bike touring – A Touring Bike, a Comfy Bed, and a Glass of Wine

Riding Among Ghosts: Part Three

This is the third and final part of my narrative about my 2022 bike trip from Tirana to Ljubljana through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia.

Sunday 1^st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km (continued)

The first thing that I noticed on entering Croatia from Bosnia was the relative normality. Everything that little tidier, more spruce, more modern. The clothes, the state of the buildings, the shops, the sudden profusion of lycra-clad road bikers…

The second thing I noticed was the traffic. Tons of it, rumbling away every few seconds along a rather dreary stretch of main road, flat, mostly straight as a bullet, and tedious.

Across the mighty Neretva for the final time, now broad and quiet, and up into the hills to the Bacinska lakes and a wonderful overlook before descending to the simple but pretty harbour of Gradac, bathed in a gentle evening sunlight.

And the third thing I noticed was that on the first Sunday in May, nearly all the restaurants were closed. So I stopped pondering the modernity and traffic, and plonked myself down at a waterside pizzeria. It was not the most Croatian of meals, but it was as good as I was going to get.

Monday 2^nd May: Gradac – Omiš: 79 km

I set off relatively early in moody skies with the threat of rain. It suited the landscape: limestone cliffs shoving their way down to turquoise waters with only a thin strip of habitable land and beach in between, towns clinging to the water’s edge with sharp names like the wonderful Zaostrog, conjuring up some triple-horned warrior springing from rock to rock with vengeance on his mind. The entrancing sight of beautiful purple irises and scarlet poppies springing from rocks here and there.

I had re-joined the Eurovelo 8 (EV8), a long-distance route going from Cadiz to Athens, and a favourite with bike tourers.

The road was largely quiet and I rumbled up and down all day following the coastline all day: long slow but moderate climbs, followed by wonderful swishing descents. Only the ugliness and traffic of Makarska intervened. With the temperature hovering at a chilly 12-15C and the constant threat of rain, it was not a day for stopping, though I occasionally took a moment to admire the savage beauty of it all and the stunning islands out to sea.

After Makarska, two stubborn climbs, the last one going up and up and up, but rewarded by the grey magnificence of it all. It was the Croatia that I had dreamed of. The sheer immensity of it all was quite stunning.

Then to Omiš, the home town of one of my team, a small but pleasant place, with much more of a feeling than the rather deserted Gradac. The rain finally arrived, so I did not linger.

Tuesday 3^rd May: Omiš – Split: 27km

I woke up to sunny skies, the true nature of Omiš revealed on a gentle stroll along the harbour and through the narrow streets. My hotel, the Villa Dvor, faced out to the coast, but also up a twisting gorge. I had it all to myself over a wonderful breakfast.

Then out along the corniche: more beautiful roads and more or less flat, but this time, passed constantly by traffic. I would have been better heading up the gorge and re-joining the EV8, even if it meant tackling stiff hills and ignoring the islands. More and more built up and ugly as I got closer to Split. A short ride but not a pleasant one.

Finally, I turned off to the village of Stobreč and after a bit of up and down along thin coastal tracks, passing olive groves and nurseries, down to a pleasant beach with bike path – you can see it in the video – where I lingered until I could check into my nice apartment.

Split was very nice: an immensely old town within the walls of Diocletian’s palace dating back to 295AD and backing onto a big harbour. A lot of tourists, but also a town where you could sense people getting on with their lives. A town to gently amble without a clear plan.

Wednesday 4^th May: Split

But I had business to attend to. I was not the first member of my family to visit Split.

In November 1944, my grandfather had entered it in rather different conditions than a care-free bike ride.

As the captain in charge of HMS Delhi, he had sailed into the heavily fortified harbour, which the Germans had recently retreated from but were keen to retake.

His problem was twofold: to establish a British naval presence in Yugoslavia in the face of local resistance from the communist partisans who had taken over whilst repelling any counter-attacks from German forces. He spent a tense four months with the threat of imminent attack from both sides, with the Delhi finally suffering limited damage from a German motorboat attack.

He spent the time trying to defuse tensions with the partisans, and build good relations with the local population. Without knowing it, the Cold War was beginning. He recorded his story – and the rest of his tough war – in the late 1960s in a rather cold naval style which hinted at the amazing stress that he had been under throughout.

(For a fascinating account of the wider relationship between the British and the Partizans, see the third part of Fitzroy Maclean’s excellent “Eastern Approaches”).

While in Split, my grandfather got to know a Dr Ćurčin, a friend of the great sculptor Ivan Meštrović. Meštrović had fled to Switzerland in 1943 to escape persecution from Croat nationalist authorities, leaving Ćurčin and other friends to look after his villa on the outskirts of the town. Another friend, the sculptor Andrija Krstulović,asked if he could do a bust of my grandfather, so my grandfather went to the villa for a number of sittings. Krstulović subsequently gave him the cast with instructions to get it cast in bronze on his return, which he did. After the death of my grandparents, the bust went to my father, who in turn passed it on to me. As I write, it sits proudly at the top of the stairs, a magnificent piece of art.

So I headed to the villa. It is a stunning museum, not just the quality but the sheer evolution and range of styles as Meštrović experimented with different approaches and materials, often within the same period: smooth to rough, stone to bronze to wood, figurative and religious to naturalistic.

And in the middle, his last piece, a self-portrait. The resemblance to my grandfather’s bust was uncanny: the ties and coats were almost identical.

On leaving, I went to one of the curators and mentioned the bust and showed a photo that I had brought with me. She immediately recognised the names Ćurčin and Krstulović and of course the style of the bust. A few weeks later, one of the other curators kindly sent me information on both of them. My grandfather had been under the impression that Krstulović had ended up in the US, where Meštrović settled at the end of the war, but no, he had remained in Yugoslavia. He stayed in touch with Meštrović and was finally given permanent use of the workshop under the gallery.

One of his works was to design the pillars of the lobby and caryatids for the monument to Njegoš at the top of Mt Lovćen in Montenegro. This was the very monument that I had passed beneath on a cold and rainy day a few weeks earlier, not daring to take on the extra climb. And he had lived to a good old age, finally dying at the age of 85 in 1997. He had seen everything: the First World War, the creation of Yugoslavia, the Second World War, the communist regime, and finally the collapse of Yugoslavia. It was a poignant thought.

If only we had known in those pre-Internet days: we could have met the great man. Again on this trip, the history felt pressingly recent.

Thursday 5^th May: Split – Grebaštica: 73 km

Split had been a good choice, but the road beckoned. And not a pretty one, once I had threaded my way through the wooded headland of Marjan Park: an ugly sprawl of the usual apartment blocks and industrial estates, choked with traffic. I was able to ride on bike path for part, but for the rest had to duke it out with the cars and lorries.

I was following the EV8 again. On the outskirts, it took me off the road and through the ruins of Salona: rather pretty but totally unsuited for a touring bike: rutted rock edges. So I had to beat a painful retreat and work my way north of the main drag, more blank suburbs fused into one another. No scenery, no climbs, just drains, misshapen manhole covers and a relentless stream of vehicles for 17 boring kilometres including a spectacularly boring stretch past the boring airport. No views of the sea and even the hills flattened out. A day for distance and muttering away like a mad man. On a bicycle.

A brief interlude in the islet of Trogir, a pretty town but now seen under a return of those rain-holding grey skies. So on I went, back on the EV8, including another bit of routing stupidity as it sent me up a rough track where again I had to walk my bike.

Up into the hills in the afternoon, the sun coming out briefly, mostly, on fresh tarmac to Vrsine and Gustirna, before a monstrous climb of 7-12% up through the village. I crested the hill and thought that the punishment was over, only to meet a bearded bike tourer coming in the other direction – headed from the Netherlands to Corfu “where I meet my girlfriend and then we see” – who told me that the bit of EV8 coming up was only just passable, so I took a longer detour to avoid it… and was rewarded with another steep sweaty horror: a constant 7-10% beast, and going on and on. At last, the top and a cheery Polish biker coming the other way, before a worthy descent to Rastovac, followed by a more comfortable up and down to Mitlo and then left to Kruševo before finally re-joining the EV8.

It was pleasant but not stunning riding on that overcast day: small villages poking sheepishly out of hillsides in the distance, poppies, olive groves, fig trees and rough stone walls.

Just as I had run out of puff, a long serpentine descent in glimmering evening light: islands hovering out to sea, and then finally, my little apartment for the night with a gift of homemade cherry brandy from the owner. I’d love to say how wonderful it was, but in reality, it was wretchedly sweet…

Friday 6^th May: Grebaštica – Murter: 51 km

There are days when you just have to go out there and do the distance, no matter how you are feeling. And so it was that day. Looking at the video, it almost seems quite joyful.

It wasn’t. And my mood had not been helped by a poor night’s sleep, tormented by a stealthy and vicious mosquito with a penchant for cherry brandy-infused blood. I set off in overcast but dry conditions: few decent sights and a steady up and down only interrupted by regular roadworks.

I stopped in Šibenik, hoping to let the front pass: a pretty city with a beautiful old cathedral, but the rain started and the temperature was a rather chilly 12-14C, so I remounted, out along a busy highway before quieter roads, looking out for a café where I could have some lunch and let the rain pass, but none open in that dreary stretch of bland landscape and even blander towns.

On the road to Tisno, the rain really set in, the wind shoving it right in my face, the road a mass of puddles and the temperature dropping to 10C. A steady up and down through utterly unremarkable landscape. I think of that day and I think of that horrible hour, pushing through the rain, my face set into the wind and rain.

Finally, an open café on the outskirts of Tisno with a cheery waitress who happily welcomed me and my bike in under the awning and served up a large coffee and a piping hot beef stew: a pasticada, with dumplings on the side. I put on dry clothes over my wet lycra and for an hour felt human again before pushing back out into the rain and cold for the final stretch to the rather featureless town of Murter and my apartment a solid walk away from it, not that anything appeared open. It was all rather a shame because the lapping of the turquoise waters and the green islands in the distance gave it a charm. If it hadn’t been so sodding wet and cold.

It was still raining heavily as I headed out for dinner and most of the places seemed closed even on a Friday night. I was initially turned away by the one place that was open, before a German couple also entered and the owner changed his mind. It was smoky and rowdy with a bunch of locals holding court, but the food was decent: fried prawns with chips and a decent mixed salad all washed down with two very nice glasses of white wine. For purely medicinal purposes. The worst days on a bike can usually be remedied by a decent dinner and this did the job.

Saturday 7^th May: Murter – Zadar: 68 km

A much better night’s sleep despite my freezing cold bedroom and the belting rain.

I retraced my route back along to Tisno: at least dry this time in overcast skies and then the main road left towards Zadar, and followed the D8 for most of the day, up and down, up and down, with at least light traffic.

But my goodness, what a boring road and boring scenery: flattish scrubland, trees or ribbon developments. If the best you can make of your footage of 68km is under two minutes, you can tell how boring the rest of it was. Even the odd detour along seashore was underwhelming on that underwhelming day. At least the rain held off all day.

Then a long walk into touristy Zadar, regretting choosing a hotel out of the town centre, the place again rather underwhelming and not helped by large parts of the seafront being closed off for reconstruction. Even the food was overpriced and underwhelming.

So I headed back out along that long walk to my hotel in a sour mood after three days of arse-soddingly boring riding and yes, underwhelming end destinations. This happens from time to time when you bike tour: your mood can get low with the physical effort, the weather and the monotony of the riding and the loneliness creeps in. I had picked myself up from the sadnesses in Montenegro, so I had to get myself going again.

Sunday 8^th May: Zadar – Pag: 68 km

Picking yourself up from low moods is part of bike touring. The combination of physical exertion and slight loneliness with a perceived run of bad fortune or bad weather, and possibly rather boring roads. You get in a rut and start churning things round in your head, and you just have to press the mental ‘reset’ button and get back on with it.

More grey skies and spotting rain. But after cutting through the backstreets of Zadar, the weather and views started to improve: a delightful stretch of coastline around Diklo before a steep – 8-10% – climb up onto the headland and a main road, but mercifully with a separated bike path for much of it, and a lot of Sunday riders for company and reassurance.

Then a terrific descent to Zaton and the pretty town of Nin before again heading up and down through farmland and then a few more savage hills around Krneza. Savage but with the reward of beautiful views. My mood was slowly picking up, helped by the sight of the Velebit and Paklanac mountains in the far distance.

The full reward for all that wet and boring slogging from Split came as I approached the bridge to Pag island: the landscape more and more remote and rocky with every mile, lit up in the increasing sun. I stopped for a moment at an abandoned roadside shack to take it all in, the wind whipping around me: a vast forbidding landscape ahead, magical in its remoteness. This was more like it!

Crossing the bridge, I felt that I was leaving the frustrations of the previous days behind me and back in the full glorious, stupid, crazy adventure.

More greenery and wild sage by the roadside, and to spur my tired legs, the threat of a storm. I was on the main road, but mercifully not too crowded on a Sunday afternoon, so I could fully enjoy.

I entered Pag Town to black skies, but happily the storm only arrived at 9 at night, after an absolutely unbelievably beautiful sunset over the port: blues, purples, browns, oranges, the town almost deserted and boats bobbing in the harbour. A sunset for the ages.

And just to cap my transformed mood, a delightful supper in a local restaurant, the Konoba Bodulo: “Saur”: fried and marinated fish with pickled onions and sultanas, followed by a divine local lamb marinated in herbs and with soft potatoes and good bread, all topped off with some fine glasses of white and red, and with a chatty and helpful waiter.

Monday 9^th May: Pag Town

I was back to good spirits, helped by good weather, agreeable scenery and decent food and wine. Pag was a pretty enough town to amble around in.

As usual, I used a day off the bike to rest up and wash clothes. Leaving the washing machine on in the bathroom, I made a call to one of my sisters, closing the bathroom door to quieten the noise of the machine.

At the end of the call, I went to check on the machine. And found that it had moved. And was now blocking the door. This was not good news. Especially as the bathroom contained the only toilet.

I could just about get my left hand through the gap between the door and frame. But no further. And the machine was sufficiently heavy that I certainly wasn’t going to be able to move it.

So I called the owner, who promised to send her husband over in half an hour.

Luckily, while waiting, the machine went into its final spin cycle and started vibrating again. I seized my moment and was able to nudge the miscreant machine away from the door and widen the crack in the door sufficiently to get myself through and then climb over the wandering washer and move it further away. And then the husband turned up.

Tuesday 10^th May: Pag – Sveti Juraj: 70km

Back on the road, still in a good mood on a lovely sunny morning, but aware that I needed to get going to catch the 11.30 ferry back to the mainland.

I had a choice between taking the main road the whole way and taking a more scenic bike route – the ‘1’ – which threatened a bit of sand and gravel but would be away from the cars and cling to the coast before re-joining the main drag after about 12 or so kilometres. Setting off early, I figured that I had the time.

And initially, it worked well: lovely gentle up and down through quiet villages and along the side of the inlet. Yes, there was a bit of earth and gravel, but nothing unrideable.

But then the sand got deeper, and I had to get off and push for a bit. And then the track disappeared. With a big red ‘no through road’ sign. There must have been a landslide. So I left the bike on its side and went to check out my options and could just about see a possible route through up the hill through more thick red sand. So up I pushed, with time moving on, and then skittle-skattled my bike down the other side of the slope, before finding road again with relief and not too much time lost.

Now I was in a hurry, flying along through those villages and happily re-joining the main road, which was well paved but with a few very long steady and sweaty hills tormenting me as I raced for the ferry. Finally, the sight of the coast and a wondrous swishing descent through hard-baked rock to the ferry, with about 10-15 minutes left.

A 15-minute crossing to the grey cliffs of the mainland. I waited for the cars to pass and took my own sweet time as I pushed myself up a 200m climb, averaging 5-10%. It was tough but worth it, savage grey boulders and formations pushing down to the sea, interspersed with outcrops of sturdy trees and the odd roadside iris lighting up the way, splashes of bright purple ink on that grey landscape.

Then I was on the main road for 40 kilometres of steady up and down. A stunning ride in great weather: those tumbling rocks to my right and to my left, a succession of islands across the calm blue sea: Pag, then Rab, then Goli and Prvić. Fig trees, dandelions, gorse and of course, those lovely, lovely irises. For much of the ride, the road was mercifully quiet, though the traffic picked up in the afternoon.

A marvellous long descent – 8km in 15 minutes – to my end point in Sveti Juraj, my splendid day capped by a simple but happy dinner of grilled squid, chips and salad and a few very medicinal glasses of wine, watching the sunset across the water and the flickering lights across the bay. Magic.

Wednesday 11^th May: Sveti Juraj – Kraljevica: 62km

My journey to and from Pag had revived my spirits and sense of adventure. But sometimes you pay for the exertions of one day when you get out the next, and so it was that day. My energy was not helped by a poor night’s sleep with irregular air conditioning and again the torment of mosquitoes.

The coastal road was much busier than the day before and the almost constant stream of traffic and especially motorbikes rocketing past combined with steeper hills and hotter weather, became an annoyance. Even the landscape started to bore.

I had avoided the temptations of the EV 8 for a few days, figuring to enjoy the coastal views rather than the more inland route. But with that noisy traffic and increasing boredom, after 30 kilometres, I turned off on the outskirts of Novo Vinodolski and a sluggish 200m climb in broiling heat.

I was indeed rewarded with quieter roads. But not much else: scrubby land interspersed with soulless villages, and hills growing steeper and longer, toying with my weary legs. It was a day for trundling along with my head down on those unrewarding climbs and ticking off the kilometres as the sweat trickled down my head, looking ahead only to scan for rocks. I hardly saw a soul on a bike and those that were ignored me. Even the descents were tedious.

It was a relief when I entered the outskirts of Kraljevica, a town chosen not out of any touristic virtue, but simply because it was a convenient stopping point for the day, and had a single accommodation option: a pleasant enough but expensive apartment a long walk out of a very ugly town.

Thursday 12^th May: Kraljevica – Rijeka – Lovran: 48 km

Better spirits and another fine sunny day, the drenching of Murter a distant memory. And the landscape picked up too, at least for a while: a rather nice inland bay and steady ride up, enough to get the heart and legs going, but not too bothersome. One cyclist passing me: a young Frenchman, fully loaded with luggage in all directions, heading from France to Turkey with all the time in the world and religiously following every line and squiggle of the EV 8, including that rock trap outside of Split.

Then a descent into the thickness of Rijeka, my first big city since Split, and a sense of a cultural border being crossed, out of the Balkans and into the former Habsburg empire. Rijeka had the bustle – and treacherous traffic – of a big city, but the architecture was different: much more ornate and studied, gently decaying. I rather regretted not spending the night there and taking time to explore.

But I had business to attend to. People tell me that disc brakes are the future of cycling. And they might be. But we are not in that future yet, at least for touring bikes. Since switching to a bike with them, I have had no end of trouble: axles getting stuck and most of all, the brake pads wearing through rapidly, under the toil of preventing a fully loaded touring bike from overcooking steep descents.

For a few days, my brakes had started to squeak and the braking was getting harder and harder. With few bike shops around, I gambled on stopping in Rijeka and was able to find a shop on my route out of town: “Far Out”… Literally.

So I bundled my bike through the doors of “Far Out” and begged for help. Which they were happy to give, making time to replace the totally worn-out pads with new ones, though warning me that my chain would need to be replaced when I got back to Brussels. “We are bike tourers ourselves” though he was unimpressed with my rather minor trip of only 1000 km. Did they get a lot of tourers? “Oh yeah, we even had a guy in this morning. French. Totally overpacked. That’s the problem with these guys. He could have done with half that stuff.”

On I went, the EV 8 sending me on a pointless detour through shipyards and warehouses before confronting me with a massive set of stairs up to the main road I should have stayed on in the first place. So back I rode and along another busy coastal road, past fading villas, with Eurovelo slightly redeeming itself by giving me a brief but beautiful glimpse of the bay by the village of Preluk.

And then the opulence of Opatija and Lovran, my last rest point before the final stretch of this amazing journey.

Friday 13^th May: Lovran

A quiet day and a happy swim in the waters. Lovran was touristy but it was also charming, especially the pathway along the sea, up and down, in and out of small bays. It was charming by day and charming by night, with the distant lights of Opatija and Rijeka shimmering across the waters.

But even here, the ghosts of the past held their sway. In a small shelter off that pathway was a brilliantly executed mural of a young football fan who had died at the age of 36. Sad and yet, with runic symbols and a fascist motif mixed in, rather troubling. The past and the present.

Saturday 14^th May: Lovran – Postojna: 68 km

After over 550 km of the Croatian coastline, it was time to turn inland. In the grand scheme of my longer bike trip northwards through Europe, I would not see the sea again until I hit the Baltic Sea. Quite a thought.

Back along that busy road, being buzzed by Saturday morning traffic even as I pushed my way up a moderate but long 300m climb over 8km. My route took me away from the worst of the traffic, passing through Matuji, Rupa and Jušići. Moderate climbs, moderate roads, and moderate villages, the Central European air and style more prevalent with each kilometre ridden.

It was fine but a far cry from those crumbling crags. And then my final border and fifth country for this leg of the trip: Slovenia, with hardly a glance at my passport on either side.

More and more cyclists, both tourers and road bikers, including one young man who exemplified the ludicrous nature of the cult of bikepacking.

For those who are unfamiliar, bikepacking is defined by – appropriately – bikepacking.com as “carrying only the bare necessities on a bike that’s light enough to explore the trails you’d seek out on a day ride”.

The core bikepacker will take a small handlebar bag, a small rear bag attached to the saddle, and probably a slim triangular bag fitting between the frames, with just enough space for bike bottles. They will sleep in hostels or bivouac bags, with only the clothes they come in and the rest dedicated to food and bike tools or chargers. Rear racks of any kind are frowned upon.

Laudable enough and perfectly respectable as a philosophy, especially for shorter tours. But as was clear in the young man’s case, quite difficult to translate into reality if you really need that change of clothes, toiletries, your laptop, the complete works of Charles Dickens, a stuffed giraffe, and what looked suspiciously like a guitar, all flaring out at the back. But no rear bike rack.

The landscape got prettier: not exactly stunning, but wide-open valleys on all sides and a sense of Alpine space. The sense of Central Europe beginning.

Then my penultimate stop: Postojna. Hardly anything there, the main street dug up and no one around on a Saturday evening. I had set off early spooked by the weather forecast and my judgement was proved correct when barely an hour after I arrived, a storm hit, lightning and all, seen from the safety of my hotel room. And I wondered about the poor young man out in his bivvy bag, probably sheltering under that guitar with his stuffed giraffe for company…

Sunday 15^th May: Postojna – Ljubljana: 61km

A trip that I had planned for nearly three years and postponed by two was nearly over, and I was sad. Tirana, Kotor, Sarajevo, even Split, all seemed a long time ago.

Postojna might have been grim but I had found a decent restaurant serving a prawn salad on pickled fennel and a decently toasted pizza, and had had decent coffee over breakfast which almost always puts me in good spirits.

And what a joyous day to be out: a fine cool sun-filtered spring morning, turning off the main road after seven uneventful kilometres and through the dirt tracked and potholed but hardened roads of the Rakov Škocjan forest, a cool nature reserve. Hikers, joggers, bikers out on that delightful morn.

Sadly the forest was over soon and out into an Alpine meadow, steady up, up and along a river, getting steeper and steeper as the road climbed through the treescape. The smell of wood, the song of birds, and the regular prick of mosquitoes gluing themselves to my sweaty skin.

More and more road bikers whipping past me, shiny in Lycra. I was in the land of Rog and Pog and it showed.

As I crested the third and final peak, my skin tattooed with a glorious intricate motif of insects, a voice called out “Lucky you. It’s all downhill from here.” An Australian couple in their sixties, touring for a month from Munich, final destination unknown. Lumbering away, but doing it, so hats off…

A spiralling whippy-whappy descent, tempted to take a racing line but watching out for rocks and other bikers. Initially trees but finally a splendid valley with distant blue mountains, green fields and red roofs. As I stopped to take it all in, a bearded, shirtless young Frenchman sweated his way up, sans guitar, stopping while his girlfriend caught up. “Where are you heading?”. “To Japan…” Ah, the wonder of youth… I could easily have turned round and joined them.

Down, down, down, to the Ljubljanica basin and the urban sprawl of Ljubljana. It was flat and boring, but I was in bike town, lanes and lycra, and then with another corner, my final hotel and the sadness of the ending.

I had a day and a half to pack before my flight and used it to catch up with an old friend, not seen since a memorable winter weekend in 2018 in which we had hiked snowy mountains together and eaten a fabulous meal in the middle of nowhere, gradually unspooling our lives, and eating some more seriously good Slovenian food. Fine food in fine company in a fine town. It was a great way to end an unforgettable trip.

Even the birds were treating me nicely…

Epilogue: riding among ghosts

I am always sad when trips end, but this one had lingered in the imagination for a long time, nursed during the crazy nights of lockdown, when the whole world seemed to fall apart, and taken during the early months of the Russian bombardment of Ukraine, when Europe threatened to tear apart. Finishing this write-up, in early January 2024, it is fresh in mind.

On the edges of Sarajevo, I had passed a museum with an exhibition titled “Ghosts of the past” or some such name. The ghosts metaphor lingered in my mind. My ride seemed dominated by echoes of the not-too-distant past. 1914 in Sarajevo but also the disrupted world of the pre-First World War capital city of Cetinje. Severe partisan memorials in Montenegro. Communism: Tito and Hoxha and their legacy, most evocatively felt in that awesome museum in Tirana. And of course, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic and their baleful squads, still holding back the Bosnian people.

But also my own ghosts, the impact of my grandfather and the legacy of war.

I was struck by the tensions between those who would cling on to the past or litigate old quarrels: the graffiti in Nikšić, the happy fascists in Foča, and the less happy fascists sending their tanks across the Ukrainian border, and the desperate yearnings of so many to move on, like my friends, those poor sods in the asylum camp, and the Ukrainian people.

I marvelled at the chaotic joy of Albania, sympathised with the hopes of my friends and hosts in Sarajevo, and smiled at the calm modernity of Croatia and Slovenia. That is the version of Europe that I hope for.

January 7, 2024

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Bike touring in the Balkans: Part Two: Having fun in Dystopia

Monday 25^th April: Pluzine – Foča: 51km (continued)

It was the strangest border I had ever been to. An odd unsigned descent to a confluence of rivers: the bursting Tara to my right and the turquoise Piva to my left. The only sign of life wooden shacks and garish vans loaded with canoes for the full Tara Canyon rafting experience.

And then, the only road turning 90 degrees over the river, over a single lane wooden bridge, rocking precariously with every lorry. The gaps between the wooden slats were so wide I feared my tires might slide between them and my bike and I would plunge down for an unexpected Tara Canyon experience.

There was no room to stop or contemplate: the border wasn’t exactly busy but there were cars rumbling along every minute.

So over I went and then turned left to an unobtrusive border post resembling more the ticket booth to a national park. Out from Montenegro and into Bosnia-Herzegovina without so much as a blink from either border agent.

Except by the signs of it, I hadn’t crossed into Bosnia at all. Not a single Bosnian flag. Not a single “Welcome to Bosnia” sign.

Instead, a towering red, blue and white sign and a suspiciously new sign:

In my previous post, I likened Montenegro to a modern day Borduria, the fascist state in the Tintin books. So now I was crossing from one fictional country to another.

And just to add to the experience, my half of the road had fallen to bits: a dusty pot-holed mess. I was glad that there was little traffic in either direction, so I could pick my way round it.

But my, what a beautiful country! Crenelated crags covered in trees like green Velcro sweeping down to vibrant blue rivers. A vast verdant emptiness.

I took my time. With the roads, I had to. At one point, I came across cows, idly meandering across the road without a care. The sun was out and here I was venturing into the unknown, brimming with curiosity. Even the inclines were benign: gently up, gently down for twenty gorgeous kilometres.

At Brod, I joined what passed for a main road, heading right to Foča, a cheerful town a few kilometres north, where I had booked an apartment for the night: full of families out for the evening walk, lovers making eyes at each other. And fascists.

Cheerful fascists, but fascists nonetheless. There were fascist sculptures, fascist graffiti and worst of all, a weird green glass and grey stone modernist fascist civil war memorial to the ‘victims’ of the people they were supposedly sharing a country with, dressed up like a Silurian from Dr Who and with Cyrillic lettering like Norse script. The message was clear: this is not over. It is merely on hold.

Tuesday 26^th April: Foča – Sarajevo: 81km

Another beautiful spring day, out relatively early with a long and hilly ride ahead. As I stopped outside Foča, a young man approached me and seeing that I was English, started to engage with me. About boxing. Which I know little about and care even less. “Tyson Fury: he is Irish Traveller, like Serbian Orthodox.” He then kissed the rosary around his neck., “No Muslims”. So farewell then, Foca and your cheery fascists.

Before going, I had fretted about poor roads, dangerous drivers, and long tunnels. I need not have worried about any of these. The road was not perfect, and I had to keep an eye out for rocks and the odd pothole, but it was decent enough, and the drivers were – mostly – pretty careful, giving me a wide berth and the odd toot of encouragement. And the one long tunnel that I did come across was fully lit and empty. I did not have it all my way: short of Dobro Polje, I was harassed by an Alsatian rushing at me out of nowhere and not backing down in the face of the threats of physical violence I was making in his direction. I dismounted, keeping him the other side of my bike and slowly walking out of ‘his’ territory, neither of us giving an inch. A true Balkan stand-off.

But what I hadn’t expected was how beautiful it all was: the fast rushing Bistrica river as I gently pushed uphill, tight gorges with rocks looming on both sides, vistas of trees and distant crags and as I got closer to Sarajevo, snowy mountains glinting in the sunlight.

Then a tough final ascent to the waterline between the Bistrica and the Zeljeznica with even the cars slowing down. At the summit, yet another Serb – sorry, ‘Srp’ – war memorial, slightly more sober than the Silurian before chatting with a stopped lorry driver who had one arm in plaster.

