Me and Jack parted ways after Utopia, he was heading up to Porto and, since I was really close, headed to the permaculture farm that I had stayed on months earlier with Felix. I stayed there for a few days before setting off down to Evora for a party organised by Noisy Radicals. A South African dark trance record label. The cycle down there was one of my most beautiful (yet again), the beauty of the cycle was summed up perfectly in one memory; I had been spending all day cycling up a mountain. It had been raining non stop, the mountain was harsh and the road kind of dull. Untill I got to the top of the mountain, suddenly the sun came out, the combination of the hot sun shinning down on the wet eucalyptus trees surrounding me filled the air with a rich eucalyptus oil aroma. Portugal stretched out below me, rolling pine forests embraced the curving hills and sparkling lakes dotted the scene. I was bursting with elation. I spent the next hour crusing all the way down the mountain in now uninterrupted sun shine.
On my arrival at Noisy Radicals I enlisted as a helper of the festival and made my way in for free. It wasn't long before a shinning beacon of light who everyone called Captain, came up to me and started talking. He was from the Shakzuka Project. One of the loveliest bunch of gypsies, light warriors and general saints I've ever met. They had a beautiful red dome that they called "A Home Away From Home", and it was true, you walked in to the dome and instantly felt at home. I spent much time there over the festival and towards the end they asked me if I wanted to travel with them to some more festivals spreading their native shakshukery goodness. So we strapped my bike on to their time altering campervan and I joined the 7 people already on board. There was Captain, Master, Purple-Haze, Machine, Superfly, all fresh out of Israel and Patricia and Ricardo a Portuguese couple. The festival itself was a little bit of a disaster. Only about 500 people turned up out of an expected 4000. So as a result no one got paid. The organizers hadn't got the right license for the festival so the police started making big road blocks which didn't help the people flow. The organizer ended up running away towards the end of the festival and all the festival workers were running about trying to get the money they were owed. But at least the music was good, although the over-load of constant dark trance for 72 hours has made me steer clear of it even to this day.
.We stayed a few days at the festival site after the last dregs of the festival had vanished into disarray, to to try and get a new engine for the van - Yosh -which I had no complaints about because we were just 500 meters away from the biggest man made lake in Europe. We then drove on to a beautiful little melon park close to the site of the next festival. It was right on the side of a river and I started out every day with a swim and a water meditation. We met Kizzy, another of the greatest shakshuka fairies I've ever known. We spent a few more days hanging around the melon park before going on to the promised lands of the festival, Woodstock. A few days before the start of the chaotic beauty of Woodstock, Captain performed a hair cut on me before one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever witnessed. Up until this point I had managed to find a river/lake or a pond to swim in every day since the start of the Boom festival, and so to keep up the tradition I found a beautiful river about 5 kms away from the festival which made a lovely sane sanctuary from the welcome but sometimes overpowering craziness of the festival. Every day amongst the reeds of the river bank, as dragonflies of all colours buzzed calmly about my head and kingfishers and other reed loving birds fluttered by on their daily missions I would rediscover pure and simple life.
We headed up to another festival near Porto, where we had been promised a beach festival and at least 1000 people. We arrived to an club that only about 50 - 100 people would turn up to. We opened shop for one day and after selling a grand total of 1 shakshuka closed and just enjoyed being on a beach around Porto. After the "festival" officially finished we found we were really stuck. Yosh refused to start at all, but then one of the nicest people I've ever met, a Portuguese mechanic, came along and took us to his little piece of paradise he called his home and work shop. It was in the middle of an amazing eucalyptus forest, and he let all 7 of us (Patricia and Ricardo had left us just a few days before) stay there for 8 days while he fixed the van. Valter didn't speak a word of English and us not much Portuguese so there was never much verbal communication going on between us, but we seemed to understand each other perfectly. He didn't charge us anything for staying there, feeding us or for the work on Yosh.
