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Day 20 - Palamos to Barcelona

By Matthew

Today was to be Kevins last day of riding, for his flight was booked for the following day in Barcelona. It was an average start to the day; we left at 7:30 and were approaching Calonge by 8.

It was my turn to navigate today and it seemed to all be going well at first. The instructions on my route sheet told me to follow the C31 until after Calonge, where we would turn off onto the C35 towards Barcelona. Well we got a long way past Calonge and had not seen any of the right signs, so we kept going expecting to find the C35 in the next 5 miles or so. After about 2 miles we saw the dreaded 'no more bikes allowed on this road' sign, so we had to turn off into a small coastal town and guess our way around. Being now completely lost, we decided to invent a new route to Barca - we knew that there was a mountainous coastal road that took us almost all the way there, so we headed for the coast and followed the beach around until we hit a dead end next to a hotel. This seemed like a good time to phone John and ask for help.

He found us 20 or so minutes later sitting by the marina, admiring the sea views. He showed us where we'd gone wrong (the first junction on the route sheet!) and told us how to find the right coast road that would take us to Barcelona.

The coast road was absolutely stunning! Despite being the hilliest stretch of road we'd yet riden, it was by far the most enjoyable. Amazing views of the coast and the mountains, combined with some fast downhills made for a very enjoyable first thirty miles.

After taking in the breathtaking views, we hit the N11, which was a long, flat straight road with a nice surface and a slight tailwind. Perfect! We were heading straight for Barcelona at over 20mph for a good 5 miles until we were overtaken by two fairly serious looking cyclists. I was at the front at the time and thought that we could take them back, so I pushed to get on their back wheel. Instantly their pace shot up and we were sitting at 25mph+ for a good 10 miles. Never before had we ridden so fast for such a long distance. But more was to come, as one of the two cyclists gave up and peeled off down a side road, another appeared on our back wheel and had the cheek to pass us through a red light. We were having none of it and managed to catch him up before the next set of lights, where he would pass them and we would wait. This continued for some time until we hit a stretch of road with no lights and not too much traffic. The race was on! Initially, he was in front with us on his back wheel, cruising at around 28mph, but we pushed past and took the pace well into the 30's. He managed to stay with us for a good few miles and the pace only dropped when we hit some more traffic lights. This time he stopped with us and we tried to explain to him who we were and what we were doing (Paul being the translator). He stayed with us until we hit some road works, where he disappeared down a side road and we stopped to ask directions from the locals.

On the other side of the road works was the rather large and confusingly named town of Badelona. We took this opportunity to stop and phone John for more directions and Paul used the time to sleep on the wall next to the road. John told us where to go and where the campsite was, which meant that we could continue on to Barcelona.

Barcelona is a huge, confusing and quite frankly dangerous city to cycle through. Cycle lanes merge with busy roads, traffic lights tell you to head into oncoming traffic and drivers seemed blissfully unaware of the four cyclists alongside them. Paul held the record for the nearest miss on this occasion - he jumped a red light by few seconds to try and keep up with the rest of us and ended up crossing the path of numerous fast travelling cars, who stopped with only a metre or so to spare. He was far more cautious after that.

The campsite was on the west of the city, alongside a motorway-like C31. Travelling along this sort of road in the hottest part of the day with little to no water left and no idea how far down the road the campsite was, was not a nice experience. To mood was only slightly lightened by the sight of the local hooker population working their charm with the lorry drivers of Barcelona.

We found John waiting on the opposite side of the road, outside the entrance to a very large campsite and we had a shouted conversation over the noise of the traffic to find out how to get to the site.

The campsite was indeed huge. It turned out to be expensive too - 64 euros per night! Our pitch was small, with no electricity and sandy ground, but it didn't matter, we were just glad to have finally arrived in Barcelona.

Our welcome to Barcelona came in the form of a nice storm. We quickly chucked our sleeping bags into the tents and took shelter under the canvas. The rain was so hard and the ground so bad that there was enough standing water to make the tents float.

The rain stopped in time for Daniel and Johns departure to the airport to collect Simeon. The absence of and adults left me, Paul and Kevin to have some fun. All good, clean fun you understand.

I'm going to have to finish this blog entry here, as the rest of this blog is not suitable for online publication! For further details speak to us when we are home - we might tell you, who knows!

Matthew

Distance: 94.68 miles
Time: 5:47:22
Average Speed: 16.35mph
Weather: Hot

Day 21 - Rest Day in Barcelona

By Simeon

After a very lively night of jokes and drama, the team were enjoying the pleasures of a rest day, and didn't show their face's until 9:30am. We opened the morning by all going to the showers together and enjoying the cosiness of showering as 'one'. Ok don't take that as it sounds, we didn't actually share one shower, well... apart from me and kevin. I was quite impressed with the standards of the facilities and it gave me a good first impression of how great Bike Europe was going to be. Well, this great feeling didn't last very long as the morning became very damp and miserable. Its not what you expect of Spain, and having just flown over from England, i was expecting the weather to be better than England, not the same.

However I was not going to let the weather destroy the teams moral, so in order to make amends for me bringing the weather from England I decided to 'sing the weather away'. Sounds foolish, however it did work. All it took was a bit of patience and a bit of participation from the bike europe team. To tell the truth the plan could never fail, with Paul singing with his graceful and angelic voice, God had no choice but to remove the rain clouds and bring on the sun.

So with the sun shining, the grass greening (sorry i couldn't think of anything that would reflect upon how green the grass looked) the team decided to share breakfast whilst standing under the van door which provided us with shade. The baguettes where very nice and dry and tasteless and dry and...tasteless. We did have cheese spread, however there were no knives, so the outcome of spreading the cheese with it's foil wrapper was a very thick layer of cheese in one spot...VERY NICE!