Down the valley I went, fine scenery, almost Alpine, but not as dramatic as on the way up.

Then the madness of Sarajevo, an eternity of suburbs and car fumes, enlivened by a dramatic descent into the Miljacka valley, following the other cyclists and riding on the pavements, and then up a busy street to my friend’s house.

It was a happy reunion after too many years apart, made more joyful by meeting her husband, daughter and lovable but excitable dog, Rita. I could not have been in better hands. And Rita was clearly happy to have another leg to throw herself at.

How wonderful and how incredible to be in Sarajevo! There are few cities on earth where you feel the weight of history push so heavily down on you. Berlin, Moscow, Belfast, Jerusalem certainly. Perhaps Paris, Rome and Warsaw too. But one must see these cities, one must breathe these cities. To come to Sarajevo was a big detour on my trip, but it had never been in doubt.

After dinner, my friend took me for a wander along the main drag, still named after Marshal Tito, pointing out this and that: not just the highlights of the town, but also places from her youth: her school, the law academy. We walk all the way to the old town: Baščaršija, a throng of narrow lanes, mosques and tourist shops selling sweet pastries of all kinds and in all colours: bright green, bright pink…. Most of them, my friend told me, are made in Turkey…

Wednesday 27^th April: Sarajevo

With my friend off at work, her husband took me up the hills to the ruins of the fortress overlooking the city and my first Bosnian coffee, Sarajevo splayed out beneath me on a gloriously sunny day, a city like any other.

Yet the past clung everywhere in the air like a suffocating smog: the old gun positions, the bridges, the monuments, and the human regrets.

He dropped me off at the City Hall, insisting that I take a look inside. And rightly. It was empty but quite glorious: a mix of art exhibits, historical artefacts, administrative offices, and a recreation of the war tribunal… A sign on the outside notes that the hall was firebombed by Serbians during the civil war and rebuilt with Austrian funding, a symbolic reconciliation from one side at least. History in the raw.

And then after a simple but delicious lunch of cevapcici sausage and a glass of yogurt in a Muslim café, out through the city, stopping at the Latin Bridge, where a small sign on one of the buildings notes the spot where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. A chill came down me, and again when I walked along Sniper Alley and the distinctive yellow Holiday Inn.

But it is not just the past that chilled but a foreboding of the future: a conflict simply frozen rather than resolved, and with the evil Putin trying desperately to thaw it. I had imagined Sarajevo as somehow tucked firmly inside the Bosniak and Croat zones but no, it is divided right along the river. And yet, my friends told me, there is hardly any socialising between people on each side. A society in limbo.

Yet life goes on and there are odd glimpses of the normality and moving on that my friends crave. For the first time on my trip, I saw bikers out in the streets in their lycra and shades. In an abandoned factory area, I came across a Specialized bike shop where I can get my front light. And in the evening, we went to a chic restaurant on a back street, specialising in nettle and leaf recipes: nettle pesto, dandelion leaf salad, and even a chocolate and nettle cake. This is the charming town that Sarajevo could become if only the politicians would let it move on.

Thursday 28^th April: Sarajevo – Konjic: 63 km

“You should have stayed longer”, my friend said, and rightly so. And indeed I will come back if Putin and Vučić don’t make that impossible.

Out through the madness of Sarajevo, spending the first few hundred yards following a bearded unicyclist who was making much faster progress than I was… Then Sniper Alley and a long urban mass of grassed over bike paths and rutted roads lasting a full hour of grey misery.

As the city thinned out to commuter villages, my GPS directed me over some very sturdy train tracks, lunking out of the ground. My bike was too heavy to lift in one, so I had the choice of taking off all my bags and lifting it over, or seeing if there is an alternative route. The road continued to my left and on the map, I spotted a minor road that looks like it leads to an underpass or at least to an easier crossing.

So off I went, up a straight hill and whooshing down past a large bunch of non-European people milling around. As I pedalled on, fabricated huts to my left and right and African and Asian faces playing ping pong, strolling or sitting around, and angry dogs, and… the end of the road with a watchtower. Bollocks…

So back towards the bemused milling crowd, and some unpleasantly surprised Bosnian police officers and UN guards.

And it was at that point that I realised that I was about to be arrested…

The GoPro camera mounted on my handlebars did not help my case, and nor did my passport, which was promptly seized. The whole thing had “Suspicious British NGO worker tries to break in to take footage of appalling conditions in asylum camp” written all over it. Luckily, I had not been filming during my descent, so could show them innocent footage.

After what seemed an eternity, their faces relaxed and they sent me off along the RIGHT track, with a friendly pat on the back and a clear message to not come back. Ever. Just go now.

Then a mercifully more mundane ride out along the main road to Mostar, the M115 and M17 with the odd delightful turn-off through a small village. As I was stopping for a drink, a young Spanish rider pulled up, laden with twice the amount of baggage including some very bulky canvases for sketching. He was cycling East, to Turkey… and beyond… So off we went, with him very quickly leaving me for dust.

Did I mention that he had twice the gear? Yes, but he was half my age, the little bastard.

Then off up a very long and middlingly steep hill with two lanes for uphill traffic, and threoufh a long but completely lit tunnel to a quite magnificent sight: a line of grey crags mostly covered in trees. As I sat at abandoned picnic tables, a long line of road bikers were making their way painfully up from the valley floor in the opposite direction, coaxed by a support van, whose staff proudly gave me a Herzegovina Bike Tours card. Again, some hope for this beautiful country.

Then a quite amazing descent over the best part of twenty joyous kilometres and impeccably paved and engineered, whizzing down and trying to take in sight after sight, and hoping that my GoPro would get at least some of it. Watch the video for just some of it. One for the ages…

Konjic: a pretty town perched on the turquoise Neretva river. My B&B – the basic but charming Pansion Neretva – was quite a walk from the town, but it was a nice walk at that along that stunning rustling river. I felt as though I were in the real Bosnia: wood smoke, minarets, red roofs, apple trees, and the odd foul-smelling factory poisoning the water…

I ate dinner in a soulless and almost empty restaurant in the old communist style with menus in English, Croat and Turkish with a dull but well-meaning waiter. But my goodness, the food was good: “Bey pottage”: a rich soup of chicken, okra and vegetable stock, followed by a perfectly cooked small steak in butter with chips and grilled veg, all polished off with some fine Montenegrin Blatina wine. For purely medicinal purposes.

Friday 29^th April 2022: Konjic – Mostar: 70km

Having joined the Neretva river, I was now to follow it almost to the sea. I retraced my route to Konjic and then after a rather boring first hour and a half, as I came out of the tunnel to Jablanica, the scenery became much better as the Neretva contorting itself round hills. There was a particularly lovely stretch coming out of Jablanica, a quiet but mostly well paved country road with expansive views of green truffled hills tied up in turquoise, and all in glorious sunshine. Perfect.

Sadly I had to rejoin the heavily trafficked main road, the M115, before too long, but even then, the scenery made up for it, particularly the first section with great stiff fingers of rock crowding down to that swirling river, and then regular changes of scenery as the river and valley widened out again. And I was able to take the benefit of the many metres painfully climbed since Kotor: for over 25 glorious kilometres, I was on a gentle downward sweep, at a speed well above my usual snail-like crawl.

I didn’t even mind the tunnels: there were 16 of them and they were either short or well-lit, and wide enough for cars to give me a wide berth.

The only irritation was the traffic, passing in waves all day. The road was wide enough, but the cars became a bore. The only danger came when a car coming the other way decided to overtake a line of vehicles and came at me – in MY lane – flashing its lights at me to get out the way, and forcing me to swerve into a hedge. Ah, the delights of afternoons during Ramadan… Tired and hungry drivers with too little sugar and too much adrenalin.

It was all too good to last and after a final long tunnel, a long flat stretch away from the river to Mostar with rush hour traffic buzzing me the whole time.

Saturday 30^th April: Mostar

I was expecting a lot from Mostar. I was disappointed. The star turn is the old bridge across the Neretva. It had stood there for over 400 years before being destroyed by Bosnian Croat forces in November 1993. Rebuilding was completed in 2004.

It was very impressive and beautiful but somehow, I feel that there is something missing with reconstructed monuments. The old town seemed very small and jammed with tourist shops and restaurants. It was indeed jammed with tourists out on a sunny day. No atmosphere. And the rest of the town was alternately grim and boring: grim on the Bosniak east side, still largely unreconstructed and rather mundane on the more prosperous Croat side. The divisions remained, even between the apparent allies.

There were redeeming aspects: a pleasant and rather untouristed spot just south of the main drag with a splendid view to the bridge where I sat for a while in the morning and at dusk. During the latter, I was gently amused by a young man with an expensive camera and tripod, repeatedly setting up Instagram shots of the bridge, putting the timer on and then leaping in front of the camera like a gormless gorilla. I wanted to tell him that the problem was him, not the camera settings… The other quiet joy was discovering some wonderful murals on the Croat side, livening up the place.

I did though find some nice spots to eat on the edges of the old town, having a very good Bosnian stew for lunch and a steak stuffed with cheese and prosciutto that might not have looked good but tasted wonderfully.

Sunday 1^st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km

A beautiful day to leave a sad country. Off early and after 6km of the main road with more Croatian flags than Bosnian ones, was led onto progressively quieter country lanes, picking up the Ciro Trail, a recently launched bike route largely following the old railway line from Dubrovnik to Mostar.

At one point, I spent a long time going round the outside of the “Aluminija” company. I mention this because of the combination of neat “no photos” signs, bilingual signs for a deserted vineyard and garden, and giant structure like the Seattle needle, with “We are Aluminija” written in English in a trendy font. Not a soul around… It was all rather James Bond secret villain. In farmland. I had the feeling that if I stopped, I would be quickly surrounded by burly security guards, so on I went…

Then the old railway line and that rather typical thing where you spend kilometre after kilometre pedalling along straight and narrow tree-lined lanes, getting bored out of your skull. It finally opened up to a wonderful bridge over the Neretva, with the river tumbling over falls and again not a soul around. It was just so pretty and so unknown.

Then through a rather pretty gorge, though with parts along a bearable gravel track. Few other sights: a day for making the distance.

Then off the route and onto the main road into Croatia, with the customs officer barely looking at my passport, let alone my bike or vaccination papers.

So that was Bosnia. I had taken a big detour away from the standard tourist route along the Adriatic. I had entered the country with my stomach only just about recovered from a bout of food poisoning and my feet still cold and damp from the rain in Montenegro. I had stepped into a forgotten country from a forgotten conflict with little clue as to what to expect.

But I had also stepped into an often fantastically beautiful landscape of tree-covered crags and bustling rivers. A land of great kindness, most particularly with my friends in Sarajevo. A land of great food.

A land where history lay heavy and had not stopped. It was like skating across a frozen river with rushing water not far underneath. And in that spring of 2022 with Russian tanks rolling across European territory, the ice felt thin indeed.

A land of pious Orthodox men kissing their crucifixes, of grotesque green war memorials, of fascist flags and graffiti, of divided towns with divided populations. A land of wary policemen and frustrated asylum seekers in hidden camps. And yes, a land of strange, guarded industrial plants with video cameras side by side with vineyards.

But also a land where many wanted to move on, to escape the legacy and addiction to violence and confrontation. To skate to the other side of the bank and freedom.

Bosnia will always have its history, but I left wishing for it to have its future as well, to find its true identity, to escape the ghosts, to be normal again.

So, on to Croatia… Part Three will follow…

August 6, 2023August 7, 2023

CrispLeave a comment

Riding among ghosts: Bike touring through the Balkans: Part One

Prologue

My moment of revelation took place on the runway of Tirana airport some four and a half years ago.

I was on my way to Pristina on a work trip and the plane stopped over in Tirana for an hour. It was a glorious spring day, and as we flew in over Albania, I was mesmerised by the landscape: desolate floodplains rolling up to two waves of sharp serrated mountains with a lush green plain in between. Cheerful red-hatted villages spread out and the odd pencil-straight line of a highway stabbing up through them.

After the plane landed, I gently poked my head out of the rear exit and took in the purple mountains in the distance. I was entranced.

I had been to Tirana once before, twenty-four years earlier, as a postgraduate student at the College of Europe on a memorable ‘study visit’, meeting key politicians including the then Albanian Prime Minister, Sali Berisha. We had also spent time on a side trip to the Albanian hills and seaside. It was more basic than anywhere else I had visited, and even the Romanians on my course were tut-tutting at it all. But it was fun and mad and the people were warm-hearted.

As I looked at those purple mountains on that wonderful day, it was clear to me that I had to come back… by bike. And that in turn led to the idea of a multi-stage bike tour from the southernmost town in Europe to the northernmost, spending a few weeks each year and then starting the next year’s ride at the final city I had reached the year before.

It would be a perfect excuse to ride through the Balkans and to see countries that I had never visited before: Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, and of course to return to Albania. And that in turn led to an amazing trip in Spring 2019 from the eastern tip of Crete, along and up through mainland Greece and then through Albania to Tirana.

If you are interested, you can read about it here:

Leaving Tirana at the end, I looked forward to resuming my trip a year later, onwards to Sarajevo, Split and possibly Ljubljana… What could possibly go wrong?

A year later, we were firmly in lockdown… So I postponed my plans. And then postponed them again. And again. And again. Each time being thwarted by some new wave or variant of the virus. In the meantime, I had some jolly nice impromptu trips to Brittany, northern Italy, the Jura, and Andalusia. You can read about them elsewhere on the site.

But I never gave up, and on Wednesday 13^th April 2022, I got up groggily at 3.30 am and headed to Brussels airport and then back to that same runway on an eerily similar beautiful day…

This is the story of my little adventure, split into meal-sized chunks. I hope that you enjoy it and even better that it intrigues you enough to plan a bike trip to some or all of the five beautiful countries I passed through. Let me know what you think…

Part One: A bike tour through Syldavia and Borduria

Wednesday 13^th April and Thursday 14^th April: Tirana

I hate these early morning flights. Even though I have never slept through an alarm ever and certainly not one before a trip, my brain still acts as though it can’t possibly go to sleep or I might never wake up again. I spend the night tossing and turning and rehearsing the many things that could go wrong on my trip:

COVID… and why am I coughing a bit and my throat feeling rather scratchy?
Border closures due to COVID…
Getting ill with the flu
One or both of my parents falling ill
One of my family falling ill
Gastric flu or food poisoning
A pulled muscle
A broken bone
Toothache
Earache
Back ache
Bottom ache
Belly ache
Something else-ache
Being bitten by a dog
Being bitten by a snake
Being butted by a goat
Being flattened by a cow
Being hit by thunder
Being knocked over by wind
A bike accident
A car accident
A stolen bike
Being late for my flight
The airline losing my luggage
The airline losing my bike
The airline damaging my bike
Me damaging my bike when putting it back together again… As has already happened once or twice…
Being attacked or robbed
An escalation of the Ukraine war…
Forgetting something else to worry about and then having a heart attack. Come to think of it, my muscles do feel quite tight…

I continue to muse on these things in the near emptiness of Brussels airport and then, ever more groggily on the flight to Tirana, sleeping fitfully… Until I see those rippling hills like whipped cream, those red-roofed villages and the stunning beauty of Lake Skadar and realise that it is finally happening. Finally. Unbelievable.

And then down to earth in the Balkan sunlight, those purple mountains in the distance. And the sheer swarming human madness of Tirana. The chaotic rush of people in all directions on all modes of transport. Everything under construction. Everything on the move.

But my throat is dry and I feel shattered. Luckily I appear to have booked the nicest run hotel in Tirana. At the Metro Hotel in the trendy district of Blloku, it is all smiles even when I appear at 9.30 in the morning looking like a shrivelled haemorrhoid, with a bike in a cardboard box and a mass of bags in tow. Take your time, have a coffee, your room will be available in a few minutes. No worries…

After a cappuccino, I feel vaguely human again… And the feeling is even better after a few hours’ sleep. I spend the rest of the day getting my bearings, putting the bike back together without incident, and getting caught out by how early the sun sets. I am able to watch the people out on the evening walk: pouting girls with hair of all colours, stern looking boys with shaved heads and stubbly beards in leather jackets and black jeans, dusty old men in faded baggy suits.

Two years later than planned, but who cares?

I spend the following morning exploring Tirana. Not a huge city and not a huge amount of sights but good to wander and pick up the air.

I spend a few hours at the House of Leaves, a museum set in a former surveillance centre of the Sigurimi, Albania’s secret police during communist times. Within these quiet grey walls, in an understated fashion, the horrors are quietly told: a regime that became more and more paranoid, seeing spies and traitors everywhere. Room upon room of bugs, spy cameras, paperwork, pictures and video testimony of those arrested, even front pages of the regime’s in-house magazine, going from ‘heroic’ designs of the 1950s and 1960s to more prosaic colour photos of agents inspecting security facilities in the 1970s and 1980s. Outside in the courtyard, pictures of the many leaders of the regime and secret police, most of them allowed to move on after the democratic transition without even a truth and reconciliation commission.

But I sense that society has had the last laugh: modern Tirana has a raucous energy and a vibrant individualism. Forty-five years of repression could not subdue these people. There is a wilful anarchism in the air which should make Hoxha turn in his grave, the evil bastard. I love it. The beautiful, beautiful madness. It is so anarchic, it would make a Swiss person have a conniption. Wonderful.

So on I walk, and end up past the prime minister’s residence where we met Berisha, the university and at the edges of the city park at a restaurant devoted to modern Albanian cuisine: Mullixhiu. I had read about it in Culture Trip and the menu is quite wonderful. Even with the English language menu, half of it is incomprehensible: dromsa, trahana, jufka, mishaim, arapash, rosnica, laknor, fli, peremesh. The waitress translates some of them as being types of pasta and on her advice, I settle for jufka with porcini mushrooms followed by a dessert of fli with cheese curds and honey. It is not outstanding, but it is interesting and I rather regret not having the time to go back.

Disappointingly, my friend and former classmate A selects a Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner when we meet up, on the pretext that it is one of his favourite places in town. I tease him about coming all the way to Albania to have Mexican food. But when the food arrives, it is quite delicious. We talk about all the things friends catch up with when they see each other: the family, the job, other friends, and of course politics, the pandemic and war, these inescapable realities hanging over us. I head to bed, happy to be on the road again, and happy to have spent two days in this happily crazy city.

Friday 15^th April 2022: Tirana – Lezhë: 71km

Off at last. Unbelievable to be finally out there on the bike, careening my way over the smooth coloured stones of Skanderbeg Square and out through the chaos on a stunning sunny morning.

At a set of traffic lights, I come across another bike tourist heading north and we exchange pleasantries. He is called Hugo and comes from the Netherlands. We are both loosely following the Eurovelo 8 out, so we agree to ride together. Mercifully, the Eurovelo keeps us largely off the main drags – so much so that at one point, we have to walk the bikes over a rickety and wobbly wooden pedestrian bridge – and then out back towards the airport. After a bit of main road past the airport, the road becomes quieter once we pass Fushë-Krujë.

It is nice to have company on my first day out and to share stories from the road. I had expected a boring day along flat and featureless roads, but once beyond the airport, the hills rise to our right, never boring, always changing. Some serrated, some grassy with rockfaces jutting out, solitary farmhouses clinging to the hillsides. It is all rather magical.

Sheep, donkeys, the odd stray but harmless dog. Children shouting out “Hello”. Old men raising their hats and calling “Avanti!” or “Bravo!”. A country that just over thirty years ago had been cut off from the outside world was full of relaxed warmth.

When I was younger, I read my way through the Adventures of Tintin, and was particularly fascinated by King Ottakar’s Sceptre, a story set in the fictional country of Syldavia, with even its own tourist brochure and language. I really wanted to visit Syldavia. I guess it was what led to my fascination with Eastern Europe and an urge to travel and explore.

Travelling through Albania that fine afternoon and the two following days, I felt like I was on a bike tour through Syldavia. Quite wonderful.

But Syldavia with bad roads. I had to keep my eyes on the road for massive potholes, sleeping policemen, and the odd overexcited driver coming too close.

Hugo’s pace is much quicker than mine, so we agree to split. I take my time, stopping regularly to take it all in, feeling like I have the whole place to myself.

When I reach Lezhë in late afternoon, Hugo calls out to me from a café table and says that he has decided to stop there for the night. Luckily there are rooms at my hotel, so after a few hours break to clean up and walk around, we meet up for dinner.

I looked forward to a real Albanian meal and the place had a buzzing air, with a number of riverside bars and cafes…. But no open restaurants. At 7.30 on a Friday night in April, all the places listed on Google Maps were closed, apart from the hotel restaurant, which looked empty and grim. We trogged around. There were two pizzerias open but both of them assured us that they were not serving food… It was admittedly Ramadan but the sun had firmly gone down. We were getting desperate when I looked up and saw a first-floor pizzeria. Mercifully, they were indeed open and served us with a smile, including one of the best Caesar salads I have had in my life.

Saturday 16^th April: Lezhë – Shkoder : 45km

I took my time getting up in the morning, whacked after my first day on the bike, and passed Hugo in the hotel restaurant, finishing his breakfast. We wished each other luck and headed off our separate ways, he riding over 100k to Virpazar, and me having a much more relaxed ride to Shkoder.

For most of the ride, the scenery was quietly fabulous: for 30 glorious kilometres, I rode up and down and then along the flat of a valley along a quiet country road, coasting along the bottom of a line of hills separating central Albania from the coast.

There were few cars so I could listen to the wonderful sound of nature in Spring: dogs, frogs, cocks and the sounds of mowing. And of course, the usual greetings and words of encouragement. “Pershendetje”, I called, “Hello” they replied.

A bucolic charm of thatched farm houses, rusting tractors and roaming chickens. Even the names of the villages and towns were wonderful: Trush, Barballush, Fishte, Melgushe, Zojz…

Sadly, the twenty-first century intruded for the final ten kilometres as I rejoined the main road, the SH1, being buzzed by Saturday lunchtime traffic and the dreary sights of shopping outlets, warehouses, petrol stations and auto repair shops to keep me company. Even Syldavia has to move with the modern world.

Shkoder was a funny one: a rather ugly town, street after street of grey apartment blocks and not much to see, but my, what a wonderful buzzy atmosphere on the streets! Cheap clothes shops mingling with cafes mingling with – is that a toilet seat? Dusty cafes for old men, sharp new cafes in modern fonts for young couples, all chain-smoking away.

And the restaurants were fully open so I had that most Albanian of dishes: tave kosi: baked lamb with rice, and quite wonderful it was too. If you want to try it, you can follow this very good Rick Stein recipe:

Sunday 17^th April: Shkoder – Bar: 48km

Already leaving Albania! What a shame! Part of me wanted to turn round and see more of this delightful country. And for a while, it looked as though the wind would stop me advancing further, because I woke up to a howler: a bleak grey day with trees bending in a fierce gale. And I was short of sleep thanks to the call to prayer waking me at 4am…

But I figured that I might as well get on with it, so out I went, out through the joyous anarchy of Shkoder, out over a bridge with stunning sights of minarets and mountains, and out… a gently scenic ride: nothing spectacular but pleasant enough, my only distractions the odd brand-new mosque out in the middle of nowhere, some looking as though they had never even been entered and with the telltale Turkish flag much in evidence. Mercifully, the wind was hidden from me for most of the day by a headland separating the Adriatic from Lake Skadar.

Then to the border crossing and a separate line for pedestrians and cyclists. I had a friendly chat with a French gendarme outside the passport control, while my passport was checked on the Albanian side and wordlessly passed to his counterpart on the Montenegrin side.

For a while though I could have been forgiven for thinking that I was still in Albania: a mass of red flags with the black eagle and signs in Shqip. Still the gently rising and falling roads but with stark granite rocks coming into view. I followed the main drag – the M1 – for 11 kilometres before turning off towards Bar on a smaller road climbing steadily through olive groves and past the odd forlorn Muslim graveyard. I did not have it to myself: a regular stream of cars and the odd thuggish tour bus pushing everyone out of its way.

And then, after a plateau, the Adriatic for the first time, and a gentle squiggle down the hillsides to Bar, the skies clouding over and the wind reappearing. I took a shower and headed out through a rather plain town. Not ugly, but plain, and rather empty. The beach was rather empty apart from a few madly grinning souls, and for all that, rather wonderful.

Monday 18^th April: Bar – Kotor: 63km

I wake up to a beautiful sunny day, though still quite gusty, with the wind on and off and hitting me mostly as I approach the brows of hills.

After the relative peace of Albania, it is a day for following the main coastal road – the M1 – all the way to Budva and then on to the Bay of Kotor. Lots of traffic for most of the route.

And my first unlit tunnels, and time to test my front light… and see that it shows me absolutely nothing ahead… Luckily, my rear light is visible enough and I put on a lightweight reflective vest and the constant stream of cars passing me light my way. Still, it is scary.

The scenery though is fabulous: the deep blue Adriatic to my left and a line of craggy hills to my right. Lots of climbing: steady up and fast down. So fast in one case, that I completely overshot the turn off to the causeway to the beautiful islet of Sveti Stefan, and only realised too late.

After turning off to run round the side of Budva, up a steep hill and through a long tunnel, mercifully open to the sea for the second half. Then a rather grim stretch of ten kilometres inland over towards Kotor and Tivat, with nothing remotely redeeming and cars passing every few seconds.

Mercifully, my route finally turned off to avoid a major car tunnel, and up the old road over the hills towards Kotor, marked with “Panoramic Route 3” signs.

It was a strenuous climb, and by the end, my eyes were nearly blind with sweat, but my goodness, it was magnificent. As I climbed, better and better views over towards the Bay of Kotor, gleaming away. I took my own sweet time, so by the time I reached the top of the pass at the hamlet of Trojica, it was nearly six and the sun was setting. Hardly any traffic, but no cyclists either.

I took a moment to take in the wonderful view down the other side to Kotor… and to note that the road I was about to descend would be one that I would have to work my way back up again two days later… and then continue climbing and climbing.

I donned my jacket and made a cold but stunning descent, hairpinning down to Kotor: the city and coast lit up gold in the distance, an amazing feeling. Down, down, down…

And then a quiet evening at a rather drab restaurant recommended by my host, where I was the only diner: an equally drab Shopska salad, followed by an overcooked escalope and tart red wine. But after four days on the bike and over 1000m of climbing to Kotor on the day, I was absolutely exhausted. Time for a day off.

Tuesday 19^th April: Kotor

I wake up to a quite magnificent sight from my apartment balcony in the neighbouring village of Dobrota: the mountainside that I had ridden down towering over Kotor and a massive cruise ship in the harbour. I take my time to drink it all in.

Another difficult night though, waking up with stomach cramps. These came on and off all day and were bad again the following night. Looking back, after all my efforts to drink bottled water, I had made the classic mistake of ordering salad, washed in the very water that I was trying to avoid. One gets so used to the high standards of water in EU Member States that one forgets just how contaminated the water can be elsewhere.

Despite my cramps, I am determined to enjoy the day and head up the “Ladder of Kotor”, a snaking path to the left of the city walls, ending up at a lonely church. Fabulous.

Then, up a real ladder and through a gap in the walls and down to the town over slippery cobbles and passing breathless cruise ship passengers painfully making their way up.

When I get to Kotor, it is pretty enough but teeming with tourists, so I duck out quickly and end up at a lakeside café at Dobrota and a splendid lunch of grilled squid with blitva: spinach, potatoes and garlic. My stomach is still hurting so I take a good nap and a light dinner of sea bream with blitva. With the cruise ship back out in the Adriatic, Kotor regains a charm, but I still prefer the majesty of the mountains and lake on which the town has turned its back.

Wednesday 20^th April: Kotor – Cetinje: 45km

When I had planned the route, I had known that to see Kotor but also head to Sarajevo and see a bit of inland Montenegro, I would need to climb up towards Mt Lovcen, a snaking climb of over 1000 m. I felt good about doing it though after a similar ride in the Alpujarras mountains of Andalusia the autumn before, when I had had an amazing time.

But I had reckoned without doing that long climb with stomach cramps, a tired and weakened body… and rain and cold. I woke up after another tormented night to heavy grey skies, the mountains missing under thick granite clouds. Savagely beautiful… but daunting.

At times like this, you have to get on with it. And my host wanted me out by 10, so out I went…

For the first part of my climb as I retraced that giddy descent, I thought that I might get lucky, with a mild mist cooling me down as I stretched my way out of the bay, pausing here and then to take in the steadily shrinking town and cruise ship, and my stomach mercifully quiet. It was good all the way up to Trojica and then as I climbed higher and higher, I got views in both directions: over to Tivat on my left and to Kotor on my right.

But my luck ran out, with bands of heavy rain and mist passing through. It was not just the rain: it was also naturally getting colder with the rain and climb. When I had packed for the trip, I had anticipated a certain amount of cold weather at the start, and packed a fleece, arm warmers, leggings and medium gloves. But I had concluded that thick waterproof socks and shoe covers would be overkill.

How wrong I was! My drenched feet were steadily turning into blocks of ice and my gloves were sadly inadequate to the combination of rain and cold. My GPS told me that it was 4C. I think probably slightly warmer than that but certainly enough to be miserable. At one point, even with the rain continuing, I pulled out a dry pair of summer socks from my bag to replace the sodden ones, and later when it had dried out but was still freezing, put on my casual jacket over my rain jacket and a further pair of casual socks. Even with those, usually enjoyable descents became a numbing torture.

It was sad because the views were quite incredible and I would have loved to have taken my time to admire. The climbing was steady and the grade reasonable and not too many cars. My stomach was mostly OK but from time to time, it spasmed.

At the top, I had given myself the choice between a longer scenic route to my right going up to Lovćen National Park, and a more direct route to my left to Cetinje. Sadly, I had to take the latter: I was not in a shape to punish myself further.