When the van got fixed we took it on a test drive to one of the most glorious beach/forests I have ever laid eyes on. You stepped straight from a forest full of wisdom that looked like it was straight from The House of Flying Daggers, on to a fairly typical perfect beach. I decided to go for a swim in the sea, I dived in and had a decent swim for 15 minutes until I tried to get out. The current was so strong that every time I tried to leave the force of the on coming waves pulled me relentlessly back in to the full strength of the sea, swirled me around a little bit and then threw me up in the air as it crashed to leave me to fall about 2 meters on to the sand which the wave was now receding from. Then another wave would instantly crash on me before I knew what was happening and start the whole thing off again. I didn't know what was happening and I can remember I had to attempt 3 times before I got to the safety of dry beach. When I recovered I realised that the sea had robbed my dreadlock/goat tooth necklace and then a little later it stole my phone after a Frisbee game went wrong.
We then drove down to just outside of Lisbon to stay with some lovely people we had met at Woodstock. Another guy called Freddy, Joana and Suzy. Who we all stayed with for about a month. Around late September I was torn of what next to do. Down to Africa to escape the European winter or up to Northern Europe to see people? In the end I decided I was going to head up to Belgium to see Lieve, the girl I met in Granada.
Sunday 23 December 2012
Monday 19 November 2012
9 days of Booming
The early days of our cycle to Boom, when time felt unblurred, days were long and full of energy of the body and energy of the mind, we were still just cycling, purely and simply, every corner unique as we hurtled meter by meter towards Portugal, it felt like we could cycle forever. Energy bursting out of us, carrying us forward as if pysical capabilities or chemical reactions going on within our bodies didnt matter. The rides were beautiful, constantly passing new scenery that the sprawling urban demi-paridise of Granada just couldnt offer.
We had anticipated finding food would be quite hard, we didnt know where any good recycling spots were and we couldnt afford to put too much time in to looking (we were already a bit late for the festival, we had left on the first day of the Boom and now we only had 7 days before it was over). But we quickly had the idea to ask in restraunts for food they had to throw away. As it turns out most spanish people (or at least restraunt owners) love cyclists and so are happy to give you food, even the stuff they arent going to throw away. We were overjoyed at this discovery and we ate well for the whole of our journey.
We woke on that first morning to a cold mountianious day, we packed quickly - probably aided into action by the sight of a man standing on a slope 50 meters away with a shotgun cocked over his arm - and headed towards Cordoba. We had planned to become nocturnal creatures. Cycling throughout the night when few cars littered the streets and then sleep through the 40 degree heat of the day. However our preprogrammed natural insticts that are passed down to all humans by their survivalist anscestors got the better of us, and as we set out from Granada after siesta we made it about 40 kilometers into the mountians before cooking food and collapsing. That second day was beautiful, we glided as if we were flying through beautiful spanish mountians and reached a little town for siesta, we got alot of free food and found a little chemical-coloured river to wash in and slept in the penetrated shade of the trees on the banks. We were woken at dusk by 100 goats trampling their way over our beds to go for a drink, along with a confused looking sheppard. That night at about 2am we made Cordoba, it was beautiful but a brief visit. We slept on a comfy bed of pine needles next to a little canal just outside of Cordoba.
The Camino de Santiago pleasingly intertwinned our route of the next day, we delved deeper into mountians and by siesta time we found an abandoned hotel/hostel to sleep in. The whole place had a bad energy about it and it reminded me a little of the shinning but we survived siesta and set off to a beautiful sunset, we decided to try and cycle all night and arrived by morning in a little town where everyone was just really weird, always shouting and nothing seemed quite right. Although by that point we were deathly tired so it may of been us who were the weird ones, my merories are hazy. We found a nice lake to sleep by and again woke to a beautiful sunset. That night was to mark our transistion into nocturnal action. We cycled by night, to baronly beautiful landscapes, we were cycling deeper and deper into Extremadura, the desert region of Spain.
Although it was (technically im not sure but definatly in our eyes) a desert we still found an abundance of water and slept by a body of water almost everytime we had to rest. One canal did threatened to prematurely end our trip, on a hot, hot day we were settling down for a siesta by the canal in question, we went for a pre sleep swim, I jumped in first and was almost instantly swept down stream by the waters, the current was so strong. I got to the side and was clinging on, then Jack jumped in and was swept down current as well. Neither of us were in a state to try and fight the currents and we were just left clinging untill Jack managed to pull himself out and then helped me out.
