrans should come and see how it should be done!) with fantastic views of the town, rocky headlands and beaches to reach the hotel that we had booked for the night. The 4* Hotel Hoyuela looked a little grander than most places that we stay in, but the receptionist was happy for us to wheel our bikes through the foyer and put them safely in a storage room for the night.
- DAY 12: Thursday 14th October 2021 – Rest day in Santander, Spain
- Distance: 0
- Elevation gain: 0
- Accomodation: Hotel Hoyuela
We had a rest day in Santander today and took a long walk over the hill to the old town centre before retracing yesterday’s cycle along the coast, this time on foot. Santander really is a beautiful town – I suspect that 90% of the cars that drove off the ferry yesterday got straight onto the autoroute and headed south, but they really are missing out. Apart from exploring the town, taking a few photos and having a couple of espressos in nice cafes, our main objective for the day was the slightly strange “buy a kettle”. One of the great things about UK hotel rooms is that you always get a kettle and various sachets of coffee, tea bags, milk and (if you’re lucky) biscuits. In the rest of the world, this is not a thing. So, if we wanted our morning coffees in bed, we needed a kettle. There are many lovely small independent shops in the town of Santander, but very few seemed to sell useful items.Eventually we stumbled on an appropriate shop and are now probably the only cycle tourists in the world to be carrying a kettle. We have read lots of cycling books and blogs before this trip for inspiration, and many of the authors helpfully provide packing lists – a typical item might be “toothbrush with handle cut off to save weight”; ours would now read “kettle”. After our walk, we started the evening watching the world go by on a seat in the lovely small park outside the hotel with a carton of cheap plonk from the nearby supermarket – we may be in danger of crossing a line from “budget conscious cycle tourist” to “wino” at this rate!
- DAY 13: Friday 15th October 2021 – Santander, Spain to Vargas, Spain
- Distance: 45km
- Elevation gain: 340m
- Accomodation: Hotel El Centro
We headed out of Santander to the west on a mix of nice cycle paths and quiet back roads, with lovely views of the ocean on our right hand side, which grew more spectacular as the road gradually got higher above the coastline. We soon turned inland, and after crossing the busy A67 followed a nice quiet road up a river valley towards today’s target of the small village of Vargas. The Hostal El Centro where we were staying tonight didn’t look much from the outside, but the owner was very welcoming and helped us put the bikes in his temporarily closed restaurant for the night. He spoke good English (which was helpful as we hadn’t really progressed beyond “hola” and “dos espessos por favor”) and took a great interest in where we were heading tomorrow. Pointing out on his map where we were going he informed us “here 100m, there 1000m” which gave us the definite impression that tomorrow may be a tough day. He did helpfully show us a nice traffic free route which would keep us off the main road for the first part of the day though. He then took us to a lovely room at the very top of the hostal, although the steeply sloping ceiling meant that the taller of us nearly gave himself concussion several times during the night.
- DAY 14: Saturday 16th October 2021 – Vargas, Spain to Quintanaentello, Spain
- Distance: 48km
- Elevation gain: 1130m
- Accomodation: Hotel Rural La Pradera
We followed a quiet road out of town, and following the directions from the hostal owner soon joined up with the traffic free cycle route “Vias verdes del Pas” which was a lovely route, busy with walkers and cyclists on a Saturday morning. It gave us some very enjoyable cycling with only the gentlest of uphill gradients, for 20km or so along the Rio Pas valley, before eventually running out and forcing us the join the N623 main road. Traffic on the main road was light and we continued through some lovely scenery. At this point, we noticed that we were the better part of two thirds of the way through a 50km day that we knew had over 1000m of height gain and had so far managed to gain approximately 100m – every km that went by relatively flat was something of a mixed blessing – when the hill did come, it was going to be seriously steep! The road didn’t dissapoint, and soon we were climbing very steeply up into the mountains. We managed to ride most of it, but when we got sight of the road winding up to the mountain pass, it became clear that there would be some pushing involved! We finally struggled up to Puerto de El Escudo, at 1011m the highest point we had ever ridden (mostly) our bikes to! – and took a much needed rest and what would become our tradition of a photo next to the sign. The road then went downhill for a disappointingly short distance before levelling out for the last few km. The landscape here was very bleak and empty and with the map showing a couple of km to go, we were starting to get a little concerned that this may be one of those occasions where Booking.com had a hotel in the wrong location! We were very relieved to see the hotel come into view around a bend in the road, and it really was a beautiful cute little place. There was nothing else around, so we pressed our newly purchased kettle into service and had pot noodles for dinner (and a bottle of cheap wine from the bar!). The room had stone walls, a radiator that came on for the briefest of times at was nearly 1000m above sea level in the mountains in mid-October. Also, hotels in Spain seem to be yet to discover the benefits of duvets as bedding – a couple of thin blankets was all that we had – It was a very cold night! It was at this point that we decided that we would expand our collection of small electrical appliances that we were now carrying to include a small heater at the next available opportunity!
- DAY 15: Sunday 17th October 2021 – Quintanaentello, Spain to Covanera, Spain
- Distance: 37km
- Elevation gain: 450m
- Accomodation: Hotel Rural Aguazul
The first half of the day stayed fairly high in the mountains, but was relatively flat with only gentle ups and downs compared to yesterday’s long ascent. Half way through the day, there was a big change in the scenery as we started a long descent into the Ebro valley with amazing views of the towns and villages below and spectacular limestone cliffs along the river gorge. At the bottom we stopped in a little restaurant and in a step up from our usual bread, ham and cheese for lunch treated ourselves to hamburger and chips – in part beacause “hamburguesa” was the only thing on the menu that we were 100% sure about what we would get! The road then continued through lovely scenery along the flat Ebro valley to today’s accomodation in the small village of Covanera. We had booked a lovely little place, but arrived to find everything locked up and a phone number pinned to the door – always our worst type of check in given our non-existant Spanish language skills. Phoning the owner, she spoke no English, but after a brief conversation that basically involved just the words “Hola”, “reservation”, “booking.com” and “check in” (our Spanish is getting better!) we were relieved to see a lady emerge from the house opposite who let us in and explained lots of things that we didn’t understand – we just said “Si” to everything and it all seemed to go smoothly enough. The only other business in the village was a small bar opposite the hotel and it was a sunny afternoon, so there was a certain inevitability about what happened next. We were desperately low on cash by now and nowhere seemed to accept card payment, so much scrabbling around in pockets turned up a few euro coins. We had been lulled into a false sense of security in the UK where every business now seemed to expect contactless payment – some wouldn’t even accept cash, presumably a Covid thing. We probably looked a little desperate using Google Translate to search “How much is a bottle of white wine” (“cuanto cuesta una botella de vino blanco” for future reference!) but fortunately it was ridiculously cheap and our few euro coins was more than enough. We finished the day watching a lovely sunset on the cliffs, sat outside the bar enjoying a glass of wine before going back to the room to make up the pot noodles that we had with us – we know how to live!
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