Then out through the town of Njeguši almost everything closed, and a switch from the greenery of the coast to brown hills still very much in winter, and hardly a soul out. The sun came out but it was bitterly cold, so I ploughed on, dipping and then grinding up a steady climb towards the turn off to Cetinje to avoid a long tunnel but taking another set of hairpin bends over the top. At the top, the landscape was splayed before me: an almost deserted unworldly brown, yellow and grey twist of hills and road.

Back to the main road and a very quick descent to Cetinje, the former capital of Montenegro, notably from its independence in 1878 until 1946. It was cold, I was tired and I was desperate for it to be over. One of those days. In 45 km, I had climbed 1,250m albeit at a measly 10.4kph.

Sometimes you just have to grind it out.

Luckily, my hotel in the centre of town, the Gradska, was excellent and they upgraded me to a super room, overlooking the town square. A magical shower to bring my feet back to life.

After a decent rest, out to see Cetinje in the setting sun: a pretty place smelling of wood fire with historic monuments and former embassies. But it was bitterly cold even in the sunshine.

I checked out the eating options and settled for a place with good reviews, but which I regretted the minute I had walked in: empty apart from a grumpy chain-smoking waitress looking like a jaded Martina Navratilova: 1980s glasses and all. I thought that bean stew would help give me some fibre and it was nice but spicy. Then a massive grill of meat and chips big enough for two. Again I drew the grumpiness of the waitress by not making much progress.

Thursday 21^st April: Cetinje – Danilovgrad: 59 km

Another disrupted night’s sleep with my symptoms getting worse. I would clearly have to switch to the BRAT diet from here on: bananas, rice, apple sauce, toast. A shame in such a wonderful hotel.

More clouds and rain, and no way of dodging them. I delayed my departure to 12 to give myself the maximum time to recover and to give the rain time to clear but to no avail. Up, up, up the route that I had descended the previous afternoon and then out along quiet country roads up and down, up and down in on-off rain and chilly temperatures, depleted by my illness and the hard climb the previous day.

It was a tough day on lonely narrow and winding roads: everything brown, forbidding and featureless. It had a stark beauty but in the cold and wet, I was in no position to appreciate. Even the people seemed grim. Where the Albanians had been cheery, waving and greeting, the few Montenegrins that I passed looked at me like an idiot when I wished them “Dober dan”. I felt like I had crossed from Syldavia to Borduria, the fascist state next door.

Inner Montenegro on a rare break from the rain

Even the landmarks were grim: regular stark grey communist memorials to those who had died during the Second World War. Constant reminders of Montenegro’s historical struggles.

And even the roads were unfriendly: there was a lot of roadwork going on. Roads would abruptly terminate in a pile of gravel and no sign as to where to go, so I would have to take the unfinished empty new road, hoping that it would connect me to something, and relying on my bike GPS to see where it might connect.

Then back onto the thin potholed main road like a discarded snake skin. A snake skin with warts. I had to keep my eyes firmly on the road to avoid large chunks of rock.

Then finally a descent to the valley floor, made more agreeable by first finding a dry balcony of someone’s deserted house to remove my cold and wet socks, massage my freezing toes, and put two pairs on with an extra rain jacket. It was a fabulous descent through the clouds, but with my eyes firmly on the road for potholes, rocks and the odd careening 4×4, making no compromise for a lonely cyclist.

But my hotel in Danilovgrad, indeed the only one around: Hotel Zeta, was a treat, greeted warmly by the receptionist and quickly warm under a wonderful shower.

In the rain, I took a wander round the town, though there was not much there apart from a small sculpture park and a socialist realist war memorial of bright young fighters for liberty. Again, the past was very present.

Friday 22^nd April: Danilovgrad – Nikšić

After a slightly better night’s sleep, more grey skies and with a grim weather forecast: a thick front of rain, strong winds, even chillier temperatures – down to 4C – and worst of all, the prediction of thunderstorms, lit red on the weather radar. The prospect of riding 850m uphill over just under 40km.

I had asked the owners of the apartment that I was due to stay in in Nikšić if I could arrive early, thinking that I might outrun the worst of it. They had agreed, but had said “you could always come by train”… Out of interest, I looked for train times, and yes, there was a train at 1.19, getting in just before 2. It would mean a gap in my journey across Europe. It would mean missing the chance to see the fabulous Ostrog monastery, one of Montenegro’s top sights.

But it would also mean missing the risk of getting zapped to death by a thunderstrike while labouring uphill with the wind against me in freezing cold temperatures, whilst weakened from a bout of gastroenteritis… Tough call. And indeed it was a call with my youngest sister who decided it for me. “Why would you take the risk?”.

So reluctantly, I delayed my departure for a few hours and then cycled over to the empty train station, a half hour before the train was due and then had to hop across the track when the train came in on a deserted platform… and was completely modern with a bike ramp… for a princely 3 Euros.

In the end, the thunderstorms did not appear until the evening, but it was still wet and windy and as the train swept calmly up the hillsides, I had visions of my alternate universe self, labouring my way up and cursing everything.

I stayed in an apartment in a block not far from the station: not wonderful, but a chance to rest up after the difficulties of the last days. And continue my exciting diet of apple juice, brown bread, saltine crackers and bananas.

I took an early night after a superbly nutritious dinner of bananas, brown bread and saltine crackers, washed down with a few glasses of the local jus de pomme concentrate and was half asleep at just past eleven, when the apartment started shaking. It took me a few seconds to realise that it was an earthquake… Nothing too severe. I suppose that I should have evacuated the building to be sure. But this was my second earthquake and I stepped out onto the balcony, saw no one around and then went back to bed and slept like a king. Aftershocks and gastroenteritis be damned…

Saturday 23^rd April: Nikšić

After a simply glorious night’s sleep, I wake up to a fantastic sunny morning, and a wonderful lack of concern from my family who usually want urgent reassurance that I have survived the terrors of the Eurostar train from London to Brussels, but are apparently blissfully unaware or unworried that I have just survived a force 5 earthquake on the top floor of a shoddily built apartment block not two hundred kilometres from its epicentre…

Having feasted on a sublime breakfast of brown bread, bananas, some saltine crackers for that earthy kick and some joyous apfelsaft, I set out to explore Nikšić and to find a bike shop selling front lights… Only to be informed by the one bike shop in town that they have plenty of rear lights, but what would I be doing wanting a front one?

So I head out to explore. A fabulous Serb Orthodox cathedral with glittering iconography. Plenty of busts and statues of young Partisans, cut down tragically young during the Second World War. Another depressing 1970s style concrete war memorial. A woody park around the town hill, desecrated by litter. And a deserted and damaged castle on the edge of town.

And many of these as well as the apartment blocks covered in ill-tempered graffiti, including a number with what I came to recognise as the symbol of the nearby Serb enclave of Bosnia, the Republika Srpska and the lettering “NATO 1988”. Mystified, I check, and there do not seem to be any records of Yugoslav-NATO tensions in 1988. Perhaps they were referring to the NATO bombing in 1998. Typical fascists: they always really struggle with the facts.

Intriguingly, and something I had begun to notice in Cetinje, a clash of alphabets: official buildings and most shops and restaurants in the Latin alphabet, street signs in both, and more regular houses and graffiti tending to be in Cyrillic. I wondered if there was a sort of tension between those favouring the Latin alphabet and those the Cyrillic. One turning towards the West, the other to Serbia and Russia… Montenegro was the last part of Yugoslavia to break with Serbia, and it showed… Parts of it seemed to be clinging to the certainties of the past, wrapping itself up in past glories and past arguments rather than embracing the future. The ghosts of past conflicts and tensions were all around: not just the Second World War, but the end of the Ottoman Empire, and more recently the break-up of Yugoslavia. It was a huge contrast with the buzz and positivity that I felt in Albania.

And as I was making my trip, the dangers of this reluctance to accept the present and move on from the past were being shown several hundred miles to the northeast with the first invasion on European soil since the end of the war that had taken the lives of all these tragic young people on their plinths. Wounds that are not treated, fester and spoil.

In truth, there was not a bunch to do in Nikšić. All the better. I used that day to take care of myself physically, allowing my body and stomach to recover and reset after the difficulties of the previous week. But I also used that day to reset myself mentally. The last days had been difficult but I had three and a half weeks left and a lot of riding to do. I had to put things in perspective, put things behind me and get back to enjoying myself. The weather forecast was more positive, promising more sun and warmer temperatures.

Sunday 24^th April: Nikšić – Plužine: 61km

With my stomach feeling much better, having restored my sleep, and the weather turning a corner, I fuelled myself with a breakfast of a few choice ingredients whose exciting details I will not trouble you with but which was strangely familiar by now, and set out.

It was a joyous morning: full springtime even if still with a nip in the air. The first 10-15k were relatively flat, passing through farmland along a small bubbling river, little bridges linking with houses on the other side.

Even the Bordurians, sorry Montenegrins, seemed to be in a good mood. I had to keep my eyes out for the odd nervous dog though, perturbed by the unusual sight of a cyclist. I have never been in a country with so few riders. A shame because of such magnificent scenery.

Beyond the farmland to my right was a much larger river, swollen by the recent rains, and in the distance, snowy peaks. Quite glorious.

Then uphill on a tolerably busy main road along a long and steady drag, counting off the meters climbed. The scenery was not spectacular, but it was pleasant, with regular views over to snowy peaks and regular changes of view all day. Even the wind was rather supportive for once, pushing me gently uphill. I felt that my fortunes had turned. As throughout my time in Montenegro, there was however, the regular spots where drivers appeared to have stopped the car and dumped a whole load of rubbish. And nearby, plenty of ugly grey metal rubbish carts that they could easily have dumped it in…

At the top of the first long hill, I ran into a bunch of Canadian cyclists heading the other way, the first touring cyclists I had seen in Montenegro. They were taking a short trip through Montenegro, doing a loop from the capital, Podgorica. They had toughed out the Friday storms in Durmitor National Park and had a grim satisfaction from it all.

Then off and a day of steady ups and downs with some memorable if still chilly descents, peeling my eyes for regular rocks on the road. It was a lot of climbing: just over 1000m, but it felt less than my earlier exertions. It was a day to restore my faith and enjoyment in bike touring. A day of what might have been.

A final chilly descent to the tourist village of Plužine and a cabin right on the lake: a wonderful spot but rather basic. I was feeling well enough to eat out, and so ate at a place recommended by the Canadians: a wooden cabin called Zvono. I had a warming bowl of beef and vegetable soup followed by wonderful grilled marinated lamb, beautifully soft and herbed, served with grilled leeks, courgettes, aubergines and carrots. Maybe it was because I was finally off my bland diet, but that dinner in that quiet cabin, warmed with a delicate glass of Montenegrin red, was a highlight of my trip.

Monday 25^th April: Plužine – Foča: 51km

My cabin might have been in an idyllic spot, but it was ill-suited to a cold early spring night, even with the portable heater provided, so I had a cold night and woke up to howling wind, followed by rain.

Luckily, it had cleared by the time I had had my breakfast, so off I went, back up that long hill, along the E762, and along the Piva Canyon: 57 tunnels, most of them very short but two or three long ones, where I hugged the middle of the lane and picked up the spots of light as I could.

But it was absolutely worth it for the magnificent views of the turquoise river and steep hills rising on each side. With little traffic, I could more or less stop where I wanted, so took my own sweet time. No guts, no glory.

The tunnels were not the only danger: the wind was still very present, and big thick rocks on the road, so I had to be attentive. But it was much warmer and I would not have missed it for the world.

After the Mratinje dam, there was a nice descent through more tunnels before a steady climb and then a final descent to the Bosnian border at Šćepan Polje. As with my entry to Montenegro, it was preceded by graffiti and murals of the people over the border: the Serbs in Bosnia. The ghosts of partitions, the ghosts of war.

I felt a pang of regret at not having seen Montenegro at its best (or my best), but glad that I had made the effort to ride inland and see a bit more of the country rather than continuing up the coast on the standard bike route along the EV8. I sensed that there was a lot more to see in Montenegro and that the bits I had seen would look a whole lot better a few weeks later. Maybe one day I will return and do a loop from Podgorica and maybe take in Kosovo, North Macedonia, and possibly return to that wonderful madness of Albania. Maybe one day.

But for now, I was at the border bridge to Bosnia, an old one-laned wooden bridge, the planks rotting away dangerously, with several rafting camps on the Montenegrin side, and on the other, one of the oddest entries to a country I have ever made…

But that is for the next part….

August 15, 2022August 20, 2022

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The calm delights of an Autumn bike ride through Andalucía: Part Three

Since arriving in Seville in early October 2021, I had spent two and a half weeks pushing my creaking yet strangely attractive fifty year old body and my creaking yet strangely attractive eighteen-month old bike along steaming valleys, up and down steep hillsides and now along the madness of the Costa del Sol. The weather had been magnificent: clear blue skies every day. The scenery had been magnificent: orange, lemon and olive groves, stunning mountains and pretty white towns. And the people had been… a mix, as people tend to be… I had had my skin saved several times by a succession of patient and generous bike mechanics. I had been treated kindly by hotel staff, waiters and waitresses. And I had been exposed to COVID several times by unthinking selfish tourists.

But it was time to head back towards Seville, pushing along the coast to Malaga and then inland to Ronda and then down to Seville. And all of this with an unexplained creaking saddle and an equally unexplained mystery bolt that had literally dropped from the blue on the fifth day of riding. Would I ever get to the bottom of that creak? Would I ever understand the meaning of that bolt? Would I ever get on with telling you about what happened on the final stage of my bike tour without resulting to the repetition of threes? Possibly never. Probably never. Oh there we go again.

On with the story…

Wednesday 27^th October: Nerja – Malaga: 56km

The best bits from hour after hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

After two days of trying to rest up in the once restful town of Nerja but had my sleep and nerves jangled by the many different types of noise of building works nearby, it was back on the bike, pushed out the door by the combination of the jackhammering and its musical accompaniment, several kinds of drilling.

Initially, the road was better than I expected: relatively quiet, fine views along the coast – orange crags and breaking waves – and more cyclists in one hour than in the previous two weeks put together.

Looking back away from the ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

But then the drear of Torrox and mile upon mile of apartment blocks as if I were riding through a loop. An hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. Let me repeat that. An hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. Let me repeat that again. An hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. And again. An hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. You’re bored already and we are only three sentences in. Imagine an hour of it: ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. That is a full sixty minutes of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. Mile after mile after ugly mile of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. And really we are only getting started with ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. Well I could try to vary this, but ultimately I had to spend an hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea. I was trundling along wishing for anything but an hour of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

Finally a brief lull – albeit through what is called la plasticultura – crops being grown under plastic. And then after a further ten kilometres of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea, I actually got to see the sea: a long trek along the seafront of Torre del Mar, again ugly apartment blocks followed by apartment blocks with the odd palm tree and finally a short detour through the fishing boats at the harbour.

A break between hours of ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

But then back to the development, mile upon mile. More ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea followed by yet more ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

And in the middle of it, Bob the Wahoo seized up. Or rather his screen did, turning completely black, though the electronics sort of still functioned. So I had to navigate my way with occasional looks at my iPhone, coupled with a bit of beeping from Bob.

Where Bob met his end, overlooked by ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

After Rincón de la Victoria, I passed through a brief bit of sandy cliffs before having to walk my bike over a pedestrian overpass and then navigate the entrance to Malaga proper, and this in rush hour. It was a bit crazy and at one point, a bike path abruptly started but was ignored by pedestrians, but finally I was through and over the Guadalmedina to my quiet but classy hotel, close enough to the pedestrian centre but not in the thick of it.

My priority was getting a replacement for poor old Bob. Luckily I found a bike shop less than a mile away that looked as if it stocked Wahoos, and when I went in, the guy offered me a choice of the Wahoo Roam or the successor Wahoo Bolt, both sitting on the shelf behind him. Enormous luck.

Then time for a wander through the crowded maze of central Malaga and up, up, up to the Gibralfaro castle on the hill, watching the sun set, and then down the other side through a shady park. I found Malaga to be a fun place with a real sense of life. I found a cheery tapas bar in the thick of it all and sat outside, ordering a few plates, while watching the world move around me.

Looking down to central Malaga from near the Gibralforo. After being done with ugly apartment blocks with hardly a view of the sea.

Thursday 28^th October: Malaga – Coín: 47 km

Out along the seashore on another amazing morning, cycling along paths and promenades past the joggers, exercisers or people walking their dogs. On a day like this, you think of your colleagues back home, having to sweat away at yet another unreasonable deadline. And I did, and laughed my head off.

And then turning my back to the shore and towards the hills, passing along a sandy path past the airport and then slowly up and away through the craziness of Malaga and neighbouring towns, initially along bike paths of varying quality which would end abruptly without warning but then joining the main road up to Alhaurin de la Torre. At a crossing for bikes over a dual carriageway – who thought that that was a good idea? – a car nearly slammed into me, screeching its brakes and the driver looking sheepishly at me. All in all, a rather tedious 25 km and not helped by the fact that my new GPS had not downloaded my routes, so I often had to turn back and renavigate.

At last, at the edges of Alhaurín de la Torre, my route took me away from the traffic and on a steady uphill to the outskirts of Alhaurín El Grande along quiet country roads with increasingly nice views over to Sierra de Mijas and the Sierra de las Nieves on my left. The occasional tall palm tree alone, like a military watch tower. It was a joyful ride and good to back out in nature.

And then after skirting Alhaurín El Grande, out along a main road and finally up a brutal hill to Coín. In the absence of turn-by-turn GPS directions, and having to rely on the map on my iPhone, I made a bit of a pig’s ear of finding my accommodation, eventually doing a circle of the town before locating the place above a pottery shop run by the owner.

Except he was not there and the gates were locked. And he did not respond to calls or messages, even though I had given him a clear indication of what time I would be arriving. And there was nowhere else with accommodation anywhere near. So I called and called and eventually resorted to calling [nameless internet hotel booking site] who then called and did not get through. All they could offer was a place back down the coast at Marbella. I was stuck…

After an hour, he turned up on his motorbike, all sweet and innocent. When I asked him why he had not answered my calls or messages, he looked at his phone, frowned and realised that he had put it on silent.

So he let me in, only for [nameless internet hotel booking site] to call me and say that because he had not got back to them in a specified period of time, they had cancelled the reservation… I explained that all had been resolved and that they could restate it. After 15 minutes of waiting on an international line, they said that they could not and this was my problem. I should rebook for myself. Which I could not as they had blocked the place. So in the end, I paid him in cash the next morning… A mess and a shame as the place was a nice apartment where I was able to wash my clothes, have a decent shower and sort out my GPS, downloading somewhere in the region of 200 routes…

But a decent dinner of boquerones and chips in a nice café on the church square made up for it. On days like this, you have to shrug your shoulders and appreciate the good bits. And I liked Coín: a pretty town in a beautiful setting.

After what had felt like a long ride, it felt like the edge of nowhere, but I was reminded of my closeness to the coast by the sounds of English with an Irish accent and a woman on the street the next morning with a Scouse accent and an endless string of swearwords…

Friday 29^th October: Coín – El Burgo: 32 km

And so the serious climbing begins again. Only 32 kilometres but over 900 m of climbing and most of them packed into the opening 25… It was like being back in the Alpujarras.

And I could feel the change in climate with an autumnal nip in the air.

After a gentle descent along the main road out of Coín to the valley floor, a turn off onto a quiet country road, often badly potholed and a steady climb up and down through olive groves with hardly any cars. The sound of frustrated dogs barking, the tinkling bell of grazing sheep and the odd conversation in Arabic. Fog and clouds and mountains in the distance.

It all seemed rather perfect. Until the road got more potholed and the hills got steeper and steeper, yawning up at 10-15%. Three times I decided to get off and push because the combination of the gradient and the rutted road made it too steep. The last time was the hill up into the white town of Alozaina, reaching 20% at points.

And all the time, a regular squeak, squeak, squeak from my bike seat, a sound that had accompanied me for so long that I had got used to it. And I had never got round to finding out the origin of that mysterious bolt that had dropped out of the seat on my fifth day, but guessed I would ask on my return to Brussels.

I stopped for a break on a mirador at the top of Alozaina. A spruce old gentleman beckoned me over and saluted my ride, warning of the hills ahead. “Fuerte duro!” He winked and moved on.

In truth, the main road out of Alozaina was fine: much less steep and with little traffic to bother me. If I were to ride it again, I would have stayed on the main road the whole time. It was a steady 5% for 10 kilometres but with the scenery rewarding me by getting better and better, with wonderful views as I climbed to and past Yunquera. Outside Jorox, I took a few minutes to simply stop and admire. A British car pulled in, the driver did not get out, and then moved on again, missing it all. So much better to experience it by bike.

Finally, the hill crested and I had a quite fantastic – mostly – descent to my overnight stop in El Burgo, a hilltop farming town with narrow white streets and tremendous views over to crags in the setting sun. Mud-caked Land Rovers charged hither and thither.

This time I really felt that I was away from it all, though the shine was somewhat taken off by a waiter who deliberately overcharged me for an overblown glass of wine, the most expensive in the house. A shame because my gazpacho and Argentinian steak was rather nice.

I knew that I had a tough ride ahead and with a forecast of wind and rain, so headed off to my rather basic but pleasant hotel room for an early night, with the wind picking up.

Saturday 30^th October: El Burgo – Ronda: 28 km

An early night but a massively disrupted night. I woke in the early hours to howling wind and rain and the noise of a door banging repeatedly in the room next door. After trying and failing to get back to sleep, I slung some clothes on and crept out onto the open air balcony overlooking the courtyard to investigate. A locked storage room. With an open window. Banging in the wind. Marvellous.

And then a meagre breakfast in a room full of people not bothering with masks, including a fellow coughing desperately on a nearby table. Marvellous.

And with a rotten weather forecast for later on, I figured it best to get going up the hill before the rain started again. So off I went on an overcast morning, straight uphill for over 7 kilometres at a steady 5-6% but with regular kicks of 9-10%, accumulating 450m or so. Warm but with the wind picking up, and only minor sprinkles of rain.

Was it bad? No, it was oddly wonderful: that meditative feeling that you get on a quiet and steady road as you climb a long hill, just listening to your breathing, feeling the slow energy in your legs, and at peace with the world.

And let us be honest, I was also listening to the slow creak, creak, creak of my leather saddle. But I was rather used to it after three weeks of riding, a constant whining accompaniment to my long slogs up hills. I would get it looked at properly when I got back to Brussels, and try to uncover the mystery of the metal bolt that had dropped out on the fifth day of riding, just shy of Jaen.

I stopped at the Mirador de la Guardia Forestal, a rocky outcrop with a large statue of what I assumed was a fire watch overlooking the valley down to El Burgo, glinting in the sunshine. But the wind picking up and becoming quite fierce. A family of two cars also stopped and made the walk, also in thrall to the austere beauty of the place.

Then back onto the main road for a final bit of that first climb and then after an all too brief descent along a narrow road with some tight corners at 20 kph and the sudden awareness of the possibility of rockfall, I was out onto a plateau with the wind really picking up. It was stunningly bleak: an ochre brown landscape dotted with granite crags and the odd delicious orange rock and the wind howling around me. Ah, the elemental power of nature!

I was mostly out there on my own, but saw the odd convoy of motorbikers stream past. Smugly.

Then up, up, up, and thank you, yes a bit more up, the clouds getting more and more ominous. Fierce wind in my face, rain in my face, steady uphill to the pass, the aptly named Puerto del Viento (Wind Pass). I wanted to take it all in in its magnificent destructive empty glory, but the truth is that in that fierce wind, that harsh rain and that biting cold, those 3-4 kilometres felt like torture: my head down, just counting off the metres to the top. The great comfort of modern technology though is to see the profile and to know that at some point that hill would end.

I stopped briefly at the pass, but in that wind and rain, it was no time to linger or take photos. Just time to put on a fleece under my rain jacket so as to not get too cold on the descent. As I started the descent, I passed my first cyclist, a bearded fellow, slowly grinding his way up, but giving me a big grin: that flash of acknowledgement between two cyclists out in foul conditions.

There is a mathematical equation for all this that it helps to remember at such times:

Unpleasant situation in which you might actually die + Time + Not actually dying = Wonderful anecdote to tell over dinner later

And this was the case here. Looking at that video above, it all looks wonderful, though I decided to leave the natural noise to give you a better sense of it. And in some respects it was magnificent. But it was also bloody cold, extremely windy, and I was out there on my own.

Would I do it again? You already know the answer. Of course, I bloody would. And so should you!

The other side of the hill was rather disappointing: a boggy and rather flat moor, dotted with boulders and then rather bland countryside as I got closer to Ronda.

On the outskirts of Ronda, my GPS abruptly directed me off the main road, over the train tracks that I had been riding parallel to, and down a muddy slope: a pointless diversion. So as I examined it all on my iPhone, I concluded that it made more sense to follow the main road, so started to turn my bike around to face the main road, and snagged my bike shorts on the nose of my bike saddle.

I heard a clanking noise as two metal bits dropped out – a short bolt and a strange twisted metal fitting – and the nose of my saddle abruptly bucked upwards. I picked them up for later examination and struggled into town in the wind and rain, my bottom squelching on the unharnessed leather of the seat.

I tried to find a bike shop to fix it, but here my luck finally ran out. I arrived in town at 1.40 on a holiday weekend and every bike shop in town was closing early, the shutters down well ahead of their usual 2pm closure and not reopening until 10 am on Tuesday… by which time I needed to be 30km away in Grazalema… And no ironmonger either. And just to compound it, Fate threw in my path one of those awful people who want to do good but have no clue how.

“You… er… need a what… a bike shop… yes, now let me see. I am sure that there is a bike shop in this town… Maybe there is one on the other side of this town.”

“There’s a bloody bike shop a few streets away. I can see it on Google Maps. Now please get out of my way.” Was what I did not say.

“So, er… yes… if I take a look… mmm…. yes, I am sure… Now is possible that….“

And with that, the Foul Halitosis of Fate snuffed out the Candle of Misplaced Hope. So I checked into my hotel and considered my options and whether my trip had just abruptly ended.

And in my dark hotel room, I made a quite interesting discovery.

That the mysterious bolt that had dropped out on Day Five of my trip fitted the short bolt rather well. Indeed perfectly. And together, they would have held together inside the metal fitting, itself holding my seat together…

So let me tell you what had happened here. The bolt had snapped in two. And for roughly six hundred kilometres, up and down countless hills, through rutted tracks, sand, cobbles and you name it, through the great cities of Granada and Malaga, and over the course of roughly twelve days of riding, that little snapped bolt had quietly sat inside the fitting, ready to break out at any moment, miles from anywhere.

And you can react to that in different ways.

You can sit there and think “Well, wasn’t that incredibly dangerous of you and imagine if that had happened earlier”.

You can reframe the situation and say “What enormous luck that it held all that way”.

Or you can do what I did and go “Oh giant jiggery bollocks, what am I going to do now?” And head off to the nearest supermarket for a sandwich, a bag of crisps and wine, and then consume it and head to bed in a stinking temper…

I had plenty of time to mull and stew in my own acidic juices. And most of it indoors.

The wind and rain stayed all afternoon and evening. As I sat inside the most sophisticated laundrette I had ever come across: all remote controlled, card paid, multilingual options and automatic soap, I could see people struggling outside: umbrellas and hair all blown away, and in one case a group of four girls dressed up for Hallowe’en in matching black dresses, black lipstick, devil horns on their heads and dainty silvered wings which threatened to fly away… It was more like a grim coastal resort in the north of England than the hills of southern Spain.

My mood was not helped by my room: perfectly fine but very dark and basic. Nor by the news that my neighbour’s house in Belgium had been burgled. And my legs were feeling all the climbs of the last three days.

I was tired. I had been on the road for three weeks. It was time to head home.

I ate a decent meal of croquets and cazon en adobo in a strangely empty restaurant and one that remained empty even when I left, and retreated back indoors out of that foul wind and rain.

Sunday 31^st October and Monday 1^st November: Ronda (rest days)

The next morning, I resigned myself to the inevitable, cancelled my hotel reservation in Grazalema – which they kindly did not charge me for – and booked a place around the corner as my hotel was fully booked. I had worked out that I could make it direct to the next destination with only a few extra kilometres added.

Leaving the bike at the hotel, I set out early, determined to take advantage of a break in the rain, and headed over the famous bridge and into the old part of town and down a track to where I had a magnificent view of the bridge and river. Then along through the old town before taking a breakfast in a nearby café, and one of the best cups of coffee of my life.

Otherwise a dreary day of dodging rain showers and with the air always full of moisture. I had lunch in a crowded bar full of maskless people: a shame as the food was rather nice: fried squid and a pleasant glass of white wine. As I walked around the town, I had to regularly flatten myself against buildings to dodge cars going round narrow streets at top speed.

And the same on All Saints Day, despite a visit to the Arabic baths and a pleasant evening stroll on the edges of the town.

All in all, my spirits were rather low. Even my nights were not brilliant, disturbed by a mosquito, dripping pipes, a TV in the neighbouring room and people shouting in the street at 5 in the morning…

Tuesday 2^nd November: Ronda – Montellano: 71 km

Yes…

After two days of being cooped up in dark rooms by wind and rain, I was desperate to get out. So after a poor breakfast in another den of masklessness, I headed to the local ironmonger, explained my problem and picked up a long 8mm bolt and plenty of screws, and then after failing to fit it myself, took it to the local bike shop who just about fit it, though with the screw slightly protruding from the nose of the bike.

It would get me to Seville but not ideal.

Then out, out, away from Ronda in more spitting rain and scowling wind and onto a busy main road for a fast descent. Then back up again… a long and slow 200m climb through a rather featureless valley with traffic passing every 15-20 seconds.

Finally I turned off onto a quiet back road… and thick fog. The temperature was supposed to be 16-17C but I was freezing even in my rain jacket. It was too wet to even contemplate stopping to put on extra clothes. A time to pedal away with lights on, with only my GPS giving me any sense of direction or where I was, peering nervously through the wet grey ahead of me and trying to spot any oncoming vehicles – mercifully none – and any potholes in the road.