About 3oclock one morning cycling past an animal sanctuary, just as we were nearing the border with Portugal we were heading down one of the many, many hills of Extremadura, I didnt really have much in the way of brakes at this point through neglagence to my bike and as we were riding we heard a scuffle to our left in the bushes, all of a sudden a badger came running towards our bikes, it ran behind jacks bike and me and the badger collide at about 20km/h hitting it with my front wheel, it desaddled me and I exploded in pain as I connected with the cross bar. It then ran off with a squeal onto the other side of the road apparently unharmed.
We eventually, after many hard days of cycling, arrived at a little border town called Alcantara. The town was filled with boomers, we talked to some and they told us the Boom festival was over. Our hearts sank, our mission over. We made our way down to the rio Tajo to sleep, and as I was descending the big hill down to the river banks I realised this was exactly the same way I had entered Portugal 3 months earlier, I was crossing the same bridge I had crossed with Felix. I was happy with the familiarity and it helped to lift my spirits a little for that evening. We decided the next day to still head for the after party, Utopia and still get in a little partying. We set off again our high spirits renewed with the gift of a new mission. The landscape seemingly fresh in my mind as we sweated our way through the same mountains and same old little towns.
Portugal is much more beautiful than Spain, the moment we crossed the border we were surrounded by green trees, mountains and water everywhere. After 3 days of slow cycling, our bodies feeling the wear of the intense cycling of the past 5 or 6 days and similtaniously adjusting to the vicious, unrelenting Portugese mountians, we arrived in the closest town to Utopia, Penamacor and we met some people from Devon camping in the little park. They told us that the music at Utopia was ending that night, they were shutting it off at 1am. It was now 8pm and we still had 25km to do. We started cycling frantically our muscles feeling better than new as we raced for the sound of psy-trance. We made it to Utopia in under an hour, found our way in and went mad on the dance floor. The happiness in our hearts was almost too much to bear at having finally made it to a good party. We condensed 9 days, 700 km of cycling, into 4 hours of partying, it was a chaotic night, it was definatly worth it.
We had anticipated finding food would be quite hard, we didnt know where any good recycling spots were and we couldnt afford to put too much time in to looking (we were already a bit late for the festival, we had left on the first day of the Boom and now we only had 7 days before it was over). But we quickly had the idea to ask in restraunts for food they had to throw away. As it turns out most spanish people (or at least restraunt owners) love cyclists and so are happy to give you food, even the stuff they arent going to throw away. We were overjoyed at this discovery and we ate well for the whole of our journey.
We woke on that first morning to a cold mountianious day, we packed quickly - probably aided into action by the sight of a man standing on a slope 50 meters away with a shotgun cocked over his arm - and headed towards Cordoba. We had planned to become nocturnal creatures. Cycling throughout the night when few cars littered the streets and then sleep through the 40 degree heat of the day. However our preprogrammed natural insticts that are passed down to all humans by their survivalist anscestors got the better of us, and as we set out from Granada after siesta we made it about 40 kilometers into the mountians before cooking food and collapsing. That second day was beautiful, we glided as if we were flying through beautiful spanish mountians and reached a little town for siesta, we got alot of free food and found a little chemical-coloured river to wash in and slept in the penetrated shade of the trees on the banks. We were woken at dusk by 100 goats trampling their way over our beds to go for a drink, along with a confused looking sheppard. That night at about 2am we made Cordoba, it was beautiful but a brief visit. We slept on a comfy bed of pine needles next to a little canal just outside of Cordoba.
The Camino de Santiago pleasingly intertwinned our route of the next day, we delved deeper into mountians and by siesta time we found an abandoned hotel/hostel to sleep in. The whole place had a bad energy about it and it reminded me a little of the shinning but we survived siesta and set off to a beautiful sunset, we decided to try and cycle all night and arrived by morning in a little town where everyone was just really weird, always shouting and nothing seemed quite right. Although by that point we were deathly tired so it may of been us who were the weird ones, my merories are hazy. We found a nice lake to sleep by and again woke to a beautiful sunset. That night was to mark our transistion into nocturnal action. We cycled by night, to baronly beautiful landscapes, we were cycling deeper and deper into Extremadura, the desert region of Spain.
