Today we entered the sixth country so far on our tour, Spain. It’s the first time we are travelling in a place where neither of us speaks the language, so we have a steep learning curve ahead of us. The route here was nothing short of beautiful – first through flat nature reserves and then up into the mountains where the road hugged the edge of the hill and gave us a view over the Mediterranean to our left and vineyards to our right nearly all of the way. It was hard work, with plenty of climbs, followed by steep descents, throughout the day. The roads seemed to be reasonably graded though and we were able to stay on the bikes for quite a long period of time and maintain a good 12km going up some hills, which is a lot better than our normal pace when faced with a big ascent. We are now on the Costa Brava, an area we only know through seeing its name in the windows of travel shops in the UK. So far there’s no sign of the souless string of block holiday apartments and we are all the happier for that, but we’re told there are plenty the further we go south so we’ll enjoy the local beauty while we have it.
As we’re in a new country, it’s time to try something new so from here on in we plan to list all the roads we’ve followed and any relevant notes on them, to help future cyclists. You can see the road notes by clicking on the headline of a post and looking below in the comment field.