At last the fog cleared and I picked up the road that I would have taken down from Grazalema and along a big artificial lake created by a dam. Nowhere to stop and initially not many views. When they did come though, they were stunning: a luminous turquoise blue shining through yellow and brown uplands. Even with an artificial lake, I was surprised that they did not make more of it.

And then I pass the hillside village of Zahara de la Sierra, with its hilltop castle looking quite austere and stunning on this bleak grey day. I stop at the dam to admire, all alone…

Then away from the dam and a gentle ride down and up to a rather grim main road, up and down with cars whizzing past, mostly giving space but still… Lots of litter as usual on the road side: broken glass, beer cans and at one point, a plastic tube of “Liquid Magnesium and Potassium” written in English… An afternoon of slowly grinding away the miles, up and down, up and down.

As I turned off to Puerte Serrano, much better scenery, brown fields, burnt Saharan dunes turning purple in the distance.

Then a steady final climb to the town of Montellano. My hotel on the outskirts would have been perfectly pleasant in ordinary times, but in the pandemic, with staff and guests wandering around without masks, rather scary. And another hotel with very poor Wi-Fi. How addicted to these things we become.

But a magical sunset: the sun finally coming out with a few clouds: gold then pink then deep, deep red.

Then that Spanish experience: the only restaurant in the town only opened at 9. So I sat at a local bar eating peanuts and drinking wine, desperately hungry. At 9.01pm precisely, the restaurant had three tables of foreigners, all staying at the hotel.

I order taquitas de pollo and albondigas, followed by an indulgence: a rich creamy dessert called tocino de cielo. By the time I leave, only 10pm, I am the only one there. The barman comes over and makes friendly conversation, trying to explain on the white paper tablecloth how the tocino de cielo is made. My Spanish is not really up to it, but I engage and he engages back to me. He is not remotely fazed by the foreigners. “But you should have been here yesterday: full, full, full”.

Or at least, I think that he was saying that.

As I reach the hotel, I see the glinting lights of Seville far away in the valley… Time to go home.

Wednesday 3^rd November: Montellano – Seville: 75km

I wake up to a beautiful but foggy morning and away from that nice but COVID-friendly hotel. I braced myself for a cold descent into the Guadalquivir valley but was pleasantly surprised and quickly stripping off my layers as I settled into a mass of slight but long hills followed by quick descents, following the main road – the A375 – as far as El Coronil. The winds were picking up again and buffeting me, and with the long climbs of the previous day, I was feeling a bit toasted.

Still, the autumn sun was out and the views to distant brown and purple hills were wonderful.

The road from El Coronil to Utrera was a lot quieter but less interesting: flat farmland on both sides. Starlings on electricity wires. Even a ‘farm’ of solar panels, yawning out in the midday sun, like those sun loungers in Nerja.

Then after Los Molinos, the landscape became more green, though with the odd cactus here or there, and olive groves from time to time.

I had a long grim ride through the ugly town of Utrera, followed by ten long kilometres on a service road to a motorway from Utrera to Seville. Finally a turn off back into hills, past abandoned houses and factories, with dead animals along the edges of the road, and to Alcala de Guadaira.

On a roundabout on the edge of the town, I connected up with the route I had taken three and a half weeks earlier. It was like a homecoming of sorts as I picked my way down to the jolting compacted mud bike track, thumping my poor injured bike along. And then as I cleared out of the banks of the Rio Guadaira onto easier track, I was exposed to the full force of the wind, up to 25kph at times. A small diversion as I passed through a herd of sheep, grazing on what little grass was still left at the end of the season.

As I strained along ungracefully, a gravel biker came to overtake me. “Are you riding all the way to Santiago de Compostela?” he asked, expectantly. “No, I am just heading to Seville” was all I could manage in my weak Spanish. “Oh” he said, clearly disappointed and disapproving.

I wanted to say “But I have just ridden a thousand kilometres. I have gone up and down through the Sierra Nevada and the Alpujarras. My bike has nearly died on me five or six times. And I have seen the wonders of these parts.”

But my throat was dry, my Spanish was rusty, and the gravel biker had sped off, literally leaving me for dust.

Even the flies had deserted me, deciding that the game was over and that they had faster transport available. On the sheep. On the snails.

And as I trundled back into town, getting closer and closer to the Torre de Seville and retracing my pedal strokes back through the empty landscape, then the grassy paths by the motorway, and then finally, the thick of the city, back on the banks of the Guadalquivir, I had the time to reflect on that conversation with the waiter the night before.

I thought of the quiet magic of it: a small moment in an empty hilltop town, fumbling around in another language but engaging.

That small conversation summed up so much of what had made my little trip through Andalucía so wonderful and memorable: the kindness of the Spanish and their willingness to engage. I thought of the numerous bike mechanics who had helped me on my way, never accepting payment except for parts, the kind hotel staff or apartment owners and the random strangers who would engage with me when I pedalled into their small town. I thought of an elderly couple in a village near Cordoba who had gently asked me about what I was doing on my bike, and why I had ended up there. “I hope that you are not looking for anything in this place, because there’s nothing…” (No hay nada) he said, with a laugh.

I thought of the good food and good drink. I had worked my way through most of the Andalucian repertoire: game, beef, fish fried or marinated in any number of ways, aubergines in honey, dozens of bowls of gazpacho or salmorejo, and of course slice after slice of ham and goat’s cheese.

And I thought of the wonders of the landscapes, constantly changing, though with olive groves a steadying presence. I thought of the small white towns and the big cities with their wonderful Moorish heritage. I had had the time to appreciate. Sometimes too much time, as I slowly trundled up an endless hill. I had biked through landscapes of every possible hue: deep red earths, dusty yellow emptinesses, verdant groves, blue, blue ocean and distant purple mountains. I had swum in the ocean and hiked in the hills.

All of this had been open to me, because I had left my comfort zone far behind, pushed myself and got on with it, savouring the moment. I had done it all under my own steam.

But back to reality: over the river to Triana and the hotel where I had started. I took my bags off, quickly locked my bike against a lamp post and was rushing into the hotel when a hotel employer rushed out “Don’t leave that there, sir. It will get stolen” so he ushered me into the hotel car park.

After packing my bike up as carefully as I could, I took a leisurely day to walk around Seville, ending with sunset on top of Las Setas, a bizarre mushroom-shaped structure rising above the skyline.

The next morning, a taxi came to pick me up to take me to the airport. To my delight, it was Mauricio, who had picked me up from the airport four weeks earlier. “My friend said “I have to pick up a guy with a bike box” and I said “I know that guy. Let me take him.”” So over a too-short ride to the airport, I told Mauricio all about my adventures. What a wonderful way to end.

“Loco. Absolutamente loco”…

A small postscript

A few weeks later, I took my bike into my local bike shop and had it looked at, especially the gear wires. “Nothing wrong with it. Superficial damage” said the mechanic. He recommended a bike shop across town to order the replacement bolt for my saddle. When I picked it up, they tried to hand it over to me. “Can you fit it?” I asked innocently.

So the young mechanic shrugged, went replace it, was surprised that it would not fit, so pulled a bit. And then tried another tactic. And then another.

For twenty wonderfully satisfying minutes, he plugged and strained, and yanked and hammered, his face increasingly red then puce, then purple, and using more and more tools and holders. At one point, I thought that he would bust the leather of the seat entirely. I was grateful for my face mask so he could not see how hard I was laughing.

Finally, he wedged it in and returned triumphantly.

And there it remains. Though I keep the spare bolt that I bought in Ronda just in case…

March 21, 2022March 27, 2022

Crisp5 Comments

The calm delights of an Autumn ride through Andalucía: Part Two

As I wheel my bicycle through the nearly empty streets of Úbeda, it is not yet nine on a Sunday morning and only just daylight.

I am up at this time because I have over a hundred kilometres to ride to the next town with accommodation. I am up at this time because there is over 1500m of climbing to go. And I am up at this time because I have just passed fifty and frankly my old body just won’t crank it out like it used to and I’d better get going pronto or I will miss dinner…

I am doing this in the name of ‘fun’. I am doing this in the name of ‘adventure’. And above all, I am doing this because I am deeply stupid and tight-fisted person who could have booked a rental car instead and stayed in bed two more hours….

I have to do this because I need to get to Granada the following day. I have to do this because it is the logical next step on a four-week circular trip by bike around Andalucía beginning and ending in Seville. I have to do this because I have set up a rhetorical structure based on a repetition of threes and I have run out of inspiration for the final phrase. So anyway…

This is Part Two of my… ahem, three part account of my trip round Andalucía in Autumn 2021. If you missed the other bits, then I think that there’s a link somewhere, I mean don’t ask me, I merely run this site, it’s all too techno for me, anyway, you’ll find it because you are super clever and cultured. And techno. I hope that you enjoy it and are inspired to take up comfortable bike touring and step outside your comfort zone.

Sunday 17 October: Úbeda – Benalúa: 103 km

Out at the crack of dawn, the town still largely asleep and deserted as I wheel my bike over the cobbles to the city walls of Úbeda, an autumnal coolness in the air.

Then down, down, down and out a steep track and onto an almost deserted main road, the hills blue and purple in the distance, serenely beautiful, the odd lonely car passing by. Chilled to the bone but determined to extract every last metre of advantage from my descent down the hills so painfully climbed two days earlier.

For twenty kilometres I descended and then climbed gently as the sun rose over the olive groves, with mountains ahead of me. There was a quite transcendent peace on that road. And it even smelt good, with the odd autumnal bonfire in a distant grove wafting towards me.

I stopped to put an extra layer of clothes and gloves on. Gone were the hot days along the Guadalquivir. I would happily have lingered but it was a day for distance.

I was nervous. I was outside my comfort zone. I had no choice. The route was locked in, accommodation booked at the other end. Nowhere else to go, but just get out there and do it… somehow…

I stopped briefly at the town of Jodiar but then off into the rocky formations of the Parque Natural de Sierra Magina, again cursing my poor understanding of rocks and geology. If only I could have understood the majesty in front of me.

In planning the route, I had the choice of the main road – the 401 – fast but possibly full of impatient and noisy cars, or a quieter road, but not clear whether it would mean more rutted tracks: bad enough on a short day but torture on a long day. Taking the former meant adding a few kilometres but reducing some of the steepness of the climb. So I took it and did not regret it. The relative narrowness of the roads combined with it being Sunday meant that the traffic never seriously annoyed me.

For forty long kilometres, I slogged up and down. I never got bored, with the landscape changing regularly: now narrow red cliffs, now wide open sandstone formations… It was only when I passed the sleepy farming town of Guadahortuna in early afternoon with sixty kilometres under my belt that the climbing got tedious: a tough long ascent of nearly 250m in seven kilometres to Torre Cardela, with the coolness of the dawn replaced by the now-familiar temperatures in the low thirties.

But after stopping briefly on the edges of Torre Cardela to have a much needed ‘lunch’, I came across that most magnificent of things: a freshly retarmacked road, so fresh that there were no lane markings and it was still black with youth, slithering mostly downhill over twelve luxuriant kilometres with almost no one: car or cyclist, passing me. And through a wondrous almost lunar landscape baked almost white in the afternoon sun.

I was out in the middle of nowhere and I was loving it.

And after riding through the hardscrabble town of Pedro Martinez, another beautiful bit of riding, a glorious descent into the valley of the Rio Fardes before turning off onto a quieter road towards Benalúa. Just after the turning, I passed a forest of gleaming yellow trees in the late afternoon sunlight. It was a day in which autumn was there for the first time.

But those last ten kilometres were a little too much for my tired body and by the time I reached my accommodation at the Cuevas Grande: decorated caves in the hillside, I was absolutely sapped.

Luckily, dinner was onsite: partridge salad followed by lomo baja de ternita lecha Gallega. Not even the presence of a boorish table of German bike tourists could disturb my good mood. I pitied them: everyone served the same thing and no chance for them to absorb the local atmosphere or culture. So much better to experience it all to myself.

So a day that I had feared and worried that would be too much for me turned into something rather marvellous. A wonder of colours and landscapes.

I was exhausted but it was worth it. Who needs comfort zones when there is so much more to discover?

Monday 18 October: Benalúa – Granada: 56km

Another glorious morning. After breakfast, I went for a gentle warm-up walk and ended up on a small rise – a mirador – with a 360 degree view of the surrounding area as the sun rose and the landscape came to life. In the distance, dogs barking furiously, birds tweeting, cockerels clucking and geese cackling. It was almost a battle of the banjos between the dogs and the cocks. And then a donkey stole the show with a plaintive cry…

And the scenery was a treat: red rocky buttes and plateaux purple in the distance, a sense of space that made me feel that I was almost out in Idaho or Montana. But recognisably European all the same: small whitewashed farms, olives, lemons and oranges.

How wonderful to be here and to have done it under my own steam…

I took my own sweet time. Not for me the rigid 9am departures of the guided tour. More the luxury of the leisurely kit faff.

It was an up and down trip: literally… Up for the first 26 kilometres and down for the next 26.

But what a splendid ride. As I crawled up the hill, I bathed in the first autumnal leaves, fires in people’s homes, stark golden canyons and then up and away from La Peza on a slow a twisty rise – rarely more than 6% and usually a steady 1-3% – to the Puerto de Los Blancares, the sweet smell of pine, the regular shade of trees and the cliffs around me, and the regular sound of babbling brooks and rustling leaves. In that long two hours or so of climbing, hardly a car passed, and my only ‘company’ was a female rider on a road bike who calmly eased past my lumbering body and shot off into the distance before returning back down the hill later with a cheery wave. The landscape was a balm to the soul and again I felt very lucky indeed.

The way down was also beautiful, gently skimming down and predictably somewhat faster… But my brakes felt soft and I was having to put more and more effort into them, so my hands and wrists were somewhat shaky by the end. It took the shine off what should have been a great reward for my quiet – and monumentally slow – exertions.

And then out into the valley of the Rio Genil and the usual long grind through city streets to my accommodation in Granada, only temporarily pulling away from it all up a steep hill and then down again through narrow twisty lanes and then up a savagely cobbled hill to the… oh crap, I’m not attempting to ride that… So off I came and with reason as the road up to my accommodation veered up at nearly 20%… on irregular cobbles. So up and up I walked.

But the views from my rented apartment were worth it, especially the rooftop view that I could access, sitting and having a quiet evening beer and crisps with views over to the Alhambra and down into the city. Magnificent.

Tuesday 19 October: Granada – rest day

Ordinarily I would not take another rest day so soon, but after a solid 160 km and nearly 2400 m of climbing, and well, it was a day in Granada. My third visit, but still good to be back.

But first I had business to attend to: taking my clothes to an automatic laundromat and then wheeling my bike down that steep, steep hill and over to another bike shop – Pancracio Bicis – to look at the brakes. Not only did the guy take my bike straightaway, but within an hour, he texted me to come back. New brake pads fitted and good thing that I had come to see him: he showed me the old ones and they were completely worn through. This super nice guy only charged me cost of the pads and waved me on my way, refusing costs for the labour… Another lucky escape. He asks about my trip. I tell him that I am heading up into the Alpujarras. He looks me up and down and says “Difficil pero poco a poco… Poco a poco…”. Again, I marvelled at the quiet warmness of the Spanish.

But again, I forgot to ask about that squeaky seat and the mysterious bolt… Still, everything seemed to be working and I was in good shape for the mountains, so why worry?

All done, I had a super meal of dogfish in adobo sauce on another splendid sunny day before heading over to the famed Alhambra, the palace of Nasrid kings. Wisely I had booked a slot online to see the Palacios Nazaries.

This was not my first time. Over a decade before, I had had a wonderful time wandering about the place and admiring the exquisite architecture and Moorish carvings. I didn’t exactly have the place to myself but did recall having the time and opportunity to wander slowly and take in its magnificence.

But this time we were funnelled in, in twenty-minute slots, and crowded, all social distancing rules out the window and the usual mass of idiots either not wearing a face mask or doing that childish thing of having it half on half off, and a persistent feeling of rush, rush, rush amid the crowds. It made for an experience both scary and underwhelming, with little opportunity to appreciate the splendour and sophistication, and this was a Tuesday… It was so massively different from the unhurried reflection of the mezquita in Cordoba.

This was not the only area crowded with tourists: the Calle Elvira at the bottom of the hill was a mass of cheap restaurants, vaping shops, and shops selling carpets and cheap tatty fabrics. I missed the Granada of old, the one that I had wandered about in with hardly a care in the world.

Wednesday 20 October: Granada – Órgiva: 58 km

It was with some relief that I walked my bike back down that horribly brutal cobbled hill – but my, how the brakes grip nicely – and set off across town and out through the commuter belt to the hills of the Sierra Nevada.

But not without the usual rumbling presence of more sleeping fascist policemen to trouble the wheels of my bike…

For the first half of the ride, I was often close to the A-44 motorway, but it rather complemented the arid starkness of the valley and the purple mountains of the Sierra Nevada to my left, and did not bother me: granite bike tracks pulsing up and down with the odd horror of a short and steep climb.

After a brief stop in the town of Padul, where I heard English voices and parked my bike opposite a butcher’s shop with a vending machine for cured meat – embutidos – there was an annoying and rather tiresome drag along a busy road, the N323a to Dúrcal. My legs felt sluggish and I was hot and sweaty.

After Dúrcal though, there was a glorious descent down and over the dry basin of the Rio Torrente and then cutting through and up to the Puente de Tablate – a magnificent modern metallic white bridge – followed by a slow snaking ascent up into the hills.

The weather was sunny but much cooler, the traffic not too busy, and the gradient quietly forgiving. I rather enjoyed my slow rise up and past wind turbines and along the contours marking the start of the Alpujarras. I felt that I was rising up and above everything, though a look at the height map showed that even at the top of the hill, I was still lower than Granada.

I passed through Lanjarón, proclaiming itself the gateway to the Alpujarras and cruised gently downhill to the town of Órgiva, my stop for the night.

I wasn’t expecting much, but Órgiva still disappointed: an ugly market town which seemed to have no redeeming sights but plenty of hardware stores and plenty of Brits out drinking at 5 in the evening. Even the graffiti and beggars were British. I came across one old man rattling his tin for coins. Poor sod.

For whatever reason, Wednesday was clearly not the night to visit with most of its very few restaurants shut. So on the grounds that sometimes it is better to bank something, I opted for the local pizzeria, sitting outside in a beer garden gated off from the main road.

Surrounded by Brits. Across from me, there was a large gathering for what was clearly a birthday party for a man in his forties with silvered hair and a long brown leather overcoat with felt lining. There were a few Spanish wives and husbands scattered around, but mostly it was Brits.

Who were these people? What were they doing here and how were they making their money? I had been reading Chris Stewart’s wonderful “Driving over lemons”: a memoir of setting up a sheep farm not far from here, but even Stewart admits that he only survived from the profits from the book. Other lives…

And I learnt a valuable lesson that night. When ordering a pizza in a country town outside Italy, never ever go for the intriguing item on the menu. I ordered an intriguing pizza promising ham, bacon and ‘verduritas’ and was rewarded with over-salty ham and bacon, and overcooked carrots and courgettes, two vegetables that should never be allowed anywhere near a pizza…

But my B&B, up the hill from the main area, was a quiet treat. The furnishings were basic and there was no A/C – though none was needed, but the owner was welcoming – a sort of Spanish Miriam Margolyes if that makes sense – and the place was a shady oasis with a pool and fountain. Wonderfully peaceful.

Thursday 21 October: Órgiva – Trevélez: 36 km

After a night of having to drink, drink, drink to deal with the salty after-effects of that awful pizza, I woke to another splendid blue sky and a delightful breakfast out on the terrace of the B&B. Juice, coffee, cake, yogurt, fruit: bliss.

As I say my goodbyes to the owner, she asks me where I am heading. “Trevélez”, I say, indicating the town only 36km but uphill all the way. “Loco” she says, shaking her head with a bemused smile. “Absolutamente loco”, she adds for emphasis.

And I admit to trepidation. Together with the big stint to Benalúa on Sunday, this will be one of the toughest rides: its shortness meaning that I am packing a steady 4-5% incline the whole way. Am I taking on too much? Loco indeed….

But again the comfort zone is firmly closed and accommodation at the other end waiting for me. So there is no choice.

In early November 2014, I had driven up the Alpujarras, passing through Lanjarón and Trevélez and had even taken the time to paint a rather poor watercolour of Trevélez in the autumn light, before staying halfway down the valley. Most of my drive had been in rain and wind, and indeed the next morning after a belter of a storm, I woke to find that most of the hotel had been flooded… I resolved to come back and see it at slower pace and in better weather…

I definitely managed the slower pace, working my way along the sinuous inclines at my own sweet time and snail-like pace and swapping for water and chocolate whenever the mood took me.

And let me let you in on something: I enjoyed nearly every single damn minute… It was FABULOUS.

The sun was out but it was a gentle reassuring warmth, only rising to mid-20s and with a refreshing gentle breeze. Perfect cycling weather. I worked my way up to and past white town after white town. And the views were both stunning and changing with every new hundred metres of altitude.

The climb might have been a long one, but it was rarely steep apart from a brief section into and out of Pampaneira. The traffic never bothered me or was frustrated by me, and the flies… Ok, the flies were really annoying as ever.

Poco a poco, poco a poco, each successive climb taking me way up. One of the beauties of a ride like this is that houses or hills that loom above you at one point become the small specks that you look down on later.

And there was the odd delightful oddity: the signs to a Buddhist temple, the bus stop on a hilly outcrop with post boxes testifying to the arrival of the British and Germans, a Swiss man in a camper van playing calming music.

There are lulls of course, lines and lines of trees, times to just put your head down and grind out the climbs. With every kilometre and town, the road becomes less and less busy. 5km out of Trevélez, the road opens out into a wide mountain valley with magnificent views of bare hills dotted with white houses.

And then, a final steep rise and along into the sleepy town of Trevélez, greeted only by a barking dog. How amazing to think that I have climbed nearly 1400m so quickly and all under my own slow steam. My average speed is a risible 9.6 kph but I have done it. How magnificent! I gained so much more than I did when I drove up, able to savour each turn and able to stop when and where I wanted. Things that can scare us in the abstract turn out to be rather wonderful when we put aside our fears and force ourselves to carry them out. Comfort zones are for boring people.

I settle into my rather basic hotel room for an afternoon nap before enjoying a wonderful sunset from my balcony, looking down the valley and savouring a restorative glass of beer and wonder of wonders, salt n’ vinegar crisps before heading over to a local restaurant for a very filling meal, the place full with British, French and German hikers, all sensibly kitted out.

Friday 22 October: Trevélez: day off

A day off in the hills to do a hike.

Let’s be frank about this: with my casual city walking shoes, easily foldable rain jacket and drawstring bag on my back, I was no match for the click-click brigade, marching uphill with their stiff rucksacks, sticks, waterproofs and other top grade hiking paraphernalia.

But I did not care. I set off gently on what was supposed to be an equally gentle loop around a local hill but turned out to right to the top of said local hill.

Still, it was worth it for the peace and views. I hardly saw a soul and could breathe in and admire its majesty.

Though slightly marred when having just descended halfway down the other side, I had to turn back because the route was blocked off with wire. But it was good to breathe the mountain air and strain my legs in a different way.

And it gave me an excuse for another nice supper in another small restaurant: gazpacho followed by migas con longaniza: meat and beans on a kind of couscous.

I enjoyed Trevélez: with its narrow pedestrian streets running higgledy-piggledy up and down the hill. It had a convivial atmosphere, locals stopping each other for a chat, and a wonderful quietness. I wasn’t quite off the beaten track, but I was on a much less visited section, and the tourists there were there to appreciate the calmness and nature. Even with their click-click sticks.

In the late afternoon, the first rain of my trip, after two weeks, a thunderstorm rolling through the hills. Even that had a beauty to it, clearing the air marvellously. I sat on my balcony until the rain forced me in.

Saturday 23 October: Trevélez – Salobreña: 79km

What goes up, must – usually – come down, so it was finally time for me to reap the benefits of all that climbing and descend to the sea. Amazing how close it was yet here I was up in the mountains.

I was a big contrast with the other bike tourists staying at the hotel, a pair of Germans who set off punctually at 9.30 with front and rear bags, backpacks and sleeping bags held in place with bungee cords and a huge handlebar bag, and dressed in the same gear that they had arrived in: baggy shirts and shorts, sandals and bandannas.

I rolled out an hour later after my usual morning kit faff, a vision in clean lycra, fleece, luminous rain jacket, leggings and gloves, but with three tightly packed rear panniers and a small handlebar bag, knowing that I had plenty of time to reach my booked destination. The benefits of comfy bike touring!

And another wondrous – if chilly – morning: the first snows on the mountains above the town, the autumn colours bright and sharp, and the regular smell of pine cones or burning log fires. I was expecting a gentle cruise downhill but to my surprise, for the first four kilometres, I was actually going uphill and at a constant 5-9%: hard going for legs which were feeling the after-effects of my mountain walk.

But the scenery was amazing: the mountains of the Sierra Nevada speckled with white flecks of lonely farm houses. Having read Chris Stewart’s “Driving over lemons” on farming in the area and Gerald Brenan’s earlier book “South from Granada” had given me a real sense of the hard lives of these farmers.

Having designed two possible routes, I ended up taking a third, descending on the other side of the canyon that I had come up, and then turning off down to Torvizcón via Almegijar, mostly on a staggeringly beautiful descent marred only by one impatient driver yelling at me. Just before Torvizcón, I climbed up a stiff 100m hill and then turned back on to the main road and more of an up and down affair, descending opposite Órgiva and then an artificial lake created by damming the Rio Guadalfeo. In truth, it was a rather busy road, with successive rallies of first convertibles, then Audis and then finally motorbikes storming past smugly. On roads like those, you have to keep relatively tight into the side of the road and listen out for passing cars. I was glad when my GPS pushed me off the main road leading to Vélez de Benaudalla, a marvellously Moorish name.

It was about this time that Bob the Wahoo, my faithful GPS and star of many videos, started to go wrong on me. I had had him for four years and many adventures in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Albania, the Baltics, Italy, and many other countries. He had guided me – often grumpily, beeping loudly at my mistakes – through Tallinn, Paris, Tirana, Milan and now Seville and through more than one torrential downpour.

But as I left the main road, and punched the right-hand side button to change the page, Bob broke on me, the button no longer responsive. And in trying to fix him, a glitch appeared on his main screen. This was somewhat trying as my iPhone was also dying a death, its battery draining at an enormous rate when not in flight mode. Luckily, he was showing the map page, so I was able to navigate, but it was worrying.

So on I rode with my wounded pal, the landscape gradually flattening out but still undulating gently as I followed what was largely a service road for the A44 motorway, but largely kept the motorway out of view, a long slow rise up over the final hills separating me from the Mediterranean, and the wind picking up: a tell-tale sign of the coast.

Then through a short tunnel and my first view of the Med. How exciting! How incredible.

I slowly slalomed down to the outskirts of Motril before hitting the coast at El Varadero: the sandy palms so different to the clay pines of only a few hours ago. Back in tourist land…

I checked into my rather lacklustre but fine hotel in Salobreña, and took the reluctant decision to prise Bob’s plastic panelling open with a knife, seeing that at least the electronics were still basically responsive even if the button was broken.

And then off to the beach and the Costa del Sol at last: apartment blocks, sea smells, squabbling families, cynical locals and grey sand.

It was lovely to hear the waves – always a sound that takes me back to my childhood by the coast – but I was already missing the hills. It all felt a bit of an anti-climax. A whopping 2,360 metres of descent but also 830m of climbing. Not that I notice these things.

Sunday 24 October: Salobreña – Nerja: 36 km

Another crisp beautiful morning and what I hoped would be a short but beautiful ride along the coast. I warmed up by walking over to the Peñon de Salobreña, a big rock sticking out from the coast, looking back at the town and its castle.

It certainly started well, the road passing under the towering presence of the castle and then following quiet roads to the small town of Caleta La Guardia before a brutish climb up onto the main road: the N-340.

But even on a Sunday morning, the N-340 was unpleasant to ride along: a narrow hard shoulder and a mass of traffic and a constant up and down, sometimes giving decent views of the sea and often not. It was all rather unsatisfying and my energy just wasn’t there. Some days you just don’t feel up to it and this was one of those days.

I dropped down to Almuñécar to pay a short homage to the writer Laurie Lee who had stayed in the town at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and writes memorably about the tension and savagery of it in his excellent memoir: “As I walked out one midsummer morning” and who then revisited the town in the 1950s under the Franco regime to find it vastly changed but haunted by ghosts of the past.

Calling it “Castillo” but admitting after Spain had become a democracy again that it was really Almuñécar, he writes:

“I saw this poverty-stricken Castillo lift its head out of the smoke and clamour of those days and feed, for a brief hour, on sharp hot fantasies of a better world. I had come back now, as I knew I must one day, to see what the years had done to the town. I found it starved and humiliated, the glory gone, and the workers of the sugar fields and the sea hopeless and silent.”

I sat for a few minutes by the dilapidated monument to him in the town, but the truth was that in the rush to mass tourism, little seemed to remain of what he had seen on either occasion apart from the castle up on the hill. Nearly 80 years had passed. Nature is eternal. Mankind less so.

And then another savage ride uphill and back onto that busy main road. There were a few tunnels but all well lit and with the booming traffic giving me decent space. With tunnels, I stop before the entrance, put my lights and reflective jacket on, wait for a clearance in the traffic, and then pedal like Mark Cavendish trying to get one last Tour de France win…

On one slow hot hill, I passed another bike tourist, a lady walking her bike up a not too steep part of the hill. I offered help but she insisted that she just wanted to walk the bike.