Although it was (technically im not sure but definatly in our eyes) a desert we still found an abundance of water and slept by a body of water almost everytime we had to rest. One canal did threatened to prematurely end our trip, on a hot, hot day we were settling down for a siesta by the canal in question, we went for a pre sleep swim, I jumped in first and was almost instantly swept down stream by the waters, the current was so strong. I got to the side and was clinging on, then Jack jumped in and was swept down current as well. Neither of us were in a state to try and fight the currents and we were just left clinging untill Jack managed to pull himself out and then helped me out.
About 3oclock one morning cycling past an animal sanctuary, just as we were nearing the border with Portugal we were heading down one of the many, many hills of Extremadura, I didnt really have much in the way of brakes at this point through neglagence to my bike and as we were riding we heard a scuffle to our left in the bushes, all of a sudden a badger came running towards our bikes, it ran behind jacks bike and me and the badger collide at about 20km/h hitting it with my front wheel, it desaddled me and I exploded in pain as I connected with the cross bar. It then ran off with a squeal onto the other side of the road apparently unharmed.
We eventually, after many hard days of cycling, arrived at a little border town called Alcantara. The town was filled with boomers, we talked to some and they told us the Boom festival was over. Our hearts sank, our mission over. We made our way down to the rio Tajo to sleep, and as I was descending the big hill down to the river banks I realised this was exactly the same way I had entered Portugal 3 months earlier, I was crossing the same bridge I had crossed with Felix. I was happy with the familiarity and it helped to lift my spirits a little for that evening. We decided the next day to still head for the after party, Utopia and still get in a little partying. We set off again our high spirits renewed with the gift of a new mission. The landscape seemingly fresh in my mind as we sweated our way through the same mountains and same old little towns.
Portugal is much more beautiful than Spain, the moment we crossed the border we were surrounded by green trees, mountains and water everywhere. After 3 days of slow cycling, our bodies feeling the wear of the intense cycling of the past 5 or 6 days and similtaniously adjusting to the vicious, unrelenting Portugese mountians, we arrived in the closest town to Utopia, Penamacor and we met some people from Devon camping in the little park. They told us that the music at Utopia was ending that night, they were shutting it off at 1am. It was now 8pm and we still had 25km to do. We started cycling frantically our muscles feeling better than new as we raced for the sound of psy-trance. We made it to Utopia in under an hour, found our way in and went mad on the dance floor. The happiness in our hearts was almost too much to bear at having finally made it to a good party. We condensed 9 days, 700 km of cycling, into 4 hours of partying, it was a chaotic night, it was definatly worth it.
Sunday 21 October 2012
Granada Baby
After 18 days of blissful peace and happiness on the farm things started to go a bit sour. Carmen fell out with Jorge and we returned from an evening out in Guadalajara to find the door to the room locked with about 5 chairs stacked in front of it to make sure we couldn´t get in. We found an even more romantic spot for the night, on the veranda of a near by house covered in honeysuckle to sleep. We lay under the strong, full moon stroked, once elegant but now dusted with the fragility of time, oak beams of the veranda, dotted with lizards which kept on falling off through out the night on to our little bed to try and join us in the heaven of the night. The next morning we decided to leave the farm and go back to Carmens flat. I had been planning to cycle down to Granada to meet Zack, my friend coming out from England, but in the end I caught a train so me and Carmen could spend more time together. I visited the Cubans in Madrid again quickly before I left and I saw that 4 or 5 had been on hunger strike for the past 15 days. It was a horrible and powerful sight, their faces were shrunken, their skin blotched, rolling about in the unrecoginsable state of egolessness that that kind of punishment for your body brings about.