So after doing nothing in the morning apart from 'chillaxing' (a mix between relaxing and chilling) we decided it was time to take a trip to Barcelona and check the sights. After walking about 100 miles down the road we finally found the bus stop, in which we waited about 10 minutes for the bus. We finally arrived to a place that looked fairly busy so we thought it would be a good place to stop. There was a huge building that looked like... well i don't know. It looked like some kind of library, cathedral, castle type place. Ok i have just recieved info from John telling me that it was infact a museum. Well I was close enough.

After admiring the great architecture we found ourselves getting hungry (as usual) so we found a nearby restaurant and ordered food. All of us normal people on the team ordered a pizza of some sort, however Paul was having none of it. Instead, he thought he would order some sort of fish. Ok he ordered fish and chips... but it didn't turn out the way we expected. It wasn't the usual battered fish, instead it was a fresh fish that smelt like it had just been caught. It still had its eyes, and its teeth. Now I don't care if that it is what the Spanish do, that is just madness. So after all of us dieing due to the smell and coming back to life, we thought it was about time we said goodbye to the 'funny' bar lady, and head off to a football fan's 'heaven on earth'... the Nou Camp!!!

We got there and well, standing outside was not enough. Instead we queued up for about 20 hours and got tickets for a tour of the stadium. Ok we didn't que up for 20 hours, Daniel and Matthew queued up, Kevin and Paul looked in the Barcelona sports shop, and I looked at the hot woman who stood in the middle of the pathway between the shop and the place where you get the tickets.

It was time for the tour! We got to see one of the changing rooms which was quite blatently the oppostions changing room. How could we tell? Well it was simple. Me and Paul had once seen the West Ham changing rooms and they were much better than these. How a team that fights relegation with teams like Sheffield Utd can have better changing rooms than arguably the best team in the world I do not know. It had to be the visitors changing room. Nevertheless it was still great to see it and after about 2 minutes of inspecting it, we were ready to move on.

"OH MY DAYS!!!" said the whole team. We had reached the pitch. It was a mouth watering moment. The pitch actually had grass, unlike the pitches in Morden, and it had stands capable of holding over 100,000 people, unlike the pitches in Morden, and the pitch was actually marked out with lines, unlike the pitches in Morden, and well it was amazing. Infact we were so in love with the pitch that we 'accidently' dropped our passports over the barrier and onto the pitch in order to touch the grass, or in my case actually pull a chunk out of the ground. well you know, it's got to be done. It was well worth getting caught by the steward!

After about 30 minutes of admiring the pitch, it was time to go back to the site. We took the same route back but this time the team focused their attention on telling me that i need to read more and how they can't believe i am in set 1 for english when i have never read a book apart from being forced to in school. It was funny because Kevin also joined in and insisted that i read and that he was really suprised that anyone could live their life without reading a book, but then after he came over to me and admitted to never reading one either. I knew it was too good to be true!

We reached the site at around... afternoon time. Sorry i don't really know. Nnd it says on my notes for day 21 that somebody flew a kite. Sorry again, but I can't give you much information on the kite flying. However, I am sure John had a great time.

John then came back from his epic kite flying experience to do what he does best; cook us pasta. It was just beautiful! I don't know how he managed it but he made having pasta with nothing on it enjoyable. I bet Jamie Oliver couldn't do that! Infact it was so nice that Paul went up for seconds, thirds, forths and so on. Ok that's just typical Paul but the point is, it was nice.

Time for tears. The time had come for Kevin to leave. It was a very sad moment and Kevin really didn't handle it well. He cried, he sobbed, he refused to leave, he faught with John, tried to run away. I can't explain the pain he was going through. He finally pulled himself together and after hugs and kisses he was off to the airport to make the transaction with Simon. Whilst this was taking place, me, Paul and Matthew washed the kits.

Much later on in the day Simon arrived and the times for jokes had arrived! Simon got absolutely slated for missing his flight! It's great having the attention switched to somebody else for a change. Normally its just, take the mick out of Simeon until you run out of things to take the mick out of, then once you have run out, start all over again.

After the warm welcoming, we were all sitting in a nice circle talking our usual nonscence. Then a wierd Canadian couple came past and heard us talking English so jumped at the chance of inviting us to the "bi'ch". We were really confused as to what she meant until we had finaly realised she meant the beach. You think that was bad? Well you should have heard Paul when we were dicussing where she came from. I think it was "she sounded like she comes from Canadia". It was great to hear someone of high intelect make such a bad gramatical mistake.

After laughing and making jokes with them, we were off to the beach to be welcomed by music and big crowds. It was a beach party. This was the life. As soon as we saw this, Simon was off to the vending machine and stocked up on beer. We now knew what hippies felt like. We didn't smoke dodgey substences or anything like that but the singing and dancing on a beach and generally not worrying about anything else was great. It was really hard though because all the girls there were either Spanish or French. You should try talking to a girl who speaks a language different to you. It was really hard to get anywhere. It was getting to early hours in the morning and most of the team decided it was time to go back to the tents. However me and Matthew didn't see the need. I have to admit, being on a beach until 4 in the mornin was a bit tiring but it was a rest day and we thought we'd make the most of it! Ok this lasted 20 minutes and it was time to go back.

We got back and we all sat round in a circle for another 30 mintues or so and then it was time for bed.

It was a great day on the whole, and we have had discussions about going back some time in the near future. Maybe we'll stay for longer than a few days and we'll probably get there via plane or something with an engine.

Simeon