About an hour later, I stopped to admire a coastal view in a small parking area and after a while, she pulled in. She was from Freiburg and had ridden from some part of the Italian Alps, nearly always along the coast. “I am tired of the hills…” “I am 66 years old. I sold my house thirteen years ago and I have been travelling since.” She was not travelling continuously but taking long trips, camping most of the way, though without front panniers, and looking to rent somewhere for the winter. She had heard that Nerja would be an option.

I found her an odd mixture of improvisation and organisation. She was on her own and proud of it but seemed wrapped in her own thoughts and showed no interest in anything else.

I often wonder about the strange psychology of the long-distance cyclist, the people who set off for years on end, eking out their budgets by sleeping wild or in the houses of strangers, giving English lessons or stopping here and there to do freelance IT work.

When bike touring, you come across them from time to time: dusty bikes fully laden with battered and sun-faded bags strapped on with bungee cord and all manner of improvisation. They are usually cheery souls, halfway to somewhere… and maybe from there, they will go on to somewhere else… Some though seem completely miserable, trying to find themselves or stuck in a challenge that has ceased to be pleasurable. Carried by the wind direction, chance encounters with other travellers, or most likely visa requirements or difficulties.

Over the years, I have read a number of their memoirs: Alastair Humphreys, Rob Lilwall, Anne Mustoe, Tom Allen, and most recently Stephen Fabes: a vicarious pleasure from reading about them battling winds, diarrhoea, dogs and malevolent locals throwing stones or trying to rob them, but also from their descriptions of the highs of touring: not just the landscapes but more often the sheer human kindness that is opened to a travelling cyclist.

Towards the end of Fabes’ book: “Signs of Life“, he stays with Heinz Stücke, who spent 51 years on a bike, travelling the world many times over before finally heading back to his home town. (There’s a trailer for the documentary about him below.). Fabes arrives in awe, after a mere six years on a bike himself, but ends up arguing with Stücke over immigration. Fabes reflects on the encounter as he pedals away and home.

“How worldly can you be, I wondered, alone, always moving, never setting down roots? Perhaps living in a community, with all its nuance and diversity, its discordance and compromise, can more powerfully compose a world view (or a just one, anyway) than watching a world as a stranger does, with no stake in anything. […] The last years had been, for the most part, an exercise in non-participation. I hadn’t improved any given slice of the world, but had nosed around, voyeuristically at times, and in my lowest moments I wondered if it had all been a vain search for self-worth and purpose. Perhaps purpose, at least, lay closer to home.“

And so we parted ways, and I never saw her again, another slice of life, a brief view into another soul, searching for meaning in life. Like most of us.

And I reflected on her and continue reflecting. Perhaps purpose can be shared: our work life can give us purpose, but so can our personal life, including our leisure time. These holidays give both pleasure and motivation: up close insights into other worlds for a brief and enriching spell, nourishing us and balancing us before we resume our wider purpose at home.

Then the final stretch into Nerja, a town that I have visited a few times before, and into another furnished apartment. My host, a charming and sincere man in his late fifties who had survived cancer and before the pandemic had ridden all the way to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. Another slice of life, another person’s soul, another bit of perspective…

Monday 25 October and Tuesday 26 October: Nerja: rest days

When planning the trip, I had realised that I would have a few spare days but not enough to work in the delights of Cádiz or Gibraltar. So I decided to give myself a rest by the sea and to rest up in Nerja, a town I had visited three times before, the last time in 2014.

I remembered it as a town with a low-key rusty charm: touristed but not overly touristy. A place of Spanish bars but English pubs and the odd German menu. A town moreover in a beautiful setting, jutting out into the bay, most notably with Balcón de Europa, a parade laid on top of a rock like some seaside pier. I had fond memories of gentle breakfasts in a quiet café looking out onto the sea, of happy and not too busy beaches, and most of all, leaning out on a starry night at the edge of the Balcón, with the sea surging below me.

But things change. Returning seven years later, the place had gone very upmarket and was a hive of building. Indeed my lovely apartment refuge was not the place to rest up as from eight in the morning until sunset, there was the constant sound of drilling and jackhammering from a nearby street. Indeed that jackhammering seemed to permeate the whole town, with swish new apartments sprouting up in glass and white plaster.

The centre was full of pizzerias, Italian restaurants, and at least twenty Indian restaurants. Gone was my little café, replaced by an upmarket Italian. But at least there was still ice cream to be had at the edge of the Balcón de Europa, and after dinner, it was relatively deserted.

And the place was absolutely teeming with tourists. I had seemingly arrived at the confluence of many half-term holidays and the streets were full of voices in English, German, and Scandinavian tongues, and each coming to get away from the COVID misery, and letting down their guards as though the virus would hardly attack people who were on holiday…

For me, infection with the virus would be a disaster even with my double vaccination. What would I do? Where would I go? I could hardly hop on a plane but nor could I rent out a place. “Hi, I am suffering from COVID. Mind if I bunk down here for two weeks?”. So I skulked in the shadows and quiet streets, my mask glued to my face. It was the opposite of relaxing.

I tried to make the most and sit on the beach. I found a relatively secluded spot on the Playa Carabeillo, a pebbly beach just off the main beach, the Playa Burriana. I did my usual painstaking clothes removal act with a mini-towel and then splashed about in the water for a bit. It was chilly but invigorating, but even there I could not escape from the situation. As I swam around, I spotted an abandoned face mask floating in the water, like a lonely jellyfish… Looking back to shore, I saw equally lonely Africans walking along the beach, hawking handbags and saris, lottery ticket sellers, couples trying to find a discreet spot on the beach and an old man walking from one end of the beach to the other and back again.

But at least on my second evening, with sun setting, the crowds had gone and I had the place nearly to myself, on an in-tide that was nearly full, the waves crashing joyously around me and the glorious orange, ochre and green of the cliffs in the distance. Quite glorious.

And I ate well over my three nights: puntillas, boquerones al limon, clams in their shell, padrón peppers, grilled sardines, steak with chips and a divine tomato and avocado salad. And more ice cream. For purely medicinal purposes.

But after two days off the bike, I was keen to get going, to see more, to explore more, to.. I don’t know, smell more? Yes, that kind of works.

I would have to find a permanent solution to my poor broken down GPS, Bob the Wahoo. I would have to find a permanent solution to the mysterious creaking noise still coming from my bike seat and the equally mysterious bolt that dropped out some four hundred kilometres ago. And I would have to accept my poor – but strangely attractive and incredibly blonde-haired for my relative age – body for what it is and learn to love it. Creaks and all.

So on to Málaga… To find out what happened next, read Part Three…

March 19, 2022March 27, 2022

Crisp6 Comments

The calm delights of an Autumn bike tour through AndalucÍa

“Loco”. This is the exact word that the proprietress of the Casa Jazmin in Órgiva uses to describe my intent to ride straight uphill for the next forty kilometres to Trevélez, my bike thick and laden with three heavy packs at the back and a smaller handlebar bag at the front. “Absolutamente loco”, she adds for emphasis.

So how has it come to this? What am I doing flogging my ageing yet weirdly attractive and amazingly blonde-haired body up on a heavy bike with wonky gears and a bike seat with a strange creaking noise mimicking the noise of my own hips?

I’m fifty for fork’s sake… I should be sitting at home giving stern lectures to my children about the lack of realism of their choices for college and how they can pay for them themselves by working nights in a disease-ridden kebab shop… or deserting my stable but unsatisfactory thirty-year marriage for some hot and nubile young lady called Samantha who likes to call me Mr Chunky Chips and makes regular enquiries about the state of my pension fund.

So basically doing the same as most of my friends…

And at the very least, Samantha should be coming up the road behind me in the support van, occasionally handing out isotonic drinks or sports gels and mopping my brow. If she existed.

And how did I come to… enjoy it? And why would I recommend you take a similar trip?

And is Samantha getting a little too close to the imaginary hired driver Paco?

Read on to find out. I am breaking this into three parts. This is part one.

Friday 8 October 2021: Brussels – Seville

Why do I always end up getting flights that leave ridiculously early in the morning? Up at 4.45 to wait for a taxi at 5 to be there at 5.30 for a flight at 7.

My plan had been to use a pay-by-the-minute car, picking it up the night before, parking it in front of my house, and then hoping that no one had moved it overnight. But at the last minute, a colleague says “Why not use [nameless substitute taxi firm]?” and stupidly I agree.

When the car turns up, it is ordinary size. The driver takes one look at my bike box, shakes his head, and drives off, saying that he will waive the cancellation fee. So I look for the nearest pay-by-the-minute car, find one about seven minutes’ walk away, and head off, with my bike box and suitcase hidden in the dark at the side of my house… only to turn up at said car, try to unlock it using the app, get told that I am not close enough even though I am practically sitting on the bonnet, move around a bit in the hope of a better GPS signal, and finally give up, having lost ten precious more minutes… And then order a minivan from [nameless substitute taxi firm] which does at least come… and promptly charges me three times the usual price due to surge pricing…

Still, I make it the airport, have a relatively hassle-free check-in, and am on the way to Madrid… After an hour of peace and quiet in the serenity of Barajas Airport, I am on to Seville. There with relatively little hassle, I am picked up by a fellow called Mauricio with a car exactly the same size as the one that refused me earlier… but a markedly different attitude. With kindness and efficiency, Mauricio gets everything loaded and off we go. When I tell him my route, he is full of positivity, saying that I will have excellent scenery. He tells me that he yearns to go bike touring but will have to wait until his two young sons have grown up a bit.

To my hotel, not spectacular, but perfectly decent and well positioned in the famous neighbourhood of Triana and right on the banks of the Guadalquivir river. It is 2pm and I am exhausted, so I find a bar up the road and sit down for a decent lunch of arroz negro con camarillones and a glass of white wine. When I arrive, it is almost empty. When I leave at 3, it is completely full… Welcome to Spain. I have to adjust.

So I take a siesta and then descend to the car park to unbox and methodically reassemble my bike. I thought that it had gone quite well but when I head to a nearby bike shop to inflate my tires, the assistant looks at my bike with alarm: in putting my handlebars back on, I had managed to twist the gear and brake wires…

So there I am in the middle of a bike shop, disassembling my handlebars and when everything is finally sorted, I find that I have damaged the cable for the rear derailleur… The assistant clucked seriously at it before concluding that it was just about OK but worth looking at when I could find another mechanic as they had no time. So we would see…

But a fine end to an up and down day, sitting outside a bar in Triana with a few glasses of wine, a delicious bowl of salmorejo, a slice of tortilla, and two simple slices of bread with anchovies. Off to bed, weary…

Saturday 9 October: Seville – Carmona – 52 km

A beautiful morning to set off: clear blue sky and a warm breeze. After a fantastic breakfast up the road from my hotel of a large cup of coffee, fruit, yogurt and best of all, a hot bocadillo with a river of melted butter, ham and soft cheese, I checked out of my hotel, leaving my bike box and my suitcase behind for four weeks. Packing my bike bags in a large suitcase had worked well, allowing enough space for items like zip ties, duct tape and marker pen for the other end, and also allowing me to jettison some of the cooler weather gear that it was clear that I would not be needing.

Out along the Guadalquivir, then tucking inland through the grans vias of the city and the flow of tourists, and then out along bike routes through the outskirts and…

BANG!

My first puncture, not even 5k out. The inner tube of my rear tire completely wrecked, so I laboriously replaced it before heading out of the city nervously.

Then after passing a university, a complete change of scene: following an irrigation canal along dusty tracks with an arid sienna landscape stretched out into the distance, the odd rusty factory belching away at the horizon. Desolate yet eerily beautiful. Odd sewer pipes poking out here and there like mini-bunkers or glacial boulders. I half expect to see Mad Max thundering along on an armoured motorbike.

But instead, I have loads of delicate bikers coming this way and that.

The track was mostly easy to ride, but coming into the outskirts of Alcala de Guadaira, it got more and more irregular and bumpy, hard work for my poor bike, and then in the valley under the town, the track broke up altogether so I had to walk for a bit, dragging my bike up a muddy slope.

Beyond that, almost no one on the bike track as I passed a military base and women’s prison, the track following the perimeter fence for a few kilometres on the edge of a plateau. Stunning views to my right down into the valley and beyond, over to mountains in the distance but hard work in a dry heat, constantly focusing on the track ahead and grinding my way.

It was like riding Italy’s famous Strade Bianche: the white mud roads raced on. Worryingly, my gears were starting to slip here and there, with no prospect of seeing a bike mechanic at my destination.

After 10 hard kilometres of this and 40 for the day, I decided to abandon the track and head uphill at the town of El Viso del Alcor, connecting with the main road to Carmona. It was not scenic but it was reasonably direct, up and down for a final 10 kilometers before uphill and through the beautiful town of Carmona, my gears shifting erratically, and my hotel on the edge of a cliff at the edge of the town. A quite splendid view down to the valley and beyond: buttes, farms, horses, sheep all in the setting sun.

But I was exhausted, feeling the heat and grind and the effects of hard days before my holiday. After a quick shower and lie down, I headed out through the streets in the setting sun, a very agreeable place… and then had to wait an eternity for dinner… Spain.

I sat outside having a cool glass of sherry, hake in green sauce and chopped steak in whisky, before deciding to end the evening back at my hotel with a further two media raciones of fideaua of shrimp and a tempura of aubergines with honey… I waddled off, a bit full, but after a hard first day, I had deserved it…

Sunday 10 October: Carmona – Palma del Rio: 54 km

There are advantages to spending a day going uphill: you often start the next day with a glorious descent… and so I did.

But first, breakfast, and if you are going to pay extra for a hotel breakfast, then you should take full advantage, and I did. Scrambled egg, green beans, fried ham, cheese, Iberian ham, croissant, pastries, three cups of coffee and a discreet few pastries and sandwich for the road ahead.

Out on the road, a wonderful slow and almost straight descent over 13km, never having to touch my brakes and waving nonchalantly at the Sunday riders straining their way up. But just a touch of wind….

And then the descent ended and I turned East… into the wind. It wasn’t relentless or massively strong, but it did sap me over the hours. I cycled through the plain: ploughed fields and more irrigation canals parallel to the mighty Guadalquivir, though I hardly saw the river itself. It was not the most stimulating of rides: a day for quietly grinding out the kilometres and getting your legs used to riding with a heavy pack.

But I did pass through cotton-growing country and clearly in harvesting season too, a first for me: like seeing snow over fields. And then the first of many orange and lemon groves, a novelty to my northern European eyes.

Then to Palma del Rio, and an overnight stay in a converted monastery. It was a little spartan but fine. The place had little to see, but it was nice to wander around and see people enjoying themselves on a Sunday night in a fairground area. And I had a decent dinner served by a friendly waiter: gazpacho with all the trimmings, grilled razor clams, and beef cheeks in gravy with chips.

Monday 11 October: Palma del Rio – Cordoba – 60km

After a poor breakfast at the monastery, out into the town for my most important task of the day: getting my bike fixed.

By all accounts, there only appeared to be one bike shop in town: “JR Whelee” and it did not look promising when I rolled up: half empty with motorbikes and hardware more visible than bikes.

But the owner was an amiable old man and tolerated my awful Spanish as I tried to explain my problems. Without a word of complaint, for an hour he fiddled with my gears, listening to the rhythm and trying to diagnose the problem, and also gently pointing out that when I had replaced my rear tire after the puncture, I had put it on the wrong way, with the tire treads pointing backwards rather than forwards. And after all this and assuring himself that all was well with my gears, he sent me on my way, refusing any payment whatsoever. A beautiful man.

Then on my way, back into the wind and rising heat: flat and featureless for the first 25 km but then on the outskirts of Posadas, my GPS told me to turn off the main road and onto a rutted cattle track. As I stood there pondering my options, two mountain bikers came up the track. When I asked them if it was passable, one looked at me with a “Not with that kind of bike” look but I figured that I had no choice, so for the best part of one very jolty up and down kilometres, I struggled with my bike like a recalcitrant mule, before the GPS instructed me to join the main road… that it had so painfully taken me off… a total waste of effort. Sometimes it pays to plan routes more carefully.

The main road did not last too long and there was a decent hard shoulder to ride along before I was directed off and up some painful hills to the glorious sight of the Castillo del Almodovar, looming up. I sat and had lunch in the visitors’ car park, smugly surveying those who had driven up there, before heading down the other side…

Sadly that was my fun for the rest of the day: quiet and boring farm roads and then a horrible ride along a ribbon development whose town planner had decided to make things more interesting for motorists by studding the road with hundreds of almost invisible sleeping policemen.

For kilometre after kilometre, I cursed him and his fascist inclinations as my bike hopped over one after another of his fascist monstrosities. Perhaps his fascist brother had a side-line in selling tires or his fascist sister worked for a haemorrhoid cream manufacturing company, or both. “These delightful fascist traffic calming measures are sponsored by Anu-salve, the cream that softens and purifies. Visit your local pharmacist now. Fascist.”

Mercifully my apartment in Cordoba was great: top floor, tastefully decorated, A/C, kitchen, nice shower, very quiet, good Wi-Fi, safe space for my bike outside, and not too far from everything. No fascists.

Dinner however was disagreeable. I started at one fancy place where I was offered half a table with one of those annoying bar stools and served a bowl of rancid acidic salmorejo, so bad that I paid the bill quickly and set out for somewhere else to remove the taste.

The only place that had a table – or rather an upturned barrel – was served by a woman in her twenties who walked around with her mask on her chin and barely covered the mouth when she came over to take my order and ask me about whether I was happy with my Kindle. Still the food was good: fried anchovies and fried cod: deliciously moist.

Tuesday 12 October: Cordoba – rest day

A day off. A chance to get some rest, wash my clothes, and gently wander around Cordoba. The town was full of people on Spanish national day, still rather unsettling in these virus times. I wandered around in a fairly aimless fashion, avoiding anywhere too crowded, but quietly ticking off major sights that I had wanted to see.

After a lunch of pleurotes with prawns followed by a ceviche served in a wine bottle sliced in half lengthwise, I took a pleasant afternoon nap and then headed over to the must-see of Cordoba: the Mezquita, the remains of an Arab mosque. I had been there before but knew that I must get back. The mosque is famous for its fantastic pillars, pulled together by several layers of arches in alternating red and white.

I arrived later than planned, with only just over half an hour to closure. I was quietly ticked off for my late entrance by the ticket office. “Bah” I thought, “I am not going to need more than ten minutes…”.

How wrong I was! The mosque was even more entrancing than I had remembered: a place of magnificent contemplation, helped by there being relatively few other visitors. We had time to wander around its immensity, taking in new visions not just of those fantastic arches but the mihrab and golden chapels, and in the middle, that most defiant of messages from the Reconquista: a fully blown white Catholic cathedral… I remember my shock the first time: a jolt of religion and style, aggressively breaking out of the mezquita and lunging to the heavens. I lingered in the arches of the mezquita, taking it all in, bathing in its coolness and subdued light.

Wednesday 13 October: Cordoba – Zuheros: 71km

The first of the hard days. I could have followed the Guadalquivir along its lazy, boring and gusty valley, but to me, the point of bike touring is to see a country properly not get through it as quickly as possible.

A magnificent morning to be out riding: relatively cool and sunny, and hardly a soul on the street as I threaded my way along the river, out through the suburbs, and surprisingly quickly out into the hills along a well paved and gently rising road with hardly any traffic. A joy to be on my bike!

Within a few kilometres, I was high above it all, cresting up and down along mostly easy roads, in a stunningly empty landscape of yellow and brown hills with lonely farmhouses and fincas in dimpled valleys below.

I felt beautifully alone and detached from the miseries and fears of the last years. Until the final kilometres of my ride, I only came across one cyclist, exchanging that delicate outstretched tilt of the wrist that Spanish riders use to salute each other, a sort of half-wank tilt. But I was passed by plenty of grumpy and unimpressed farmers…

I quietly congratulated myself on a job well done as I rode into one of the few towns along my route, the charming town of Castro del Rio and bought some cool drinks from a tienda whose friendly owner beckoned me inside. 43km done and 610m climbed and feeling good.

But as soon as I left the town, the real climbing began: 28 kilometres but a whopping 740m of climbing, most of it packed in the first 20 k. And on a broilingly hot and sweaty afternoon.

As I ground my way up hill after hill, stopping now and then to deal with the sweat and drink water, I attracted an increasing audience of interested onlookers every bit as zealous and crazy as the masses of the Tour de France or Vuelta a España. Flies everywhere, throwing themselves in front of me as if it were the narrow mob on the Alpe d’Huez. I gave them my full Bernard Hinault, swatting them out the way to little avail.

But the scenery was again magnificent: mile upon mile of olive groves like corncob braids on a brown head but with green trees and cliffs in the distance, and then the town of Doña Mencia gleaming white in the distance in the setting sun.

Then, after a brutal but short ascent, along the Via Verde, a converted railway track, to the outskirts of Zuheros, and a final desperate 20% incline up into…

And you know what? I got off my bike and walked. Because it’s a bloody holiday and I don’t need to wreck my tendons trying to prove that I can get a heavily laden bike up there. My rules, people, my rules…

The town itself was amiable but rather basic: narrow streets in the increasing gloom. I set out for a circuit of the town, rather late as the sun was nearly set. Feeling exhausted after nearly 1400 metres of climbing, but glad to have done it. A world away from the hubbub of Cordoba. Magic.

Thursday 14 October: Zuheros – Jaén: 74 km

A day spent following the Vias Verdes, the green bike path routes following abandoned railway lines. First the Subbetica and then the Aceite or olive.

For all that, quite hard work, with the bike path often rutted or sandy, meaning that one had to keep one’s eyes on the path ahead. Old railway bridges had been left with their wooden buffers intact, giving one the option of either cycling carefully along the narrow side of the buffers or taking them head on, a jolting, buffeting ride. In some places, I had no choice with the sides taken up with metal girders with rusted nails sticking out, forcing me into that horrible ride over the buffers.

Yet a beautiful ride, downhill for an eternity, gently losing the height that I had so painfully acquired the day before. Mostly olive groves stretching out in the distance but the geology was constantly changing: changes of hue and rock every few kilometres and at one point a vast arid basin stretching to my right. I wish that I had the knowledge to make sense of it.

Hardly a soul out there, hardly a breeze as again the temperature cranked remorselessly up into the low thirties.

I had it almost all to myself, seeing more rabbits scurrying from their hiding places at the sound of me than other people. Starlings all around, a stray cat, lizards.

And loads and loads of startled rabbits.

And my bike certainly gave them advance warning. Whilst my friend at JR Whelee had cured the randomly switching gears and I was no longer worried about another tire explosion, my seat had been making an annoying creaking noise as I laboured up hills or pushed hard on the pedals.

Ordinarily with noises, you find the right place and squirt a little oil or grease, but with this, where to squirt? So I put up with it, wondering how in hell I could explain it to a bike

On the outskirts of the ugly town of Martos, I stopped for a late sandwich lunch, only to notice that my seat post had begun to slip. The bolt to tighten it was almost impossible to turn, having been worn away. So I did my best, happy that at least I only had an hour to ride.

While removing the seat post, another bolt dropped off. I looked and I looked but could not find where it had come from. Everything looked in place.

So I pocketed the bolt and made a mental note to ask the bike mechanic whose help I would need on my seat post.

After a slightly nervous trip into Jaén, I found a bike shop: Ciclos de Luna and manoeuvred my laden bike inside. A kind guy took a look and removed the bolt, tailoring a new bolt to replace it, clamping, filing, banging, tweaking… and refusing any payment, happily sending me on my way, saved yet again. (And by the way, with a strong command of the English language, much better than my basic Spanish.)

And checking into my hotel in the centre of town, I realised that I had forgotten to ask him about the mystery bolt. Oh well, no harm done… I’m sure I’ll come across a bike mechanic sooner or later…

My hotel was one of those old corporate town centre hotels: rather soulless but just fine. Decent A /C, shower, breakfast, the lot… I took time out to wander around the city and in particular its magnificent cathedral, before having a rather lacklustre dinner of oversalted tuna and tomatoes in the old town.

Friday 15 October: Jaén – Úbeda: 58 km

Fuelled by yet another colossal hotel breakfast, back on the road again and quickly out of Jaén and mile upon mile of olive groves, but so peaceful and splendid and above it all.

I spent the morning up in the hills, almost plateauing along a lonely but mostly well-paved farm road. Despite its apparent emptiness, there were regular snatches of Spanish and – more common – Arabic from the olive trees and the warm greetings of farm workers rather than the supercilious contempt of their bosses in tractors.

There was a wonderful serenity to it all as I continued to release myself emotionally after the stresses of the previous months. The hills gave me not just a break from the petty squabbles and emotional confrontations, but a slow deflation of them. To be away on holiday is a marvellous luxury at any time, but in October when you have the satisfaction of knowing that your co-workers are slogging away, even greater.

But as ever, there was a price in the afternoon, a long slow climb along the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway to Baeza: 420 metres of climbing at 5% and often 7-8%, with the temperature again pushing thirty degrees, sweat pouring out of my eyebrows. I dared not look up because then the sweat would start pouring in a worse way. And as ever, the goading presence of those black flies, taunting my slowness.

And to make things worse, my stomach started to act up. After days of splendid overindulgence in the evening, working my way through the Spanish and Andalusian repertoire and shoving cheese and salami in a bread roll into myself on the road with reckless disregard, my stomach had lost its patience.

By the time I reached Baeza in the thick of the afternoon, I had reached a decision. I spotted a lonely but posh hotel on the outskirts, dismounted from my bike, put my face mask on, wheeled my fully loaded bike through the doors and approached the front desk.

“¿Es posible utilisar sus aseos?”…

“Si, claro”.

So leaving my bike and bags in reception, sweating profusely and gripping my stomach, I headed for the toilets…

The rest, my friends, is history…

A little later, I struggled into the nearby town of Ubeda, ready for another day off and into an apartment with an owner who I never meet but who bestows me with the mysterious codes needed. A nice place but lacking in… decent WiFi, and… condiments… A bath mat… Table mats… coffee… clothes wash… head space. But at least there is space to store my bike safely… With its strangely squeaky seat and unexplained bolt…

The view from my apartment bedroom. Without Samantha.

So how best to treat a bruised stomach? With a stupendous dinner of apple salmorejo – a revelation – and flamenquin: rolled steak in ham and cheese sauce, all washed down with a few tasteful glasses of vino tinto… for purely medicinal purposes.

Though oddly, I feel strangely queasy afterwards… Must be the cycling…

And where are Samantha and Paco? They should have arrived a long time ago.

February 21, 2022February 24, 2022

Crisp5 Comments

Jurassic Perks: A bike tour through the beautiful Jura and Upper Rhone: Week Two

This is the second part of my account of a great bike tour that I did this summer in France and Switzerland through the Jura and along the upper Rhone valley. I hope that it inspires you to get out there.

Saturday 24 July: Le Sentier – Geneva 64k, 662m

I wake up to that rare thing: a morning thunderstorm: lightning flashing away in the distance. One of those days where you look at the weather apps on your phone and assess when you should make a break for it. My impression of the uselessness of the hotel is confirmed by the breakfast: hardly any selection and a rather mean sign saying that you are only allowed one hot drink.

At a certain point, the rain seems to have cleared and the radar is looking clear, so I head out. After a few kilometres warming up along the flat of the valley, I am about to set out on the one big hill of the day when the rain starts pouring down. Luckily, I am in the village of Le Brassus and find shelter next to a closed business.

I wait for half an hour, checking the apps for signs of clearing and trying to keep warmed up. I wait for at least five minutes without rain and then gingerly start heading up the hill. This turns out to be a good decision because the rain does not come back and the storm has left the air beautifully cool. The hill is pretty steep and long: 300m over 4km at an average of over 7%. But in the cool air, and with not too much traffic, I settle down and enjoy it, taking regular breaks to enjoy the changing landscape and rewarding views: a total contrast to the sweaty slog of the day before. There is something rather meditative about a long climb in cool air.

And at the top, I am rewarded with a wonderful long plateau through the Parc naturel régional Jura vaudois, 11km of gentle up and down along decently paved farm roads with views across to stone walls and cow pastures, with nothing but the occasional Saturday cyclist passing me occasionally with that friendly look of mutual respect for making it up the hill. It is quite magnificent.

Then the descent and a wonderful first view of Lake Geneva: pale blue and languid in the distance: a beautiful slow and long descent over 20k, slowly losing all the elevation that I have built up over the previous week, but getting full value.

Away from the pines to the vineyards and wheat fields of the surprising wide Geneva valley, my route keeping me on mostly quiet roads where one can sit back and take it all in.

After I pass Nyon, the slow accumulation of commuter towns as I head towards Geneva, and then after passing round the side of the airport, to the suburb of Grand Saconnex and a rendezvous with my old friend Elenka at the Slovak mission to the UN. Technically I cross another border, onto Slovak territory…

Elenka cooks an early supper of hearty meat and vegetable stew and then we head out to the centre of Geneva and the lake for a walk, catching up in person for the first time since I stayed with her on another bike trip in 2015 when she was still in Bratislava. We speak about all the difficulties of the past years but also the good moments that one can find in between if one is open to them.

We time our walk just right because as we get in the tram to go back, it starts absolutely heaving it down again. An early night in a guest room, coughing away with my bike bag propped under the pillow to help…

Sunday 25 July: Geneva – Seyssel: 64k, 511m

Breakfast is the key meal for cyclists: a chance to fuel up for the day. When I get to Elenka’s apartment, she has rustled up a breakfast fit for the Tour de France: omelette, melons, peppers, pie, coffee and finally herbal tea with honey for my rickety throat.

We say sad goodbyes and I head off through the quiet Geneva streets, downhill and out through the usual urban detritus and stop for a photo when I cross the Rhone for the first time after nearly 5km.

And then notice something in the pocket of my bike jersey: the key to the guest room… So I call Elenka and head back to repeat the whole exercise for a second time… Then finally over the river and out, out, out… Out into vineyards with hills stretching away in the distance on either side. After the storm, the heat started rising again.