When I got down to Granada me and Zack inhabited a little field by the side of a river a little outside the city for about 2 weeks. It was a beautiful spot with a little fire place that cooked us many amazing meals. We found a small co-operative a kilometer away from our spot, the people were extremly nice and we often hung out there. The two weeks passed in a haze of relaxation and discovery of the city. The day after Zack left I moved into a cave even closer to the city than the field. The cave was amazing, you had to climb a rope ladder to get up to it, it had a kitchen and 4 caves lined in a row. I was living with 6 other people mainly, but the number changed all the time and everyone was always bringing up their friends. We had a cave kitten called Raton, who someone had found in a bin abandoned, probably the cutest kitten I´ve ever seen. I quickly got taught in the art of recycling, and Granada was one of the best places to start, you could find everything, food, clothes, furniture, cooking equipment, bike equipment, anything you needed. All that people had thrown away, and within roughly the month I spent living in the cave I didn´t spend a cent.
The cave itself was very beautiful, it would never get to more than about 25 degrees while the city of Granada itself usually got to the still slightly too hot temperature for my English blood of about 45 degrees, it was dug in to the side of a mountain that looked out over a beautiful forest with rolling hills, filled with sweet birds and calmness. it had a river nearby with a powerful waterfall to serve as a shower. I explored Granada and discovered a fraction of the amazing places filled with wonderful people. Granada is an amazing place, I never really knew a city like this could exist. Many, many squats about. One night me and some friends went to one of these squats which was more or less a big paving slabbed courtyard, a few buildings and a garden. There were 15 people there at about 1am when a person practising fire spinning showed up and wanted to show us all his fire dancing. The whole scene must of been one of the best experiences of my life, beneath this impressive dark night, jewled with few stars, in this silent still court yard where time stood still was a perfect setting. The dancer began by setting down two dishes of fire on either side of him and he started elegantly moving and flowing, as he and his stick became one, I was transported to some taoist temple in Asia.
Granada has filled me with undying love for life, it has awakened something in me which was always there but had only just found the catylyst to shine through. Just knowing that there is this world where only truly lovely people exist is enough to make me smile for the rest of my life. On one of these Granadian days set with a smile on my face and hunger in my belly, I was going down to the local soup kitchen to get some food, where a guy asked me why, since I was from London I was getting free food. For London is a rich place. That one question sparked an intellectual conversation that would last for me a good 5 hours and for my friend Deeds 7/8 hours. Stuff like that would usually be how I spent my days, wandering around recycling and filling my day with unexpected things in this beautiful city.
There was a festival in Portugal that nearly all of the travellers were heading to, Boom. I wasn´t planning on going because I wanted to start cycling around the coast, but when one of my cavemates Jack said that he would be up for cycling with me we suddenly started preparing for the 700km journey. On our supposed last night in Granada, the Wednesday before Boom started we went down to one of the main squares to celebrate and see friends. We met the Belgium girls who had been up at our cave a few days before, Gitte and Lieve, and we stayed up quite late just sitting in the square talking. At 4am one of our friends a crazy cheque guy called Bigasz insisted that we come to his squat to look at the view and Jack walked Gitte back to Lieves place where she was staying. Bigasz´s squat reminded me of an Aztec castle, with big gardens and ominous steps leading to unfortold mysteries, the view was pretty cool and we stayed for about 30 minutes. Me and Lieve went back down to Plaza Nueva and where about to say good bye when all of a sudden she kissed me. Suddenly we were locked in one of those passionate kisses in which the whole world seemed to revolve around us. That kiss started a whirlwind romance of 4 days of bohemian love; me, Jack, Gitte and Lieve stayed at Lieves flat and spent our time once again in blissful happiness.
We left on Saturday, the first day of Boom, the festival went on for 8 days, and then there was the official after party, which last for another 4 days. For some reason we seemed to think that we would cycle there in a few days and still have loads of time to party. It turns out we were quite wrong...
When I got down to Granada me and Zack inhabited a little field by the side of a river a little outside the city for about 2 weeks. It was a beautiful spot with a little fire place that cooked us many amazing meals. We found a small co-operative a kilometer away from our spot, the people were extremly nice and we often hung out there. The two weeks passed in a haze of relaxation and discovery of the city. The day after Zack left I moved into a cave even closer to the city than the field. The cave was amazing, you had to climb a rope ladder to get up to it, it had a kitchen and 4 caves lined in a row. I was living with 6 other people mainly, but the number changed all the time and everyone was always bringing up their friends. We had a cave kitten called Raton, who someone had found in a bin abandoned, probably the cutest kitten I´ve ever seen. I quickly got taught in the art of recycling, and Granada was one of the best places to start, you could find everything, food, clothes, furniture, cooking equipment, bike equipment, anything you needed. All that people had thrown away, and within roughly the month I spent living in the cave I didn´t spend a cent.
The cave itself was very beautiful, it would never get to more than about 25 degrees while the city of Granada itself usually got to the still slightly too hot temperature for my English blood of about 45 degrees, it was dug in to the side of a mountain that looked out over a beautiful forest with rolling hills, filled with sweet birds and calmness. it had a river nearby with a powerful waterfall to serve as a shower. I explored Granada and discovered a fraction of the amazing places filled with wonderful people. Granada is an amazing place, I never really knew a city like this could exist. Many, many squats about. One night me and some friends went to one of these squats which was more or less a big paving slabbed courtyard, a few buildings and a garden. There were 15 people there at about 1am when a person practising fire spinning showed up and wanted to show us all his fire dancing. The whole scene must of been one of the best experiences of my life, beneath this impressive dark night, jewled with few stars, in this silent still court yard where time stood still was a perfect setting. The dancer began by setting down two dishes of fire on either side of him and he started elegantly moving and flowing, as he and his stick became one, I was transported to some taoist temple in Asia.
Granada has filled me with undying love for life, it has awakened something in me which was always there but had only just found the catylyst to shine through. Just knowing that there is this world where only truly lovely people exist is enough to make me smile for the rest of my life. On one of these Granadian days set with a smile on my face and hunger in my belly, I was going down to the local soup kitchen to get some food, where a guy asked me why, since I was from London I was getting free food. For London is a rich place. That one question sparked an intellectual conversation that would last for me a good 5 hours and for my friend Deeds 7/8 hours. Stuff like that would usually be how I spent my days, wandering around recycling and filling my day with unexpected things in this beautiful city.
There was a festival in Portugal that nearly all of the travellers were heading to, Boom. I wasn´t planning on going because I wanted to start cycling around the coast, but when one of my cavemates Jack said that he would be up for cycling with me we suddenly started preparing for the 700km journey. On our supposed last night in Granada, the Wednesday before Boom started we went down to one of the main squares to celebrate and see friends. We met the Belgium girls who had been up at our cave a few days before, Gitte and Lieve, and we stayed up quite late just sitting in the square talking. At 4am one of our friends a crazy cheque guy called Bigasz insisted that we come to his squat to look at the view and Jack walked Gitte back to Lieves place where she was staying. Bigasz´s squat reminded me of an Aztec castle, with big gardens and ominous steps leading to unfortold mysteries, the view was pretty cool and we stayed for about 30 minutes. Me and Lieve went back down to Plaza Nueva and where about to say good bye when all of a sudden she kissed me. Suddenly we were locked in one of those passionate kisses in which the whole world seemed to revolve around us. That kiss started a whirlwind romance of 4 days of bohemian love; me, Jack, Gitte and Lieve stayed at Lieves flat and spent our time once again in blissful happiness.
We left on Saturday, the first day of Boom, the festival went on for 8 days, and then there was the official after party, which last for another 4 days. For some reason we seemed to think that we would cycle there in a few days and still have loads of time to party. It turns out we were quite wrong...
Wednesday 25 July 2012
Back to Spain
I quickly gave up on my idea of looking for land. I realised it was probably a good idea to speak portugese before trying to negotiate land prices. Cycling back in to Spain from Portugal was probably the most beautiful countryside I've seen. Full of grandoise trees whose sharp brilliant greens contrasted dramatically with reddish barks, the broad majestic leaves stretching for the sky offering a pleasing escape from the endless non-native pine forests of Portugal. The predictabilitiy of the unpredicitable hills topped with endless wind turbines seeming to to make the coutryside fly makes a perfect backdrop to the misty electric blue sky. The magic was added to by the area being famous for having colonies of lynxs roaming about. If I could at some point get a little land in this "land of the lynxs" I would die a very happy man. I was ecstatic on reaching Spain, I could get back to learning Spanish, which I prefer a lot to Portugese. I find Portugese a little like talking Spanish but with a heavy Sean Connery accent.