I had looked at my route the previous night and realised that I could be missing some great landscape so made a short deviation along the main road to Vallery and Vulbens, crossing the French border quietly, my final crossing before my return to Brussels. Again no one around.

Then onto the Via Rhona bike route and up to the edge of the Rhone valley and beautiful views of a gorge and the L’Ecluse fort and that deep turquoise Upper Rhone. A motor biker pulled up and said that he had just bicycled up and down the Via Rhona and complained that it was getting too full of bike tourists… Yet until I reached the middle Rhone near Lyon days later, I hardly came across anyone. My only encounter was not far from the gorge, a fully laden Frenchman from Lille coming the other way and doing a tour of the region, and like me, absolutely loving it.

After a long steady and rather enjoyable uphill of 3-5% and then some quite boring countryside, I hit the highlight: a simply stunning bit of road around the town of Usinens: the Rhone valley wide open in the late afternoon sunlight: pale blue hills melting into green pastures and amazing views in all directions. I stopped for my ‘lunch’: Elenka’s cherry pie and savoured it all. No mass of passing cars. Indeed no one at all apart from some bored boys trying to use a scooter like a go-kart down the slim hill. The golden landscape in that serene moment is mine, mine, mine and mine alone.

A perfect spot for a slice of cherry pie

And I think to my friends and family who tell me that I am very brave and foolhardy to be undertaking these trips. What bravery is this to pedal somewhere beautiful and take it all in… and eat a nice slice of cherry pie?

Then downhill, floating through this wonderland, a brief stretch along the main road and then the town of Seyssel strung out on both sides of the very full and stunningly turquoise Rhone.

And my hotel, the hotel du Rhone, was pretty perfect: a lovely calming room with beautiful wallpaper of golden fishes on a blue pond and A/C, wonderful A/C…

So I set out in a good mood for a dinner fit for a champion, armed with a Google Maps list of 6 or 7 places. Hmmm, my hotel restaurant: closed until Tuesday. Le Bouchon du P’tit Pont next door, ordinarily open on Sundays but ‘exceptionnellement fermée’. The Café du Pont, up past the bridge: closed on Sundays. The Hotel du Beau Sejour: shutters down, no sign of life. So I wandered across the bridge into the main part of town: the Brasserie du Rumilly: closed on Sundays. And so on…

Indeed the only place remotely open was the takeout Pizzeria La Venise, with a queue pretty much stretching down the street. I finally ordered… and was told to come back in an hour… Which turned out to be an hour and a half… I can’t say that it was the most amazing food that I have ever had in my life… but it did at least qualify as food and I scarfed it down.

Monday 26 July: Seyssel

I woke up after a relatively cough-free and air conditioned night and after a decent breakfast, got on with the usual day-off errands of clothes washing, postcard writing, and trying to catch up on my videos.

And then wandered around Seyssel, quickly establishing that a) half the place was dug up, b) the other half had left for holidays. I googled for things to do and discovered little despite the splendid surroundings.

So I had lunch at the Café du Port on the riverside and very nice it was too: a decent steak and chips and glass of the local red while the locals chainsmoked their way to oblivion.

In the evening, I walked along the bank and sat down to admire the river and a speedboat going up and down. An old man came up and made some comment that invited conversation so I engaged. He was a lawyer specialising in helping people who could no longer help themselves and was there to help put their legal affairs in order – and he hinted protect them from themselves and those who would take advantage of them. He had lived in Lyon but had ended up in Seyssel a few years ago “to be closer to my clients”.

I said that I was surprised by Seyssel: such a beautiful spot yet falling to bits and lacking life. He very much agreed. “Ce que je critique c’est une léthargie, une manque de dynamisme” (What I criticise is a lethargy, a lack of dynamism”).

We talked about Europe, we talked about Macron, we talked about populism. At the time, Macron was introducing a requirement for people to prove vaccination to be admitted to restaurants or other indoor spaces. He said that he sympathised with the protests. “I have not had the vaccine and nor have any of my friends.” He came up with the most common reason: it had all been developed so quickly.

Now my friend Elenka had pointed out to me that the MRNA vaccine was not exactly new: it had been tested during the SARS epidemic and been proven to work. So I relayed this to my new friend and suggested that one might not have made strawberry mousse before but if one had a decent recipe for raspberry mousse, one was already pretty sure that it would work. And as he walked away at the end of our chat, he said “You know, I will get vaccinated. But Pfizer.” And I thanked him and walked away thinking that I had done one small thing to make peoples’ lives better.

Seyssel with my new friend in the distance on the left

And then went in search of something to eat and having been turned away from the Hotel du Beau Sejour, ended up gratefully at the Café du Port for another pizza…

Tuesday 27 July: Seyssel – Aix-les-Bains: 34 km, 267m

Away, away, away, from this frustrating town of Seyssel to… anywhere… I don’t care.

On paper, a very boring and short ride over to Aix-les-Bains, but after a few kilometres of flat along the Rhone, a steep ascent takes me to sunlit vineyards, to green mountains curving away to my left, to small but happy villages and auberges broadcasting their prowess in cooking frogs… and a few elderly pelotons passing me on another gorgeous morning and giving words of admiration and encouragement.

What could have been a soulless and short ride turns into something rather uplifting and magical.

And that is before the descent to the lake. I had imagined it as dull and over-touristed as those boring lakes out of Pontarlier, but immediately I see it, I am seduced by its calm turquoise magnificence. The bike lane goes right up against the water. I seriously consider jumping in.

In a car, this show would be over in 20 minutes flat, with a line of impatient cars right behind you making their feelings known, but on a bike, you can just take your time and enjoy the sheer perfection, the sheer moment of being, and feel lucky to be there at that moment in time after all that has happened. You can absorb the gentle lapping of the lake, the perfect mid-20s temperature, the soft caresses of the sun, and appreciate being there under your own power, having pushed your own way over 300 kilometres, and no wonder you are getting some respect from other cyclists.

These are the moments that you dream about. The moments that reward every sweat-drenched ascent, every strain in your muscles, every thankless French town subsisting on pizza.

They are yours. No need to search for some layby to park. Just lean the bike against the railings and soak it all in. Well done!

Sadly the glory of the lake did not last for ever and I was finally yanked away uphill to the rather ugly main part of the town, but luckily just off a busy road, the Logis Auberge Saint Simond, an oasis of calm run by very nice ad helpful staff and again a fine small room with AC. I took it easy, going for a walk over to the lake before taking a swim in the hotel pool and then a lovely dinner outside in the setting sun: a tomato tatin, sauteed perch and finally a rather odd parfait glace flavoured with Chartreux, and all with a few fine glasses of medicinal wine. And my cough was finally going, hurrah!

Wednesday 28 July: Aix-les-Bains – St-Genix: 49k 387m

I wake up to the sound of rain pattering on the table outside my room. I start with moody grey skies as I skirt the Lac du Bourget, but all the better for it as it keeps it nice and cool and gives the lake a rather romantic and mysterious feel. After 10k, I head up the hill: not too aggressive and not too long: only 150 metres.

And then through a dedicated pedestrian/bike tunnel parallel to the Tunnel du Chat. When renovating the road tunnel, the authorities had the rather good idea of making the – now compulsory – fire escape tunnel usable and open for cyclists and pedestrians during ordinary times. It goes on for a solid and rather chilly kilometre and a half – or nearly a mile – and has been decorated every twenty to fifty metres or so with simple motifs showing the highlights and towns of the region.

Then out, away from the main road and along the quiet country roads linking La Platiere, Haut Somont and Landrecin. I have it all to myself and it is jaw dropping as I slowly and enjoyably wind my way back down to the Rhone. Do you ever feel that landscape has been designed just for you? I did that day.

Then back onto the Via Rhona, well away from cars, and the company of more conventional cyclists: a patch of wonderful landscape with the hills again peeling away in the distance, large cliffs showing the force of the glacier that must have been here millions of years before, now reduced to this narrow turquoise river.

As with the day before, all good things come to an end and as I approach my destination, my route pulls away from the river and back through farmland: fields heavy with ripening corn. Like thousands of sprouting Boris Johnsons…

Then to St-Genix-sur-Guiers. I slog up the hill to my hotel: a converted chateau, only to find absolutely no one around and a sign saying that guests must arrive between 5 and 6, so I have an hour to kill and descend back down into the town.

I had hoped for a charming small French town and… well it was small. Unlike Seyssel though, there was little charm in the buildings or setting, and little to see in the place itself. Luckily, I locate a decent hotel restaurant – the Coq en Velours– over the river from the town in the amusingly named Gare de l’Est and go in and make a reservation for the evening just to be sure.

Then I am finally able to check in. The owner walks around with no mask on and no reaction to the fact that I am clearly wearing one. Indeed, everyone there is walking around without a mask, even though the infection rate in France is soaring.

For the money that I am paying, I expect at least a decent room where I can escape from the Covidiots, but am given an airless and baking hot small top floor garret with just about enough room to lay out my bags.

My consolation comes with another decent dinner though at the place I had booked: sitting outside in the back garden with a glass of white, and a three-course meal of smoked trout on a bed of cucumber, pickle and pureed beetroot, followed by the signature dish of ‘coq en velours’: cock in a creamy brown sauce, and finished with a glacé flavoured with verbena, a bit sweet for my tastes.

Then reluctantly back to that hot and COVID-heavy hotel, windows as open as I can get them and fan full on all night… You can’t have everything.

Thursday 29 July: St-Genix – Pérouges – 71k, 480m

Again, away, away from this noxious place before I succumb to the germs: even the breakfast was poor. Absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

But a beautiful morning to be out and I was not the only one: I was overtaken by another peloton on the road out of Gare de l’Est.

France is a wonderful place for cycling: not just the landscapes and towns – shitty little places like St-Genix notwithstanding – but the attitude and patience of the drivers. It’s as though they are scared that the riders in front of them might contain the next Tour de France winner. Nowhere else do drivers treat cyclists like royalty, even in holy Belgium where there are regular shouts of encouragement to the straggling cyclist.

And again I saw it on that morning as a car waited a solid three minutes behind a bunch of riders going side-saddle and not going at a particularly fast pace. In the UK, there would have been angry shouts and swearwords exchanged and in most other parts of Europe, some crazy bit of overtaking, pancaking the cyclists into the hedges. But not in France.

Always a good sign to be on the penultimate riding day and loving it, loving it, loving it. Only my loyalty to my dear exhausted boss drives me back home to replace her for August.

But the Rhone is flattening out. Good for the wine. Less good for the interest. So it was a long hot day in the saddle, trying to keep myself going. Ironically the best bit was when I was forced to take a deviation because of a bridge closure and took off uphill away from the main road to the pleasant village of Lluis before a great descent back to the Rhone.

At St-Genix, I had decided to indulge myself and try out the local pastry, given that the tourist information signs had been banging on about it. I ask at a local bakery, and she points to a great massive cake as if I am an idiot, so I duly buy and save for lunch. When I open it for lunch and cut away a slice, I find it to be a cake made entirely of… red… Not strawberry, raspberry, redcurrant or anything interesting like that. Just red food dye. Red syrup with bits of candied red. There really is nothing redeeming about that town.

Finally I reach Meximieux and my hotel, picked for its closeness to the historic town of Pérouges and have a good wander about the town before heading down for dinner.

The hotel restaurant is packed so they give me a table indoors and ignore me for the rest of the evening. Having seen frogs’ legs advertised on restaurant boards since Seyssel, I go for it. The frogs are fine but are smothered in garlic, taking away whatever taste they might have had.

But at least the hotel has AC and people wearing masks…

Friday 30 July: Pérouges – Lyon : 45km, 189m

The end of the road. Final days on the road can be so sad and anticlimactic. I set off reasonably early – 10am on the dot which is good by my standards – pressed out by the forecast of imminent rain, thunder, hail, frogs (garlicked and non-garlicked), cats, dogs, locusts…

I beat my way through an extremely boring 45k of monotonous country lanes, sandy towpaths, mud paths, and boring, boring suburbs, with not an automatic cheese dispenser in sight. I would even have settled for an automatic red pie dispenser. But on, on, on to my endpoint with the skies gloomy but not stormy overhead. Even the entrance to Lyon was boring: long bike paths along the now bloated and brown Rhone with not a glimpse of the city until the final stretch: an urban promenade floating under bridges and filled with bikers, joggers and the homeless.

A final crossing over the Rhone and through some tunnels to my hotel, where the rain finally came after I had checked in, leaving my poor bike in an internal courtyard to take it. While I settled into the Brasserie Georges next door, a good old hall in the grand style such as one used to have in Brussels with the late lamented Falstaff, and ordered an andouillette. It comes out with a bed of mashed potatoes and gravy and a medicinal but cheap Côtes du Rhône. I slice it open to an almost sickening odour almost as repellent as that dairy and plunge in to its awful, nasty, delicious wonder.

And then I take a nap.

A Friday evening in Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. I find a nice bistro near my hotel where the wine is plentiful, the ambiance good, and… I really don’t remember what I had apart from that it was good and I wandered back to my hotel replete, following the bridges over the Rhone and the Saone, some lit up, the city breathing a slow nervous release.

Saturday 30 July: Lyon – Brussels

I always find myself fidgety on last days even when in my case, my departure isn’t until 7 in the evening. I scratch around Lyon, looking at my watch, with eight hours to go…

It is an odd place: a mixture of several cities and a meeting point of cultures and parts of France: tied both to the hills and to the south by the Rhone, but also recognisably industrial. It is a mixture of fancy middle class and gritty working class. A city of yellows, reds… and greys. It is recognisably still Lugdunum. Suddenly an image from an Asterix book read many decades ago flickers back in my mind.

The fact that two rivers meet, sidling alongside each other for a few kilometres somehow sums it up. I wish I had more time to wander, to get lost.

I wander up to the hills overlooking the city, to the Roman remains, to the basilique, and then back down again across the rivers… in search of an American. Earlier this year, I had read Bill Buford’s book “Dirt” about his experiences as a trainee chef – and already famous culinary author – in Lyon. I was curious to visit the area that he lived in, between the Quai St Vincent and the Place Sathonay, and to try to guess at where the bakery run by the late Bob was – where Buford serves a kind of apprenticeship – and where the Bufords lived. Sadly his favourite local – Le Bouchon des Filles – is closed for August but I find a restaurant on the Place Sathonay that is buzzing with people on a sunny Saturday lunchtime and I sit and order. A smoked trout with a side salad. And then a chicken supreme almost on its own, like a moment when a rock star steps away from the pyrotechnics, the light display and the backing singers, and just sings…

Almost on its own. There is a small guitar accompaniment of stringy well-fried chips. And nothing else. It is simple. It is magnificent. It is time to go home.

And so I wait for my time to leave, watching police vans and protesters at an anti-Macron protester amass on the bridges and when I do ride towards the main station, I have to take a few detours to avoid the protestors and the police barricades.

Then after waiting an hour for my train to be signalled, a rush to get it up onto the platform and twisted and turned into some kind of shape to be lugged aboard the train and protected against idiots who cannot see that it’s a bicycle and all done while wearing an FFP2 mask, dealing with idiots who refuse to wear the mask and this is getting tiresome all these idiots I really do not need this why not start thinking of someone else beyond your lunkhead small willied self just putting that out there I want to live and it’s a bloody bicycle what do you think it is no please do not crash your suitcase into it or I will cream you.

There really must be easier ways of doing all this. And I am tired, tired, tired and it is time to get home. And eventually the train pulls into the Gare du Midi at just after eleven on a Saturday night and alone on a grey platform, I bring Susan back to life.

And off I go, a blinking light attached to my GoPro, up the hill, reversing the route taken on a grey morning two weeks ago. Out through the bars, the prostitute-heavy Avenue Louise, the empty petrol stations, the slow signs of Brussels also starting to emerge, out along the Avenue de la Couronne and the Boulevard General Jacques to Auderghem my sweet home, and just after midnight I am back home and everything is safe.

And I pull out of my saddle bags a dinner sandwich of Rosette de Lyon with cornichons. And a bottle of Cotes du Rhone bought earlier in Lyon. For purely medicinal purposes.

And I sit outside on my patio and enjoy.

I hope that you enjoyed this. Either way, please leave a comment and let me know what you enjoyed or what I can improve. Thanks a lot.

September 26, 2021September 26, 2021

Crisp1 Comment

A simple guide to Packing (and unpacking) a touring bike for a flight

The most stressful part of bike touring is getting the bike there and back. At the time of writing, I estimate that I have taken my bike on 28 flights and through 15 airports, all within Europe. I’ve taken a bike with rim brakes and one with disc brakes. And I’m still learning…

With the experience of taking my bike to Oslo and back last month fresh in my mind, I thought that I would give some tips on how to pack and unpack, based on what I have learnt over the years, and the mistakes I made along the way.

If you Google, you will see lots of different and contradictory pieces of advice – and I have looked at most of them for inspiration over the years – but this is what seems to work for me.

Obviously one way of avoiding the hassle is to rent a bike at your destination, but that might not be practical if you plan to return from a different city and personally I prefer to ride my own bike where I know how everything works.

What follows is a bit long but don’t worry: it doesn’t actually take too much time and is not very hard to do. It just involves a bit of planning and preparation beforehand.

Before your trip

When planning, the first thing that you need to do is to look at the possible flights. I try to get a direct flight to minimise the chances of the bike getting lost en route, though the one time I had to do a transfer (in Athens), it was fine. Whilst for many cities, there is just one big airport, be aware that for some – London, Brussels, and yes, Milan – there are multiple airports. It will be tempting to go for the cheapest and most direct flight but before you do, check how close the airport is to where you want to start your trip and what the transport from the airport is like.

Many cyclists put their bikes together at the airport and cycle from there/ take the bike on a train. This can be fine as long as everything arrives in a good state, you have plenty of time, can work undisturbed and you do not need the bike box again.

For sheer convenience, I have tended to take a taxi from the airport and quietly unpack at my starting hotel. With both options, be aware that the choice of arrival airport can make a big difference to the cost/viability. Modern airports tend to be far away from the city and with only fast roads around them, which can make setting off by bike an unnerving proposition. Equally, some airports are over an hour’s drive from the city centre, which makes for a very expensive taxi and might have poor or non-existent public transport. For instance, in Belgium, Zaventem (the main airport) is reasonably close to the centre and there are good and regular trains, but Charleroi, the alternative is basically in another city with only bus connections. Check it out: it might be worth paying more to fly to a closer and more convenient airport. (I made this mistake going out to Milan, flying to Malpensa when I should have found a flight to the much more central Linate. It cost me a whopping 95 Euros compared to 25 to go to Linate on the way back.)

For my recent trip to Oslo, I found out that taxis are ruinously expensive and that the best way is to take a direct train. Given that I needed the bike box for the return flight, unpacking at the airport was not an option. So I stored a lightweight and easily portable trolley in my suitcase and used it when navigating from Oslo Central station to my hotel 10 minutes away. It was a bit clunky with both the bike box and the suitcase but it just about worked.

Secondly and again before you pay for the ticket, check that the airline that you propose to fly with is OK with bikes and what their rules are. Most are fine, but some have some awkward rules (see below). I usually reserve beforehand either by phone or by email, usually paying in advance. Be ready to answer questions on the weight of your bike and dimensions of the bike/box that you are taking it in. You do not need to be ultra-precise on the former – I quoted 12kg but when checking in, it was closer to 19 and they did not care – and on the latter, unless you have a specially big bike, I would tend to quote 135x75x20cm, which is the standard size of a bike box. Don’t worry: they are unlikely to check.

Next, book your starting accommodation. One factor in my choice is that the place is reasonably close to a bike shop, just in case anything has gone wrong. If I am doing a round trip, I book the same place for the return. I tried this with Milan and asked the owner if I could leave the bike box with him while I was cycling, and he was great. This made life much simpler. In Oslo, they were initially sceptical, but agreed that if I flattened the box to save space, they would look after it. All this meant was using an extra bit of duct tape (see below).

If returning from a different city, it can be a good idea to identify a bike shop there and ask them if they can reserve a bike box for you. I recently did this for a trip ending in Ljubljana, contacting a bike shop that had good reviews about ten days before I needed it, and they were happy to keep one for me (and said that they did this all the time). On the day, I simply walked up, picked up the folded box and reassemble it with duct tape. The only city I had difficulties with was Prague, where several bike shops did not even reply, and the one that did, charged me about 10 Euros for the privilege and had forgotten about it when I finally turned up. Luckily, they rustled one up and I spent ten very amusing minutes walking through central Prague with an empty bike box.

The risk if you don’t is that you find that no one has anything. At worst, you could make a box from other cardboard boxes, but it is a lot more tricky.

A month or so before you go

A few weeks before you go, approach a local bike shop and ask them if you can take an old cardboard bike box. As with Ljubljana, most bike shops are very happy to do this for free or ‘coffee money’, as all they do when they have received new bikes and assembled them is to chuck the boxes away. Try to get one that is ‘standard’ size – 135-140 cm in length, 75cm in height, 20 cm in depth or close to that, so that your bike fits tightly. You might want to bring a tape measure to be sure. By the way, it is not a bad idea to take your bike for a check-up about a month before you go unless it is new or was repaired recently. They should check the chain, spokes, brakes and tire treads.

While you are at the bike shop, you could also ask them whether they have other protective materials left over for packing. Of particular value is a derailleur protector/ shield. They will know what to give you.

If you have rim brakes, you should ask them whether they have a plastic spacer for the front forks. This is to stop them bending or getting twisted. If you have disc brakes, you should ask them for a protective padding for the disc brakes and a spacer/mount. It is a different type – see below. When I am using the bike with rim brakes, I take the spacer, remove the skewer from the front wheel and use that.

The latter two look like this:

One thing to avoid

When I started touring, I used a reusable transparent bike bag, having read on the Internet that this would actually lead to better treatment of the bike because baggage handlers would see that it was a bike and take better care of it. In my experience, this is, to be frank, bollocks. After nearly having had my trip from Sofia to Istanbul jeopardised by a crushed derailleur (and only saved by an extremely nice bike mechanic), I switched to bike boxes and have not looked back (though note my comments below.)

A week before you go

Finally, also a week or two before you go, head to your local hardware/DIY store and pick up the following:

A roll of bubble wrap
A few lengths of foam pipe cladding
A bag of plastic cable/ zip ties of a decent length
A roll of electrical tape
A roll of duct tape
A small length of bungee cord

(And if you do not have already, make sure that you have a full set of Allen keys/ a multi-tool, some grease and some lube.)

Packing the bike

Finally! I recommend that you pack your bike at least a few days before you travel and ideally at a time when shops are still open – and especially bike shops – just in case you need to run out and get something or have a mechanic help in an emergency. If you have recently had your bike fixed or checked, you might find that they have over-tightened the pedals.

I also recommend setting aside about 2-3 hours. This is something that you want to do slowly and carefully.

As well as all the above materials, you will need: your phone/camera, a knife, some scissors, some freezer bags and a marker pen. Important rule here: if you use a tool or material when packing your bike, you will need to have it (or a substitute) with you when you unpack it at the other side and when you repack at the end of your trip (or be sure that your hotel will have one). It does not need to be the same tool but close enough, so for instance, when I pack at home, I use kitchen scissors and a Stanley knife, but when on my trip, I substitute with a small pair of medical scissors and a penknife. I use the camera to record every major move and for instance, the position of the saddle, handlebars and other adjustables.

Ready to go?

1. Lower your gears to the minimum on both sides

Simple reason for this: it means that the derailleurs – gear changers – are as protected as possible (see below).

2. If your bike has disc brakes: loosen the skewers

The reason why I suggest doing this now is that sometimes, you will find that they get stuck or have been over-tightened by the shop. Best to find this out now before you dismantle everything else or go travelling. I had this happen the last time that I dismantled the bike. Luckily, squirting some WD40 and leaving it for 10 minutes to soak in allowed me to unscrew the skewer. If not, you need to find your nearest bike shop and get them to unscrew. I would check both wheels, but not actually unscrew them. You will not be removing the rear wheel but it is best to check this before you head out on the road as you don’t want to have this problem when you are trying to fix a flat tire.

3. Remove the pedals

Here is an interesting thing that I did not know until a few years ago: you don’t – usually – need a spanner to remove pedals… All you need is a big Allen key. I don’t know for sure whether all bike cranks and pedals are the same size but for my bikes, we are talking 6mm and it comes as part of my multi-tool.

Why? Because if you look at the crank – that is the ‘arm’ sticking out from the big chainwheel at bottom centre of your bike – you will see that the hole that the pedal screws into is completely open, so you can in fact unscrew the pedals from the side furthest away from you rather than using a spanner on the near side. (If you want to use a spanner, don’t let me stop you, but I don’t as it is unnecessary extra weight)

A simple rule with screwing and unscrewing pedals: you tighten by screwing in the direction that you pedal and you loosen by screwing in the reverse direction. So for the pedal on the left hand side of the bike, you loosen by turning clockwise, and on the right by turning anticlockwise.

A quick warning here: as with wheel bolts, it has been known for overzealous bike mechanics to over-tighten pedals by using a massive torque wrench, making them near impossible to budge. This is one reason why I pack the bike at a time when bike shops are open just in case, though these days, I specify with the bike mechanic when I pick up the bike from its service.

Having removed the pedals, I wrap them in bubble wrap, and put them in a plastic bag. Out of caution, I used to take them with me as part of my hand luggage, pulling them out when I go through the airport X-ray machines. These days, I tend to tie them to the top bar right at the end of my packing. If anything is going to fall out, it will more likely be the seat.

4. Remove any bells and mounts

OK. This is much simpler. I unscrew my bike bell, handlebar bag mount, GoPro mount and bottle holders so that they don’t get bashed/ get in the way. Again, I put the mounts in a freezer bag and I put the bike bottles in the mounts in the bike box at the last minute as extra padding.

With the bottle holder screws and any other screws such as for seat post, pannier rack and handlebars, as soon as I have removed the bottle holder, I screw them back in though not too tightly.

5. Fit padding onto frame

This is where those lengths of foam pipe cladding and cable ties come in. They are ideal for wrapping round the frame to protect it. I use a mixture of duct tape and cable ties to secure them in place. With the cable ties, do NOT tighten them as far as they will go. When you unpack the back, you will need a little bit of space to cut them without damaging the frame. And you may be using a Swiss Army knife at that point.

I start with the three core parts of the frame – the top tube, the down tube and the seat tube – and then move to the other parts of the frame though leaving the front forks until I have removed the front wheel. If I can, I mark each part so that I remember which bit I used when I come to repack at the end of my trip.

6. Remove the front wheel

OK, this bit is slightly different according to which type of brake you have.

If you have cantilever rim brakes, start by releasing the wheel release mechanism.

Then turn the bike upside down. Then flip and unscrew anticlockwise the quick release mechanism: the golf club-shaped lever that sits on the left hand side of the hub of the wheel. For the time being, you don’t need to unscrew it all the way: just enough to loosen the wheel enough that it comes out of the forks. Remove the wheel and unscrew the quick release skewer all the way and pull it out of the wheel, replacing the nut loosely on it and then wrapping in a bit of bubble wrap and packing with the pedals.

If you have a fork spacer, fit it now.

If you have disc brakes, it is even simpler. Turn the bike upside down, and unscrew the skewer. Gently remove the wheel, which will come out easily.

Then, take the weird brake spacer and plug it in between the brake pads, inserting the narrow bit, with the wider bit sticking out so that you can remove it when you unpack. Screw the skewer back in, and put the spacer block on top of it (so that when you turn the bike up the proper way, it will be sitting underneath the skewer. Use a cable tie to fix it in place.

[If you have a front mudguard, this is the time to remove it.]

Then wrap the forks (and disc brake if appropriate) with pipe cladding and/or bubble wrap. They can easily get damaged so wrap them nicely. If using disc brakes, wrap the disc in some bubble wrap.

7. remove pannier rack and seat

Sometimes the pannier rack will fit in the box without needing to be removed, but most times it doesn’t. I unscrew the bolts, remove the pannier rack, and then rescrew the bolts loosely. I wrap the ends of the rack and the top in bubble wrap/cardboard.

With the seat, before removing it, I cut a small bit of cardboard to the length of the gap between the seat fitting to where it fits in the seat tube (see picture). I take a photo and put the cardboard in my wallet or handlebar bag. This allows me to set the seat at the right height when unpacking. While on the road, it also allows me to check whether the seat is slipping or not and if so, to refit it and tighten the bolt.

8. Deflate tires

This is a bit of silliness that most airlines insist on even though it makes little difference. Half-deflate both tires so that they are soft enough that an overzealous airline will be satisfied in the unlikely event that they check. You don’t need to go all the way and you want them to have a little air in them to pad them and to save you some effort when you have to pump them up again.

9. Remove and turn the handlebars

Now the bit that always makes me nervous because I once screwed it up, even though it should be easy: removing and turning the handlebars.

First, take a few photos, including a side-on view of the handlebars.

Second, cut two small strips of electrical tape and apply them evenly either side of the handlebar clamp (the bit that holds the handlebars onto the front stem of the bike). Note where the clamp bracket screws on (i.e. where there is a little gap) and mark it with the marker pen on both sides.

Then go and get the small bungee cord and loosely hang it on the top tube – as you will need it quickly.

Then start to unscrew the four screws holding the clamp bracket in place. I tend to loosen each one a little to start before unscrewing them in turn, ending with one of the top ones. Put them in a safe and close place. Then remove the clamp and immediately take the handlebars to the left and hang them on the top tube, using the bungee cord to hold them in place and being careful not to twist the gear cables. It does not need to be tight at this stage: just enough to hold them and get them out of the way.

Then fix the clamp back on, using the screws. Again, do this by hand: no need to over-tighten: just enough that they do not come off.

At this point, I turn the forks clockwise 180 degrees so that the handlebar holder is turned towards the back of the bike. When you come to fit the handlebars and put the bike into the box, you will find that they turn slightly. See the picture below.