The cycle to Madrid was a quick one, with me quickly covering the 200km from Plasencia to Madrid in two days. I got a cooking pot and spent the evenings on my journy cooking relativly edible meals. I cycled lazily in to Madrid up to Plaza Mayor where the Cubans were last time, and low and behold there they were again, only now they had grown to be about twenty or so in numbers. I wrote in one of my earlier blog entries that they were being deported back to Cuba but due to my very limited Spanish at the time I know now that that's not actually whats happening. They have been abandoned by the Spanish government, they have had all their benefits taken away so now they have no food and no housing. Many of them have kids and some are old and ill. On top of that they can't even really get jobs because the qualifications that they have in Cuba need to be approved by the Spanish government in order for them to be usable in Spain, there are doctors and teachers among them.
I stayed in Madrid with the Cubans for about twenty happy days, making friends with some touring journalists and a Romanian guy named Paul. I spent most of the days exploring with friends and the evenings playing guitar with the Cubans. Over these twenty days these Cubans became like family to me. I decided to leave for the northern mountains of Zaragotha before heading down to Granada where my friend from England, Zack was coming to visit for a couple of weeks. I soon hit the beautiful Rio Tajo again, this time near its birth place. It was possibly even more beautiful than where I had met it in Portugal. Its waters a perfect photoshop light blue, winding its way through bushy broadleafs and secretive shrubs, its waters the home of grand shadowy fish, its surface the breeding ground of mosquitoes and thus a feeding place of nameless diving birds, its banks a home for hiding herons and timid ducks and, on one particular bend, somewhere near the village of Aunon a resting place for me.
I cycled on to Guadalajara where just outside of it I found a beautiful wilderness park with the rio Henares flowing through it. I decided to spend a day washing my clothes. Im not using any soap or shampoo now so I have to spend quite a while soaking it in the river to try and wash out all the dirt. After I washed them and let them to dry I decided to continue on my way, when all of a sudden just as I wasleaving the park my chain broke. I was in the middle of nowhere and I didn't really know how to fix chains my self so ended up having to walk back the 10km to Guadalajara. I hate walking.
I got back to Guadalajara and met a guy on the streets called Jorge, we got talking for quite a while and he said he wanted to cycle with me to Valencia, I was already begining to abandon my cycle to Zaragotha and so I agreed. I found a park to sleep in that night, and the next day I went and got my chain repaired for free at a local bike shop. Jorge needed a few days to fix his bike before we rode and so I decided to go to Madrid for a few days and then come back to Guadalajara. I cycled in to Madrid which is a lot more of a challenge to do from the east than the west which I had only done up untill then. There were practically only motorways which I didnt really want to go on so had to cycle a 100km route around them in the blistering heat to try and find an alternative route. I couldn't in the end and so went the last 10km on the motorway into Madrid. Spanish motorways are no where near as bad as English motorways with nearly every driver beeping and shouting encouragment at me.
The two days in Madrid were pleasant and the cycle back to Guadalajara was no where near as bad as the cycle to Madrid. I stayed with Jorge and a women called Carmen on an abandoned farm just outside of Guadalajara. The farm was stupidly beautiful, small and rustic, with one room and a single bed and a river close by. Me and Carmen instantly hit it off and spent our time happilly swimming, eating and lazing about together on the farm while we waited for jorge to fix his bike, something which would be put off day after day after day. It was one of the happiest times I've had in Spain.
The cycle to Madrid was a quick one, with me quickly covering the 200km from Plasencia to Madrid in two days. I got a cooking pot and spent the evenings on my journy cooking relativly edible meals. I cycled lazily in to Madrid up to Plaza Mayor where the Cubans were last time, and low and behold there they were again, only now they had grown to be about twenty or so in numbers. I wrote in one of my earlier blog entries that they were being deported back to Cuba but due to my very limited Spanish at the time I know now that that's not actually whats happening. They have been abandoned by the Spanish government, they have had all their benefits taken away so now they have no food and no housing. Many of them have kids and some are old and ill. On top of that they can't even really get jobs because the qualifications that they have in Cuba need to be approved by the Spanish government in order for them to be usable in Spain, there are doctors and teachers among them.