With the handlebars, you will probably find that you need to lift the left hand side over the handlebar holder and then can wedge the right hand side in between the front forks that you just reversed. Keep it loose because in a minute, you will need to fit the front wheel and adjust the handlebars around it. See the picture below.

Nearly there…

10. Wrap derailleur and everything else

If I were really talented, I would remove the rear derailleur, and that is the safest thing to do if you know how, but every time I have looked at a YouTube video on it – and when the friendly Sofian bike mechanic tried to explain – it has looked wayyyy… too complicated and more likely for me to damage the bike than protect it.

So having lowered the gears, I wrap the derailleur with as much bubble wrap and other protection as I can manage so that it is as snug as a bug. If you can, get hold of a protector as seen in the picture. Your bike shop should have some. You attach this to the hole where the wheel skewer fits. It just gives a bit more protection.

I also put more wrapping on anything else that seems vaguely vulnerable, using whatever bubble wrap and pipe cladding I have leftover. You do not want to overdo it or you will never fit the bike in the box, and you run the risk of customs or security officials at the airport not being able to see clearly what is in the box and opening up the box to take a look. Believe me, this has happened a few times.

11. Put bike in box

Enfin. The big moment. Start by using some duct tape to cover the bottom of the bike box so that even if there is some rain while it is being loaded onto the plane, the box still holds together. I use quite a lot.

Then take the front wheel and fit it on the left hand side of the bike (i.e. the opposite side from the derailleur) between the tubes. I tend to use two short lengths of bungee cord to hold it in place.

If using a disc brake wheel, I would put the side with the disc on the inside of the box so that it is more protected. Please note that I did not do this in the picture below. I am always learning!

Really my advice at this point is to fiddle around a bit and see what works, protecting the sensitive parts of the bike – the derailleur, gear levers, brakes, front forks – as much as possible.

Then gently lower the bike into the box, starting with the rear wheel and then the front forks. You need to fiddle around a little bit including with the handlebars so that they fit, but DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING. This is why I use the bungee cord rather than a cable tie, to give myself a little bit of movement.

Then fit the seat post and rear pannier rack if possible and mudguard if appropriate. I also jam in a bit of extra padding round the rear wheel if possible to give the derailleur extra protection. Don’t overdo it with the padding for reasons set out below.

What about the pedals? Some sites suggest taking them with you in your main/hand luggage just in case your bike box gets ripped. I used to do this – and got some odd looks when going through airport screening – but these days I put them in a tough plastic bag and try to fix them to the top of the bike. If your box is going to get ripped – and so far, I have had only minor tears around the handling holes at the top – your bike seat and everything else is going to drop out too. So far, that has worked.

The last few times that I have travelled, I also dropped in my bike bottles, with two of them in the bottle cages, and my helmet, putting it on the same side as the derailleur. This seemed to work.

Then close the box and seal it with the duct tape.

On the side of the box that the derailleur is on and on the top of the box, use the marker to write such things as “Fragile: bicycle”, your name and phone number and the flight number and date.

Remember to pack the duct tape, electrical tape and some spare cable ties for the return journey, together with some grease, oil, and the pedals and other parts that you removed from the bike.

12. The day itself

Whenever possible, I try to take the bike to the airport myself using a share car. If not, I try to call a taxi company and tell them that I will need a car or minivan large enough for a bike box. When loading the bike, if it has to be turned on its side, I make sure that the part with the derailleur is on the upside.

When travelling to/from Oslo airport, given the exorbitant cost of taxis, I was forced to take the bike on the airport train, taking a small foldable trolley that I packed in my suitcase for the flight. It just about worked for the five minute haul of my bike from the central station to adjacent hotel, but I certainly would not have wanted to lug it and my suitcase for much further. Still, it saved me about £100 each way, so was worth the inconvenience and odd looks.

At the airport, having navigated round with a trolley and got to the check in desk, I usually find that they weigh it and then tell me to take it to the large baggage desk. When they stick the baggage tag on it, I ask that they put it on the side with the derailleur on, again so that this placed upwards ideally.

One final word here: after you have parted with your precious bike, it will usually go through two sets of baggage handlers and two sets of customs officials. Both tend to be underpaid and overworked… Baggage handlers might not treat your precious bike like Ming china and customs officers when presented with a large box marked “Fragile: bicycle”, often think “Hmmm…. I wonder if that’s really a shipment of cocaine or some explosives. I’d better check”. On a number of occasions, my bike has arrived at the other side with large holes torn into the box as a result of careless treatment/ a customs officer wanting to take a better look at the contents.

I am sorry to say that there is nothing that you can do about this and it would be difficult to prove that it was the airline’s fault. This is why I try to leave at least half a day spare between arrival and setting off just in case I need to take to a bike mechanic. But please take heart: since I started using bike boxes and worked out how to protect the bike, I have had no damage to my bikes and have found taking it on planes to be considerably simpler than taking on cross-border trains even if it does take more time.

Reassembling your bike

Over the years, I have put my bike back together in airport terminals, car parks both inside and outside, hotel rooms, hotel corridors, hotel luggage rooms and quite often, a quiet part of a hotel lobby.

A sense of humour, lots of patience and the ability to withstand odd looks and funny comments from passers-by are essential. I take the bike box, my tools and a rag and bottle of water, and slowly get on with it. Believe me, hotel staff have seen stranger things…

Inflate tires

If you are doing this in a hotel room/airport, then the chances are that you will be using a hand pump. Unless you feel super-strong, I would pump them until they are reasonably hard and then take them to a bike shop when the bike is fully assembled and ask to use a foot pump. Usually bike mechanics grunt a bit but then consent.

Remove padding

Do this gently, so that you can re-use as much as possible. If I am doing an A to B trip, I tend to compress all the packing materials into a bag that I tie with the bungee cord. If not, I shove them in my luggage or the bike box.

This is the point to remove the spacers from the front forks and disc brakes and put them somewhere safe: possibly the bag that you put the bell and mounts in.

Replace front wheel

If you are using rim brakes, now is the point to stick the skewer back through the front wheel. The quick release lever should be on the left of the bike – the opposite side to the gears. With disc brake wheels, you will obviously want to remove the skewer at this point, keeping it in your hand.

If you have a front mudguard, this is the time to refit it.

Turn the bike upside down gently.

A minor but important point is to put the wheel in the right way. With disc brake wheels, this is rather obvious. With wheels that use rim brakes, the way of checking is to look at the markings on the side of the tire. You will see an arrow pointing in the direction that the bike should rotate in when pedalling (so on the left side, it will be pointing anticlockwise and on the right side clockwise).

Gently slide the wheels in. With disc brake wheels, you will find that they slide in precisely. With rim brakes, a piece of advice given to me by a mechanic is to get them roughly in place and then when the bike is the right way up, loosen them a bit and slightly jog them into place to allow them to find their natural fit, checking by then lifting the front wheel and giving it a spin. Then tighten the skewer before pressing down the quick release lever. The rule here is that you should tighten the skewer just enough that when you press down the quick release lever, it momentarily leaves an imprint on the palm of your hand.

Turn the bike right way up. If you are using rim brakes, you now need to refix the wheel release mechanism for the brakes so that the conical part slides into the catch. The ribbed rubber covering should be outside this.

Refit handlebars

Start by unscrewing the clamp bracket, again keeping the bracket and bolts in your hand, and then undo the bungee cord and gently slide your handlebars back into the clamp before rescrewing the bracket, being careful not to twist the gear cables. Don’t worry about getting it exactly right at this stage and don’t fully tighten the screws. You can adjust at the end. You just want the handlebars the right way up and fixed inside the clamp.

Refit saddle

Same process here: gently lower the seat post into position and slightly tighten but again don’t worry about getting it exactly right at this stage.

Refit pannier rack

Having removed the screws from the frame, I tend to start by fitting the top part of the frame and rescrewing the two top screws halfway before dealing with the bottom screws, and then tightening up everything. Get it nice and tight and check regularly as with the jolting of the bike on the road, these often come loose.

Refit bottle holders, mounts and bell

As with the pannier rack, I get everything loosely into place before tightening up.

Refit pedals

Before you put the pedals back in, give both them and the crank a quick clean with some toilet paper/ kitchen paper and then squeeze a bit of grease onto the pedals before screwing in. As above, to screw in, the left pedal should be turned anticlockwise and the right clockwise. Again I use an Allen key for this. You do not need to tighten beyond the point at which you feel resistance and the pedals are screwed all the way in: the act of pedalling will automatically tighten the pedals.

Final checks and adjustments

By this point, everything should be more or less in place.

This is the point to get the saddle absolutely right, at the right height and with the nose pointing in a straight line along the top tube, before tightening up.

Then I make sure that the handlebars are sitting absolutely right, absolutely aligned between the two pieces of electrical tape and with the gap between the bracket and rest of the clamp absolutely aligned with the markings. Then I tighten everything up.

At this point, it is a good idea to check that the screws holding the gear levers are firmly in place as sometimes they come unscrewed. You do not want them super-tight as otherwise you will not be able to move the levers: just tight enough that the levers do not slip.

Then time to spin both wheels and check that they are moving freely, check that the gears are working and check the brakes. If you are confident that all is OK at this point, squeeze a bit of grease into the various nuts and even better, run your chain loosely through a bit of rag and apply a bit of lubricant.

Remember to keep the bits of padding, tape and cable ties with you for the return journey or in the bike box if you are leaving the box until your return.

If you can, take the bike out for a quick ride round the block, just to check that everything is moving nicely. Happy riding!

Any questions?

September 27, 2020October 15, 2023

CrispLeave a comment

Spring 2019: Crete – Tirana Part Three

This is the third and final part of my account of my trip in April and May 2019 through Greece and Albania on the first leg of my planned multi-year ride from the southernmost town in Europe to the northernmost.

Day 15. Thursday 2 May. Arkoudi – Patras: 81k

I start with a detour past the Kastro Chlemonitsa. This ends up being a good idea as the road worms its way up the hill rather than the full frontal assault that I would have had to face on the main road.

After a nice descent, a mostly flat and boring day, following the main road to Patras through fields and non-descript towns. Hard to focus. Speed mostly constant. Heart rate low. Altitude flat. Road straight. Scenery unchanging apart from the odd ugly town. After all the hills, it is actually quite a relief, though the constant swishing of cars prevents it being relaxing. You have to maintain your concentration. It only takes one lapse or one idiot and the adventure is over.

I am able to build speed all day and after 60km, I get a nice coastal road. Then into Patras. A beautiful setting with mountains behind and mountains across the gulf but what an ugly city, filled with equally ugly people. Hustle and bustle.

Stats: Distance: 81.2kph, Total Distance: 723km, Climb: 418, Total Climb; 8,778m, Average: 19.4kph

Day 16. Friday 3 May. Patras – Agrinio: 96k

On paper, the second longest day of the trip so I set off early. As usual, a long trek out of the city before more and more suburbs. Finally the bridge over the Gulf of Patras that I flew over two weeks ago. I have to haul my bike over a fence to get on the pedestrian walkway, taking my bags off and pushing them over before the bike itself which feels surprisingly light. At the other end, I repeat the experience and try to continue through only to be barked at by the toll booth attendant who directs me to the side of the road where there is a metal staircase to go down. Luckily two Greek cyclists help me lift it down.

Then a long sweat along the side of the cliff. Beautiful but strenuous, before a delightful slide down into a valley away from the sea.

Then back to the sea but a dreary stretch along past Mesolongi. On another day I might have routed into the town with so much history but not today.

Along the salt flats, edging away from the sea, to a lunch stop at Aitoliko. On the map, the town looks beautiful, stuck in the middle of a lake, radiating out in a circle to the north and formalistic in a bloc on the southern side.

But sadly whatever it might have been, and the architecture suggests nothing much, today it is a shell of empty shops, a ruined and dusty old town.

Then off over a slow but gentle hill to the valley in which Agrinio sits, past yet more barking dogs. I follow my GPS and take a detour off the main road, another rickety rackety, bumping my poor bike. To my horror, I see a herd of sheep being directed towards me and fear an encounter with the sheepdog. But it goes past without the faintest interest in me, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

Then Agrinio. A boutique hotel. Supposedly an oasis in the middle of “the ugliest town in Greece.” that the very nice Greek man in Dimitsana mentioned. I go for a walk. It is indeed ugly. Not spectacularly ugly. Just totally lacking in anything of beauty. A mass of high rise buildings stacked along crowded streets with nothing else. As if nobody had bothered to add anything. Ugliness by neglect rather than design unlike other ugly towns that I have visited such as Pazardzhik and Shumen in Bulgaria.

I go out for dinner, following the local Google recommendations. At the first place, which is still absolutely empty, the manager makes a big fuss before pointing me to one specific table. There is no menu in English. I am about to try deciphering the Greek lettering and words when the waiter says “What you want? We have meat. We cook you meat. “ I make my excuses and leave for the next recommendation which turns out to be a chain. Too bad. I end up with a nice starter of fried cheese balls stuffed with green peppers and then a less happy set of three gigantic meat balls in yogurt and on bread. Whether it is these or the two glasses of Fix beer which I have to avoid bad wine, I head to bed feeling bloated.

Bed once I have deciphered the boutique hotel room. It is magnificently badly designed. The windows can’t open because of the curtains. The toilet is set in some weird frosted glass cubicle which is only accessible by obstructing the bathroom. Of course the shower is set to spray all over the bathroom floor. There is the common trick of having to stick your room card into a slot to activate the electricity but with a twist. This one has to be inserted in a particular way with the right way up. And you don’t know you have got it wrong until a few minutes later when the lights abruptly go off.

But the real fun comes in trying to turn off the array of lights. There is no general switch, so it is a question of hunting around the room to find the right switch for the right light. The bathroom light switch is hidden behind a full size heavy mirrored door. It takes me a full fifteen minutes to locate the switch for the light above the desk.

Even with the lights off, I discover more cleverness: a set of blinking power switches in the open wardrobe opposite the bed. Luckily my jacket is able to cover.

What happened? Did the architect and the interior designer have an argument? Did the electrician feel neglected? Honestly, I don’t care as long as I get some sleep.

Stats: Distance: 96.1km, Total Distance: 819km, Climb: 728m, Total Climb: 9,306m, Average Speed: 16.5kph

Day 17. Saturday 4 May. Agrinio – Chanopoulou: 91k

Off as quickly as I can but not before suffering the hotel breakfast. It is not the food though that is not good. It is the soundtrack put on for my benefit: a relentless loop of guitar and piano. Again and again the same chords, every minute. There was more variation in the music to Space Invaders.

A rainy morning but I am soon into misty valleys, silent apart from sheep bells.

As ever, there is the regular reaction of farm dogs to my presence. At one point as one gets too close within the fence, I scream at it to get back, only to get a rather stern look from the shepherd, the Greek equivalent of “What you screamin’ at my Bert for?”.

I descend to Amfilochia. Hard to believe that this is technically on the coast, albeit in a secluded gulf. The town itself seems rather unimpressive so I press on.

Some steep climbs inland and then back along the coast. Bumpy old roads take the shine off it all. I stop at an abandoned WW2 war memorial. Mosaic mostly gone. A roadside shrine and fountain. An abandoned restaurant though with a modern car parked. Another small sign of decay, a recurring theme in my ride through Greece.

Off through Arta, rather quickly because it is a one way system and I have cars behind me. I stop briefly to admire the pretty bridge.

My hotel is 10 km north, set on its own. Simple and rather nice. A simple dinner of trout and marinated pear salad followed by chicken schnitzel. Perfect but the weather threatens.

Stats: Distance: 91.3km, Total Distance: 910km, Climb: 506m, Total Climb: 10,013m, Average Speed: 19.0kph

Day 18. Sunday 5 May. Chanopoulou – Ioannina: 68k

I wake up to the threat of a storm: air close, trees rustling. But it just hovers. My two weather apps offer different diagnoses. I wait a bit and then decide to press on. The hotel manager reassures me and suggests a better route than the one I had planned, along the old road.

I head off. It doesn’t take long for the rain to start, so I am slugging uphill, hoping that that is as bad as it gets. After a while the rain eases and I descend into a sunlit valley. With ominous grey clouds at the end. Going along, I see a moving shape in the road. As I pass it, I swear it is a brown crab, claws up.

I come to a tunnel, put my rear light on and dash. At the other end, there is a restaurant with a bus stop and it starts to rain more heavily so I take shelter, trying to wait it out. This works. For a while. I see successive waves of torrential rain pass over. And it does not pass. I am getting cold and the rain starts coming in. Decision time. I decide that things are looking better so I press on. For about ten minutes, this works. Then it doesn’t. I shelter in an old petrol station where an old man is sitting outside, smoking and not paying a blind bit of notice. But the roof is dripping and I am already cold and wet.

The next 20 km are a nightmare, slowly and then at a consistent 5% uphill in worse and worse rain. Getting colder and wetter. No place to even rest, let alone shelter. At points, I am cycling upstream not uphill. Grim determination. And it does not stop, the climbing or the rain. My feet are buckets. My gloves have dissolved. My crappy rain jacket is actually collecting water and then funnelling it down my back.

Stay in bed. Get a taxi. The gods are not pleased with last night’s offerings. I resolve to eat more bad food and drink more liquor.

Finally it ends. First the rain and then the climbing. After a brief descent, I am in the long drawn out industrial ribbon of Ioannina, slowly working my way in. Destroyed. Within minutes of arriving at my hotel, the bathroom of my immaculate and stylish hotel room is covered with wet clothes and shoes.

I open my Ortlieb pannier bags to see how much water they have let in. Not. A. Drop.

A long walk around Ioannina in the setting sun before an early supper.

Stats: Distance: 67.7km, Total Distance: 978km, Climb: 780m, Total Climb: 10,783m, Average Speed: 15.5kph

Day 19. Monday 6 May. Ioannina

My hotel room is perfect. Boutique in the right sense. Design that works.

Good because I need to spend most of the day there, recovering from the ride and keeping out of the rain showers that go through all day.

I find a bike shop and walk out with not one but two bike jackets, one fully waterproof and winter weight and the other summer weight.

Other than that, a gentle lunch of souvlaki followed by a glass of warm rakomelo and then a snooze.

I find time in the evening for another wander. I like Ioannina. You feel the Ottoman history and it has a beautiful setting.

Day 20. Tuesday 7 May. Ioannina – Gjirokaster: 88k

Another mixed day of weather. As I come down to check out, the sun comes out. It continues for the first hour along the road. But it is pretty cold. I regret not bringing full length gloves.

The usual long drawn out departure from Ioannina, made even longer by a face-off with an angry dog, defending… a petrol station. The usual warnings do not work. GET AWAY! I swear I will kill you. I will rip your doggie balls off and fry them in oil. I will turn you into dog burger with special relish. For you, Captain Dog, I fear zat ze var is ofer. Begone dog! I am going to rip your skin off and use it for my next dog leather sofa. I will turn you into dog pate and digest you with fava beans and some Chianti. This is the end. The end of the end, my friend. I am the Terminator of Dogs, the Alpha and the Omega of your dogness. And the Ypsilon as well. EX-TER-MIN-ATE!

You know, the usual threats.

He keeps some kind of distance but not enough and is harassing me even as I get off the bike and walk along. This goes on for a good fifty to a hundred yards. Mmmmm… dog pate.

Then up into the hills, I hear some more telltale barking. A group of cyclists cruise past going downhill. As I reach the ridge, I see them: about 5 or 6 along the side of the road, hanging out by a parked lorry. I stop for some stones and steel myself for the worst, slowing down, taking as wide a berth as possible and looking at them fiercely. Luckily no problems but they do eyeball me intensely. All it needs is a bit of Ennio Morricone and you have The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Or rather just the Bad and the Ugly.

Up the road, a further commotion of dogs but on the opposite side of the road. Again I prepare for the worst. An oncoming driver sees this and slows down in case I need help. Another car comes along and is barked at and chased. A few of the dogs start to come across the road to me but another car gets in the way and in the confusion I see my chance and gun it. Good lord, that could have been nasty: thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.

Then some rain. Brutal for a while but the sun comes back out and I dry off as I climb the long ridge towards Albania.

As I am having a drink of water at the top, a large bee lands on my left leg. Luckily I have running bottoms on. It sits there. And sits there. It starts cleaning itself. I gently move my leg to encourage it to leave but not annoy it. It takes no notice. Cars go past, creating a bit of wind that ruffles its wings. It settles down again. This goes on for five minutes. I gently move my sunglasses to it to give it somewhere else to explore. No notice. I then quickly lever it off with the arm of the sunglasses. It falls to the ground, either stunned or dead. I am afraid to say that I crushed it underfoot before it could decide.

A nice descent and then uphill to the border. Not much wait and then into the Drino valley. Beautiful… but windy. Theoretically this should be the easy bit of the day, a gentle descent over 30km. But it is a headwind and I have done 60k and a lot of climbing. So the victory lap is a struggle in wonderful scenery, glacial hills climbing to each side of the valley

Finally Gjirokaster and a horribly steep climb up to the old town. I feel like cracking but somehow make it.

The old town is touristy but elegant. I rather regret not having more time to spend there. Houses perched at all angles and heights along the hills in grey stone and timber. It reminds me of old town Plovdiv if a little simpler and more uniform. I walk up to and around the castle, windswept and cloudy but all the more impressive.

Stats: Distance: 88.5km, Total Distance: 1066km, Climb: 699m, Total Climb: 11,481m, Average Speed: 15.9kph

Day 21. Wednesday 8 May. Gjirokaster – Fier: 112 k

I set off early, sad to leave Gjirokaster but knowing that I have a long day ahead of me. The wind has dropped – mostly – and the clouds are scattered. It warms up very quickly.

On days like this, the early kilometres are difficult because you are daunted by the sheer length of the ride ahead. Best simply to press on.

Initially I am wary of the many goat and sheep herds close to the road or crossing it, but the dogs do not even notice me and I give the shepherds a friendly wave.

The landscape changes all day in 10-20 km stretches. First glacial valley, then twisting rivers through tight cliffs, then opening out again. And then after a steep ridge, snow capped mountains over to my left and a silted river basin with a thin streak of turquoise idling through it. It reminds me of Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

I have been warned about the drivers and in the towns, it is indeed chaotic. In the country, though for the most part, I have a decent hard shoulder to play in. The odd angry toot, mostly from bus drivers or white van drivers. More Rarely a double toot of encouragement.

A few towns along the way, mostly pleasantly ramshackle. In one, I saw a dedication to and quote from Lord Byron. He is everywhere in these parts.

After 60km, a bruising 300m ride uphill, feeling tougher than hills that were longer and steeper. At the top, a boy reaches out with a bunch of cherries. When I decline, he persists and steps out further into the road, getting in my way. I nearly go full Bernard Hinault on him and get off and punch him, but instead swerve around him. A good thing because his family are pestering cars on the other side of the hill.

Usually the descent is sufficiently memorable to reward you for the climbing but this one is steep and distinctly boring. I try out the summer weight jacket that I bought in Ioannina, which the assistant had assured me would be great to unfurl for fast descents. The thing quickly balloons out so much, flapping furiously that it is like riding with a galleon attached. I quickly exchange it for the other jacket.

Finally a more interesting section, cutting down through sandstone quarried cliffs to the turquoise river. I stop at a spot empty apart from a shop with the word Muzika on it. I cannot see much apart from old furniture stacked to one side. The owner is sitting round the back and slightly down the hill, enjoying the fine sunlit afternoon and not remotely bothered by me.

On, on, still too much to go. At around the 70km mark, I hit a long and mostly flat stretch, farms and farmland on both sides, people out sowing, more shepherds and flocks and at a certain point, fruit stalls every 100m. No towns. Just fruit stall upon fruit stall. And a wind that is not fierce but is draining. Especially after 70, 80km.

Onwards, onwards. The 80s take an eternity to pass. The landscape is boring and unchanging. At 90km, I feel that this might come to an end. I start counting every small milestone. 20k to go. 19.9, 18.9, 17.9, 95k… The energy returns especially once I clock 100, always a big moment.

Finally I turn off the main road. 10k to go. A horrible narrow stretch, cars impatiently passing. A lot of hooting. A final slow hill and then into the multicoloured monstrosity of Fier. Mercifully it is a small town so I survive the “anything goes “ approach to driving and find my hotel, a new place located on the first floor of a block of flats, right next to a dental surgery. The next morning as I prepare to leave, I hear a young boy screaming in terror. It reminds me of my childhood.

Google helps me find an empty restaurant located underground, where the owner and waiter are charming. I discover why it is empty at the end of my meal as they all sit down in front of the television to watch Spurs play Ajax in the Champions League. As I walk back to my hotel, every house and cafe is full of people watching.

I review my video for the day, only to find that I had knocked the camera, so lots and lots of sky.

Stats: Distance: 112.5km, Total Distance: 1199km, Climb: 928m, Total Climb: 12,409km, Average Speed: 16.5kph

Day 22. Thursday 9 May. Fier – Berat: 46k

A much shorter day. I walk around Fier a bit before leaving. Very Balkan. Loads of people sitting and milling around. Two modern and very ugly brick and concrete minarets. Small alleyways with cafes. A big reconstruction of the river canal.

Off out of Fier on another narrow and busy road, this time with plenty of potholes. Gradually after the town of Roskovec, the traffic thins out, but the road gets worse and worse, especially in the town of Strum, where I have to get off and walk for parts. To complicate matters, as I enter the town, a sleeping dog wakes up as I go past and starts to come after me. I give him the usual “Back off!” which scares him appropriately but annoys his owner.

Otherwise passing the towns is rather pleasant. The French cyclist had said that Albanian kids were really friendly and indeed they have been. They regularly call out “Hell Low”, occasionally following up with “Ciao bene” and are clearly delighted when I wave and say “Hello” back.

Then a tough hill peaking at an old war memorial, seemingly abandoned and a shrine to a young man, marked 1973-1997. Poor sod.

After a 10% descent, being rightly careful because at one point, the road is strewn with potholes, along the main road to Berat. A late lunch, a quick walk and then a snooze.

Stats: Distance: 45.8km, Total Distance: 1245km, Climb: 325m, Total Climb: 12,734m, Average Speed: 16.5kph

Day 23. Friday 10 May. Berat

A day off, waiting for my friend and seeing Berat. It starts with a power cut across the town that lasts until lunchtime. No coffee, which rather disrupts an otherwise good breakfast.

Up to the castle. A 10% hill, all the steeper because of uneven cobbles.

It is full of school children, possibly because of the power cut. Impressive in size but lacking the atmosphere of Gjirokaster. These walled towns never do it for me. They get taken over by tourist shops and bad restaurants. This one has a few desperate sellers of woodcuts, lace, rugs and rather oddly small cups of fruit but is otherwise rather empty.

I mostly manage to avoid the school children, who are more interested in kicking footballs against the walls than exploring. One bunch do take an interest. “Hell Low”. “Hell Low” “What do you think of Edi Rama?” (the Albanian Prime Minister)… I reply that I have never met him.

After a late lunch and a bit of meandering about the town, which is beautiful but the old part is rather small and monotonous compared to Gjirokaster.

My friend comes and picks me up. Or rather picks up my stuff, leaving me to walk/cycle the bike up the 10% hill. And at the top, he waits for me and unlatches a gate with a gravel track leading uphill, with the scenery and views getting increasingly stunning: wide vistas down to the Osumi valley below. It is a converted army base and I see an old bunker with “Parti Enver” written across the top.

There are animals everywhere: sheep, hens, horses, a solitary turkey, cows, a cat, two angry dogs. Happily on the other side of the fence.

We have a good evening, drinking wine, catching up, though his son is clearly frustrated to be there. A few times during the night, I wake up, a glorious starry sky. I wish I could stay for longer but I sense that he has to get back to his wife and daughter in Tirana.

Day 24. Saturday 11 May. Berat – Elbasan: 64k

After a leisurely start and a talk to the shepherd, a sunburnt and wrinkled figure who turns out to be only four years older than me, I set off, with my friend following me down the hill. Back along the main road and then, following his instructions onto a perfectly paved road that does not appear on the map. It rises and falls but the scenery is splendid: blue mountains on both sides, turquoise lakes, small towns.

And the weather is magnificent if a little hot: azure blue skies with a few wisping clouds.

Finally it descends to the valley and a gentle but mostly well paved back route into Elbasan, meandering above the river and accompanied of course by the odd bit of annoyed tooting from buses and white van drivers. Then a short bridge, ignoring the river and then the usual bit of urban craziness before arriving at my hotel.

My friend had warned me that Elbasan was ugly and he is quite right. Potentially endearing features like castle walls and palm trees jarring with tower blocks and ugly urban sculptures or metal arches and globes.

My hotel room is perfectly nice but a bit dirty, scuffed and dated. Trying to work out how to use the over-elaborate shower, I see a control panel and innocently press the ‘on’ button. Not much happens. I see a light symbol and press that. A set of blue, green and turquoise lights above me come on. And immediately start blinking. I press the light button again. Nothing happens. So I press the ‘on/off’ button. Nothing happens. I jab it with more force. Nothing. I get on with the shower and try again when the water is off. Nothing. I try an hour later. Nothing. The turquoise lights keep on blinking. They are on when I go to bed. They are on when I take a comfort stop in the middle of the night.. I could have called the staff but they have already given a distinct impression of uselessness. And it is 5.30 on a Saturday.

Stats: Distance: 64.2km, Total Distance: 1309km, Climb: 547m, Total Climb: 13,281m, Average Speed: 17.5kph

If this video starts a bit abruptly, it is because I edited it for data protection reasons

Day 25. Sunday 12 May. Elbasan – Tirana: 54k

My final day on the road.

The forecast is for rain and thunderstorms by late morning. So I am up at 7. I go to get some breakfast. The guy looks at me as though that is not something he wants to do but asks whether I want it on that floor: the veranda, or two floors lower, the bar. It is a little chilly so I opt for the bar and go down there. They tell me that the breakfast is served on the veranda.

When I get back up, the guy asks me what coffee I want: a cappuccino? I ask for an Americano. When it arrives, just a regular cup of coffee, I ask for some milk. “But that is a cappuccino …”

I get going at 8.30, not before trying to pay and being told that the person to pay hasn’t turned up yet. Eventually I am able to pay in Euros, worth it to get out.

I leave the hotel room with the shower lights blinking on into eternity.

After the usual industrial wastes, mercifully mostly free of traffic on a Sunday morning, a turn right and onto the big hill: 750m of climbing.

I pace myself: stopping every 80m or so of climbing to drink water and admire the views. And indeed quickly the views become very good indeed, looking back over Elbasan and the Shkumbin valley and then the mountains beyond. I pass a few dogs lying in the sun near the side of the road but whilst they watch me go past, they do not move or bark. I really notice a clear difference between dogs in Greece and Albania, with the former regularly working themselves into an impotent frenzy and the latter not giving a damn.

I realise that we are only half way up, so after passing the village of Petresh, the road goes behind the initial ridge and starts working its way up a narrow ridge with regular views down on both sides. It is awesome. Range upon range of softly curved green hills as far as the eye can see. The visibility is excellent.

There is almost no traffic: just me quietly and slowly working my way up a massive hill. But I know that I have to press on: the weather can change very quickly in mountains and there are few villages. On the western side of the ridge, I see ominous clouds forming or even raining in the distance.

Then, unbelievably, I have done it and have mounted the hills. As I look for somewhere to stop and refuel, I see an upside down racing bike and bike gear in the middle of the road and a guy 20m further up, stretching his hamstrings. I stop and ask him whether he is OK. He says OK and we have a fractured conversation in the best that the two of us can do in English and Albanian which is not much, given that I have precisely six words of Albanian. He tells me that he is doing Tirana – Elbasan. And back. I salute and bow to him. Shum mir. He smiles and points to my heavy bags and salutes me back.

I cruise along the plateau for a decent 5k of gentle ups and downs. On an ordinary day, I would have hung around admiring it, blue hills dropping down on both sides. It is one of the great moments of my trip: the perfect example of how something that seems scary or impossible can turn out to be beautiful. The blue hills are draped with the threat of grey clouds so I press on.

Postscript: a few months after writing this initial account and getting back, I read “Thunder and Sunshine”, the second volume of Alastair Humphreys’ account of riding around the world, and on his return to the UK through Europe, come across the following passage:

“In the morning the rain had stopped, the sun was shining and I rode enthusiastically on towards Tirana. Occasionally there is a glory that lights up a man. It is a welling deep in this body that flames all his senses, bubbling through his heart with an almost painful energy. At those moments he does not wish to live forever, he knows only complete satisfaction with that moment. I felt it that day on the high mountain road from Elbasan to Tirana. I climbed up and up from a valley dominated by an enormous and ugly factory, up the craggy limestone switchbacks, up and up until the air was cool and sweet and smelling of pine. A man standing by his moped and admiring the view kissed his fingers and gestured out at the world as I passed. Below me the hills rippled to the horizon in every direction, dark green with trees and interrupted only by rocky outcrops, pale squares of corn fields and very occasional red-roof hamlets. I was very aware of my good fortune.”

And I sit there with a mixture of massive envy at his writing ability and the thought: “Gender-specific nouns and pronouns? Thank god, I didn’t make that mistake… Al, what were you and your editor thinking?”

Then the descent starts. I pass a potential bunch of bike tourists: bulging saddle bags. Ordinarily I would have stopped and chatted but not today. The descent is twisting and turning but extraordinary: beautiful sights of the hills on both sides.

Then I am down in the valley, 20k out from Tirana. For a short while I am joined by a guy on a racing bike. We chat for a bit before he turns off for home.

Then the rain starts, gentle at first, but by the time I thread through the out of town shopping centres and commuter suburbs of Tirana, it is thick rain. Abruptly I turn a corner and my hotel is on the first corner and I am there.

All over and the usual sense of deflation. No welcoming party with champagne. No one there at all.

After showering and drying, I head out to a place that does meatballs and nothing else and quite terrific it is. The rain lessens and I find myself on Skanderbeg Square for the first time in 25 years since a visit as a postgraduate student in 1994, trying to find my bearings, the place unimaginably different apart from that titanic mural of workers, peasants and soldiers. I am lost. I try in vain to work out where our hotel was or the football stadium that I stumbled into but all has changed. I remember it being dusty and small. Now it is verdant and huge and filled with cars and people and shops. And the double headed eagle everywhere.

I pick up a cardboard bike box from a small bike shop that my friend had telephoned on my behalf. Lovely old guy waiting for me. I mention my ride from Elbasan and the cyclist going there and back. “Oh” he says, “I have a friend who does that twice a week…”

Stats: Distance: 54.1km, Total Distance: 1363km, Climb: 860m, Total Climb: 14,142m, Average Speed: 15.3kph

Day 26. Monday 13 May. Tirana – Brussels

And so it ends. I leave for the airport at 7am, pouring rain and driven by a guy from the hotel – the Stela Center – who insists on carrying my bike through the airport and waiting until I am in the right queue and then refuses a tip.

The flight is on time. As we fly back, I watch the screen showing where we are and how far we have travelled. It isn’t until past Frankfurt an hour and a half in that we match my distance of 1363 km.

The flight arrives early. A brief wait for my bike, which arrives, turned on its end with the top half of the box nearly destroyed. A fight to get a taxi, then home in glorious sun. And a quick change into my suit and back to the office.

Bad things that I feared happening

Missing the flight by oversleeping
The airline refusing to load the bike
The bike getting left in Brussels
The bike getting left in Athens
The bike getting lost
The bike box being destroyed
The bike box falling apart in the rain
The bike seat getting lost
The derailleur getting crushed
The bike not fitting in the rental car
The bike getting stolen
Hotels refusing to store the bike safely
My credit cards not working
My wallet getting stolen
Getting zapped by a thunderstorm
Getting drenched by rain. Every day
Cycling into fierce headwinds. Every day
My hips becoming too painful to ride
My feet becoming too painful to ride
Not being able to cycle up all the hills
Food poisoning
Getting a cold or the flu
Getting dehydration
Having an accident
My bike puncturing
My brakes not working
Getting chased by dogs
Getting bitten by dogs
Getting bitten by snakes
Getting run over or knocked over by cars
Impassable roads
Missing the ferry to mainland Greece
Not being allowed into Greece because of a sudden no deal Brexit
Not being allowed into Albania
Missing my flight back to Brussels
My bike box being destroyed
The bike box falling apart in the rain
The bike seat getting lost
The derailleur getting crushed

Bad things that actually happened

I got drenched by rain. Once
I cycled into fierce headwinds. A few times.
A few dogs started to chase me. But retreated quickly.

Things that other people told me I should be afraid of

Cretan drivers
Cretan bandits
Greek drivers
Albanian drivers
The entire country of Albania

Other things that actually happened

I met lovely people
I had amazing landscapes to myself and was able to linger in them
I slept beautifully
I ate as much as I liked and still hardly put on any weight
I had wonderful experiences that make me smile every time I think about them
On the road to Dimitsana, I met a beautiful woman who inspired me to start this blog…

A week later…

Reality starts to dawn.

I get out on the racing bike with a friend. For most of it, I control it, setting a steady heart rate of 126 bpm. He races ahead where he can, pushing himself to the limit.

But at certain moments, I feel the pleasure of being able to accelerate and close the gap on him and match him. At others, I just cruise along, holding it back as we ride through a cathedral of green.

And on the final climb, he bonks spectacularly. And I do what any friend or fellow cyclist would do. I put my foot down and crush it, putting as much distance as I can on him and letting him feel it as I disappear into the distance.

But I realise that my soul is still on that plateau above Tirana, cresting along with those dark blue hills dropping alternately on either side.

I keep having moments when I sense the great moments of that ride. It is not just the spectacular scenery but the quiet moments riding through an empty valley to the smell of flowers, bonfires of olive wood and the sound of goat bells tinkling.

And somewhere in the distance, a chained dog picking up the smell of a sweaty cyclist and barking its frustrated heart out.

Stay in bed. Get a taxi.

Not a chance of that happening.

To be continued….

February 5, 2020February 9, 2020

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Spring 2019: Crete – Tirana Part Two

This is the second part of my account of my trip in April and May 2019 through Greece and Albania on the first leg of my planned multi-year ride from the southernmost town in Europe to the northernmost.

Day 7. Wednesday 24 April 2019. Kissamos – Mavrovouni Beach 8k

Up at the crack of dawn to catch the ferry after a typically tortured nights sleep. The poor old hotel manager at the Galini Beach Hotel up at 6.15 to make me breakfast and check me out – what a star. And then over to the ferry by around 7, only to be told that I could not board for another hour. And indeed could have easily turned up an hour later. The kindly manager would have known this but still humored me, which makes me even more grateful.

The ferry itself is smallish but solid. Inside most of the rooms have the windows blacked out and TVs blaring. The choice is that or going on deck with the chain smokers and wind. I alternate, watching Crete sadly and slowly retreat into the mist.

I meet my first bike tourist, an Oregonian called Bill, cycling from Crete to Barcelona by mid-June, doing a mixture of camping and hotels with a trailer dragging behind. A bit stand-offish though we had plenty of chats during the trip. He reminded me of the way that Brits abroad used to be before June 2016 and The Thing: aloof and vaguely threatened by the sight of another Brit as if that threatened their unique selling point as “the British person”. (These days meeting another Brit abroad is like a funeral wake: “Were you close to the deceased?”, “Yes, very, though you know he was a total shit”.)

Despite Bill’s disdain for wild camping “What’s the point if you don’t get to meet people?” I wondered whether he was really touring to get away from other people and to resolve some demons. As the ferry docked in Gythio and we spotted a pair of cyclists about to board for the next sailing, we reflected on the slightly odd mindset it took to be a bike tourist especially in the less bike-friendly countries.

Into Gythio and our paths part. I head over the headland for the delightful Mavrovouni Beach, pretty with the spring flowers and the smell of burning olive wood which infuses much of this trip.

Dinner of Greek salad and the best grilled chicken livers I can remember. No complimentary raki. Things are different on the mainland.

Stats: Distance: 8.2km, Total Distance: 297km, Climb: 76m, Total Climb: 3311m

Day 8. Thursday 25 April. Mavrovouni Beach – Agios Nikolaos – 53k

Back in the saddle. A tougher ride than expected across the Mani. A very steep ride out of the valley – gradient reaching 12-14% at parts – with mercifully hardly any traffic. As with the ride up out of Heraklion, a quiet mountainous beauty once you are up, the fierce rocky slopes of the Taygetus on all sides.

Seemingly deserted towns until I reached the coast again, no sign of the two castles of Passava and Kelefa. I hit the main road again and meet an elderly French couple going south, complaining about the rain and the head wind, envying me having it on my back but warning me of the climb ahead.

And the warning was worth it. I feel out of puff, despite the gentle wind in my back. Mile upon mile of olive trees and the mountains rising away to my right, a steady uphill aggravated by not taking enough water. 870m of climbing in 50k and you fritter it away on the hairpin bends on the way down.

A grey old day, which takes some of the charm out of the otherwise lovely spot of Agios Nikolaos. I have dinner of marinated anchovies and grilled octopus overlooking the water. It almost immediately starts to rain. The awning is pulled out further and further. I persist, as do a family, and the local squad of cats. It is quite delightful though cold enough for me to ask for a glass of tsipouro to end the meal.

Stats: Distance: 52.8 km, Total Distance: 352km, Climb: 862m, Total Climb: 4173m, Average Speed: 15.0 kph

Day 9. Friday 26 April. Agios Nikolaos – Kalamata: 47k

A supposedly easier day but having picked up speed every day in Crete, I am slowing down. Possibly because the climbs get stiffer and stiffer.

After a beautiful ride along the coast to Kardamyli, I turn off down a steep hill and find the house that the great writer Patrick Leigh Fermor built and wrote his books “A Time of Gifts” and “In Between the Woods and the Water” in (and struggled with what became “The Broken Road“). Before his death in 2011, he had bequeathed it to the Benaki Foundation, who set about restoring it. It was initially due to reopen in March 2019 but then got delayed to the summer. I had written to the Foundation, asking if I could stop in on my way. After an initial reply indicating that this might work, I had no reply to my suggestion of a specific time.

So I went there anyway, peered through the door, saw someone inside it and hailed him. He was initially suspicious and said that it was closed, but did not object too strongly when I asked if I could have a look outside for two minutes. “Ok but no photos”.

Two minutes was all it was, but enough to see inside the dining room – completely empty with windows open – and see the two outdoor areas where the Leigh Fermors would sit: both sunken gardens. One looking out to sea. The other abutting the house. It was something magical. I could feel him there. I could also feel him on the beach below, where he would go to swim.

The view to the Leigh Fermor house from the beach

Then off past Kardamyli and up a very long, steep and snaky hill. 500m of climbing. The reward was a stunning view back along the coast. But also another tricky descent, screeching my brakes down a severe farm road to the coast.

On the coast, I hear my phone ringing. While I take the call from the guest rooms that I am heading towards, a small dog behind a fenced garden starts to yap and bark furiously. This goes on throughout the call and while I prepare to get back on the bike. I lose my patience and start to shout back at the dog and aggressively move close to the fence. The dog cowers and starts barking pathetically.

And then the owner comes out.

So I head off quickly… It was heating up. When I reached Kalamata, it was 28C. I grab some meze nearby. A delicious crab salad and an equally delicious aubergine salad.

I walk around the old town. Perfectly nice but nothing extraordinary.

Stats: Distance: 47.4km, Total Distance: 397km, Climb: 775.3m, Total Climb: 4949m, Average Speed: 14.3kph

Day 10. Saturday 27 April. Kalamata – Dimitsana: 93k

The day I had been alternately looking forward to and dreading: 93k to Dimitsana: 1650m in climbing, largely composed of a 600m climb and an 800m climb.

I get going as soon as I can, which thanks to a lazy and inept waitress at the cafe across the road, is 10. It is already hot. A long and flat ride out through the suburbs of Kalamata before the climbing begins 25k in. Again, little traffic but this time the scenery hardly varies as I climb so I am just monitoring the altimeter, stopping every 80-100m of climbing, only enlivened by nearly crushing a tortoise, seeing a large green snake slither across the road ahead of me, and near the top, three boar. But it is beautiful.

While I stop for lunch over the summit at the beautifully named Paradiseia, two elderly Dutch cyclists come over, Garmin, fresh Ortliebs both front and back. Despite the friendly talk of all cyclists about how wonderful it is to be out there, they soon start emphasising their superiority. “Oh yes, we cycled 80km this morning from Dimitsana. Better to go downhill.” I tell them that I take it easy on hills, stopping every 80-100m of climbing. “Oh we don’t need to stop. We just find a steady pace and keep on going.”

Twats.

And off they go, clearly annoyed to have had to stop their relentless progress for a few minutes.

After a leisurely ride downhill and a gentle meander through meadows dominated by two cooling towers, I am about to hit the great hill when I come across another cyclist: a French woman mid thirties going in the opposite direction. Much more friendly. “You have the same colour bags as me!” She exclaims though she has a lot more. We get talking with the annoyed dog in the yard next door barking at us solidly for 15 minutes. She sees the doggy-whacking stick that I carry on the back of my bike in case of problems. I tell her that I have never used it but carry it after some experiences in Serbia. She points to a scar on her left leg. “Tell me about it. I got that last year in Peru. The dogs there are really crazy …”

She has taken a month off, doing a loop from Igoumenitsa round the Mani. She consoles me about the hill to come. “Vous allez vraiment chauffer…”. We linger but I know that I have to get on. So we split and afterwards I wish I could have exchanged contact details. A pretty girl underneath the sweat.

Off up the hill, stopping every 100m. I’d love to say that I enjoyed it but 800m is a lot especially after 65k and an already hard hill. It was one slow grind with very little to show in terms of changing scenery until the end when I am too tired and desperate to care.

On the way up, with the cooling towers in the background.

A glorious descent through Stemnitsa to Dimitsana in setting sun.

But I am wiped. I nearly fall asleep over dinner. When I arrive at the guest house, the owner shows me to my suite of rooms and spotting the flask of tsipouro, says “but of course you won’t be wanting that”. “Leave that right there” I snap.

I have been told by my colleague Argyro to be up for 11pm for church but I am well in bed. I am woken up around midnight by half an hour of fireworks and explosions. It turns out that a local habit is dynamiting rocks. Actually very few fireworks in the air. Mostly people lighting a cracker and dropping it into the valley below us.

Stats: Distance: 93.3km, Total Distance: 490km, Climb: 1695.4m, Total Climb: 6644m, Average Speed: 13.6kph

Day 11. Sunday 28 April. Dimitsana

Orthodox Easter Sunday. A much needed proper rest day, enjoying the luxury of the Xenios Tower, where I am staying. It might be a bit expensive but it follows the philosophy of BB&W: enjoying a bit of well-earned comfort after a hard trek and is really terrific, helped by the great hospitality of George.

But I am tired. I feel out of puff the whole day.

Delicious breakfast at the bottom of the tower. Pastries, bread, fried pies. A nice Greek-Swedish couple living in London. both economists working for the EBRD. Again The Thing goes unsaid. Again I think “what a waste”.

I tell the Greek husband the rest of my route. “Agrinion? That’s the ugliest town in Greece…”

I have a few brief walks around the town. Lamb being roasted on spits everywhere, everything on show.

Dimitsana. The Xenios Tower where I stayed is the three-storey tower in the centre of the picture.

I spend a large part of the afternoon in bed and happier for it. A lovely room.

Day 12. Monday 29 April. Dimitsana – Ancient Olympia: 69k

Back on the road delayed but fuelled by another delicious power breakfast from George. A steep climb for 4km to wake me up before the most glorious downhill imaginable, floating along the side of the mountain, with the blue mountains stretched away from me in the distance. Sunny but a bit chilly on the descent.

Gradually down into the valley albeit with the usual collection of hairpin bends. And some truly awful potholed roads.

A long ride through the valley before I stop for a brief lunch over the river. A mistake because the ride up from the valley floor involves an average 14% grade. And then more. It is always a bad sign when you sweat your way up a horrible slope only to find that it is not the horrible slope, it is the foothill before the horrible slope.

I finally hit beautiful road and know that I am on the tourist road to Olympia. Freshly tarmaced and painted, a joy to ride on. I sweep along it. All is well until I reach a tunnel and then another and then another. And then a really long one. Luckily they are wide and illuminated. I still put my rear light on and pedal like Mark Cavendish.

The tourist hole of Olympia. The main road is one long tourist drag but by the time I get to the site, the crowds have gone and I have the place almost to myself on a wonderful sunny evening. Magical.

A nice dinner disrupted by the woman at the neighbouring table who talks loudly throughout, dominating the conversation. I hope that the food will shut her up but she is master of that, taking small mouthfuls and talking through them.

Stats: Distance: 69.3km, Total Distance: 561km, Climb: 872m, Total Climb: 7,516m, Average Speed: 16.6m

Day 13. Tuesday 30 APril. Ancient Olympia – Arkoudi: 81k

A quick visit to the archaeological museum. Magnificent stuff. A sense of how amazing it must have been.

Then back on the road. Supposedly an easier day. Along the main road for an hour and then another 14% climb into the hills, snaking up to the village of Chimadiou, or Chlamydia as I thought of it. All good. Beautiful hills and vineyards.

Then I reached a moment that I had known would be tricky. A decision between whether to turn left off the main road and off Google Street View territory, cutting off a large chunk of riding but possibly along rutted farm roads for 3km and with another 50m of climbing and a possibly crazy descent, or to take the long route along the main road, adding possibly another 10km.

I get off the bike to take a look. It is indeed rutted farm track. There is a sign to it calling it “The route of truth”. While I am mulling, an older man on a racing bike comes along and stops to help. I try to explain my decision. He looks at the farm track and says “That road not good “

So I take the longer route and for a while, it works spectacularly. I sweep along a well made up road with fantastic views to my right. I congratulate myself for adjusting plans in the light of new information. Until I get to the point where I have to turn off onto another main road to reconnect with the short cut. I remember checking on Google Street View and it does indeed rejoin at a main road.

The problem is that the turning is onto a farm track no better than the one I had scorned. I mull it and decide that it is better than turning back and must clean out.

It does. After about 4km of rutted track and a ruthless descent and then ascent up a track that alternates between vaguely rideable and totally suicidal. Most of which I walk. Cursing myself. These are the moments when you realise that you really should have done further work researching the route and seeing what other riders do.

Finally I hit tarmac. 20% vertical tarmac, which shortly returns to being rutted track and then after a lengthy humming and hahing becomes tarmac again. By the time I pass the point at which the track I would have been on rejoins the road.

It looks beautiful, but it was hell to go through

And then it is a lengthy descent. With the wind in my face. Conifers followed by ugly towns, followed by farmland.

And just as I am closing in on my destination, the road becomes rutted again. So I turn off and head for the main road, adding more distance.

And then the road gets worse again and I am passing through a camp of travellers. Or whatever one calls them these days. And there is first one unchained dog coming at me and so I am warning him to back off. And then this attracts the attention of children so I am alternating between waving at them in as friendly a way as possible and telling the dog to back off in a very unfriendly way. And then they are coming round the bike and waving beads at me and I see that there are more dogs and more people. And suddenly my synapses are firing and I am fearing trouble.

So I get off the bike and walk it through the encampment, making smiles at the children and adults in a trusting way but desperate to get out of a situation which is almost certainly not dangerous but where I do not feel fully in control. To my relief, nothing goes wrong and I am on the bike and struggling uphill against the wind again. On days like this, there should be a Lowlights reel.

Finally the descent to Arkoudi. And I go out and get a beer and crisps and sit on my balcony. And then a short walk on the beach with a lovely sunset.

And it all ends well in a restaurant where I am the only client, sitting outside under the awnings as a gale goes through and eating anchovies and grilled squid and vinegary wine , but I don’t mind as I feel at home in the sea wind. Such nights have a majesty to them.

Stats: Distance: 80.7km, Total Distance: 642km, Climb: 844m, Total Climb: 8,360m, Average Speed: 16.3kph

Day 14. Wednesday 1 May. Arkoudi

Another day off. Good because I am tired again and the weather is grey and rainy.

Arkoudi is nothing special but the coast around is beautiful.

I cycle over to Glyfa Beach. A pleasant enough spot.

Then back to Arkoudi for a simple but indulgent – and totally deserved – lunch of gyros, chips and beer, followed by a nap. My body is a temple. The gods will be well satisfied at my sacrificial offerings.

Then, having seen others laboriously try to swim in the sea, only to give up quickly, I walk over to Loutro Kyllini and take a swim on a beach full of sun loungers but not a soul around.

Initially it is freezing and reminds me of a Labor Day weekend on the coast of Maine when I foolishly attempted to swim in the entrancing – but bizarrely empty – turquoise waters, ignored the freezing current as just being a sign that I needed to immerse my body fully and start swimming – and lasted less than 60 seconds before fleeing at great speed before I had a heart attack.

But this time the gambit pays off handsomely and it becomes glorious, with the sun glinting off the sea and the island of Zakinthos in the distance. Admittedly afterwards I still feel like I need to stick my knackers in a microwave to defrost them, but that is all part of coastal swimming.

And with the thought of me defrosting my knackers in your mind, I think that this is as good a moment as any to end my account of this part of the trip. Sweet dreams.

January 28, 2020January 29, 2020

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Sunday 1st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km (continued)

Monday 2nd May: Gradac – Omiš: 79 km

Tuesday 3rd May: Omiš – Split: 27km

Wednesday 4th May: Split

Thursday 5th May: Split – Grebaštica: 73 km

Friday 6th May: Grebaštica – Murter: 51 km

Saturday 7th May: Murter – Zadar: 68 km

Sunday 8th May: Zadar – Pag: 68 km

Monday 9th May: Pag Town

Tuesday 10th May: Pag – Sveti Juraj: 70km

Wednesday 11th May: Sveti Juraj – Kraljevica: 62km

Thursday 12th May: Kraljevica – Rijeka – Lovran: 48 km

Friday 13th May: Lovran

Saturday 14th May: Lovran – Postojna: 68 km

Sunday 15th May: Postojna – Ljubljana: 61km

Epilogue: riding among ghosts

Monday 25th April: Pluzine – Foča: 51km (continued)

Tuesday 26th April: Foča – Sarajevo: 81km

Wednesday 27th April: Sarajevo

Thursday 28th April: Sarajevo – Konjic: 63 km

Friday 29th April 2022: Konjic – Mostar: 70km

Saturday 30th April: Mostar

Sunday 1st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km

Prologue

Part One: A bike tour through Syldavia and Borduria

Wednesday 13th April and Thursday 14th April: Tirana

Friday 15th April 2022: Tirana – Lezhë: 71km

Saturday 16th April: Lezhë – Shkoder : 45km

Sunday 17th April: Shkoder – Bar: 48km

Monday 18th April: Bar – Kotor: 63km

Tuesday 19th April: Kotor

Wednesday 20th April: Kotor – Cetinje: 45km

Thursday 21st April: Cetinje – Danilovgrad: 59 km

Friday 22nd April: Danilovgrad – Nikšić

Saturday 23rd April: Nikšić

Sunday 24th April: Nikšić – Plužine: 61km

Monday 25th April: Plužine – Foča: 51km

Wednesday 27th October: Nerja – Malaga: 56km

Thursday 28th October: Malaga – Coín: 47 km

Friday 29th October: Coín – El Burgo: 32 km

Saturday 30th October: El Burgo – Ronda: 28 km

Sunday 31st October and Monday 1st November: Ronda (rest days)

Tuesday 2nd November: Ronda – Montellano: 71 km

Wednesday 3rd November: Montellano – Seville: 75km

A small postscript

Sunday 17 October: Úbeda – Benalúa: 103 km

Monday 18 October: Benalúa – Granada: 56km

Tuesday 19 October: Granada – rest day

Wednesday 20 October: Granada – Órgiva: 58 km

Thursday 21 October: Órgiva – Trevélez: 36 km

Friday 22 October: Trevélez: day off

Saturday 23 October: Trevélez – Salobreña: 79km

Sunday 24 October: Salobreña – Nerja: 36 km

Monday 25 October and Tuesday 26 October: Nerja: rest days

Friday 8 October 2021: Brussels – Seville

Saturday 9 October: Seville – Carmona – 52 km

BANG!

Sunday 10 October: Carmona – Palma del Rio: 54 km

Monday 11 October: Palma del Rio – Cordoba – 60km

Tuesday 12 October: Cordoba – rest day

Wednesday 13 October: Cordoba – Zuheros: 71km

Thursday 14 October: Zuheros – Jaén: 74 km

Friday 15 October: Jaén – Úbeda: 58 km

Saturday 24 July: Le Sentier – Geneva 64k, 662m

Sunday 25 July: Geneva – Seyssel: 64k, 511m

Monday 26 July: Seyssel

Tuesday 27 July: Seyssel – Aix-les-Bains: 34 km, 267m

Wednesday 28 July: Aix-les-Bains – St-Genix: 49k 387m

Thursday 29 July: St-Genix – Pérouges – 71k, 480m

Friday 30 July: Pérouges – Lyon : 45km, 189m

Saturday 30 July: Lyon – Brussels

Before your trip

A month or so before you go

One thing to avoid

A week before you go

Packing the bike

1. Lower your gears to the minimum on both sides

2. If your bike has disc brakes: loosen the skewers

3. Remove the pedals

4. Remove any bells and mounts

Sunday 1^st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km (continued)

Monday 2^nd May: Gradac – Omiš: 79 km

Tuesday 3^rd May: Omiš – Split: 27km

Wednesday 4^th May: Split

Thursday 5^th May: Split – Grebaštica: 73 km

Friday 6^th May: Grebaštica – Murter: 51 km

Saturday 7^th May: Murter – Zadar: 68 km

Sunday 8^th May: Zadar – Pag: 68 km

Monday 9^th May: Pag Town

Tuesday 10^th May: Pag – Sveti Juraj: 70km

Wednesday 11^th May: Sveti Juraj – Kraljevica: 62km

Thursday 12^th May: Kraljevica – Rijeka – Lovran: 48 km

Friday 13^th May: Lovran

Saturday 14^th May: Lovran – Postojna: 68 km

Sunday 15^th May: Postojna – Ljubljana: 61km

Monday 25^th April: Pluzine – Foča: 51km (continued)

Tuesday 26^th April: Foča – Sarajevo: 81km

Wednesday 27^th April: Sarajevo

Thursday 28^th April: Sarajevo – Konjic: 63 km

Friday 29^th April 2022: Konjic – Mostar: 70km

Saturday 30^th April: Mostar

Sunday 1^st May: Mostar – Gradac: 84 km

Wednesday 13^th April and Thursday 14^th April: Tirana

Friday 15^th April 2022: Tirana – Lezhë: 71km

Saturday 16^th April: Lezhë – Shkoder : 45km

Sunday 17^th April: Shkoder – Bar: 48km

Monday 18^th April: Bar – Kotor: 63km

Tuesday 19^th April: Kotor

Wednesday 20^th April: Kotor – Cetinje: 45km

Thursday 21^st April: Cetinje – Danilovgrad: 59 km

Friday 22^nd April: Danilovgrad – Nikšić

Saturday 23^rd April: Nikšić

Sunday 24^th April: Nikšić – Plužine: 61km

Monday 25^th April: Plužine – Foča: 51km

Wednesday 27^th October: Nerja – Malaga: 56km

Thursday 28^th October: Malaga – Coín: 47 km

Friday 29^th October: Coín – El Burgo: 32 km

Saturday 30^th October: El Burgo – Ronda: 28 km

Sunday 31^st October and Monday 1^st November: Ronda (rest days)

Tuesday 2^nd November: Ronda – Montellano: 71 km

Wednesday 3^rd November: Montellano – Seville: 75km