I stayed in Madrid with the Cubans for about twenty happy days, making friends with some touring journalists and a Romanian guy named Paul. I spent most of the days exploring with friends and the evenings playing guitar with the Cubans. Over these twenty days these Cubans became like family to me. I decided to leave for the northern mountains of Zaragotha before heading down to Granada where my friend from England, Zack was coming to visit for a couple of weeks. I soon hit the beautiful Rio Tajo again, this time near its birth place. It was possibly even more beautiful than where I had met it in Portugal. Its waters a perfect photoshop light blue, winding its way through bushy broadleafs and secretive shrubs, its waters the home of grand shadowy fish, its surface the breeding ground of mosquitoes and thus a feeding place of nameless diving birds, its banks a home for hiding herons and timid ducks and, on one particular bend, somewhere near the village of Aunon a resting place for me.
I cycled on to Guadalajara where just outside of it I found a beautiful wilderness park with the rio Henares flowing through it. I decided to spend a day washing my clothes. Im not using any soap or shampoo now so I have to spend quite a while soaking it in the river to try and wash out all the dirt. After I washed them and let them to dry I decided to continue on my way, when all of a sudden just as I wasleaving the park my chain broke. I was in the middle of nowhere and I didn't really know how to fix chains my self so ended up having to walk back the 10km to Guadalajara. I hate walking.
I got back to Guadalajara and met a guy on the streets called Jorge, we got talking for quite a while and he said he wanted to cycle with me to Valencia, I was already begining to abandon my cycle to Zaragotha and so I agreed. I found a park to sleep in that night, and the next day I went and got my chain repaired for free at a local bike shop. Jorge needed a few days to fix his bike before we rode and so I decided to go to Madrid for a few days and then come back to Guadalajara. I cycled in to Madrid which is a lot more of a challenge to do from the east than the west which I had only done up untill then. There were practically only motorways which I didnt really want to go on so had to cycle a 100km route around them in the blistering heat to try and find an alternative route. I couldn't in the end and so went the last 10km on the motorway into Madrid. Spanish motorways are no where near as bad as English motorways with nearly every driver beeping and shouting encouragment at me.
The two days in Madrid were pleasant and the cycle back to Guadalajara was no where near as bad as the cycle to Madrid. I stayed with Jorge and a women called Carmen on an abandoned farm just outside of Guadalajara. The farm was stupidly beautiful, small and rustic, with one room and a single bed and a river close by. Me and Carmen instantly hit it off and spent our time happilly swimming, eating and lazing about together on the farm while we waited for jorge to fix his bike, something which would be put off day after day after day. It was one of the happiest times I've had in Spain.
Thursday 7 June 2012
A little stay in Portugal
As soon as we got off the train in Caceres we were back into horrible weather through which the only thing that seemed to lift our spirits was singing at the top of our lungs, the kilometers fell by to the likes of The Beach Boys, Gorrilaz and my all time favorite Promised Land . We crossed the astoundingly beautiful Rio Tajo into mountainanous Portugal with sun shinning on our backs - but still no where near as hot as it would get in later months. We entered Portugal not knowing a word of portugese and only basic spanish, but we thought it would be ok as the languages were so similiar. Turns out we were quite wrong. The first town we came to we tried to buy some food and I thought they were almost going to refuse us as we went up to them talking Spanish. We left with food but all the old ladies of the village declaring that they werent Spanish to our backs, something that I would get used to over my time in Portugal, turns out the Portugese dont like being treated as Spanish people.
We experienced what felt like monsoon season for a few days with extremly heavy rains coming and going at their pleasing. We had to take shelter under garages because there was so much rain in our eyes we actually couldnt see where we were going. One night we found a barn seemingly deserted with hay strewn all over the floor. It was the best nights sleep that we had in Portugal so far. We reached the local town to the farm that we were heading to after what felt like a harsher hill climb than the mountains of Cantabria and met the family and some of the people from the farm, we tied our bikes on to the back of the truck and headed to the farm.
The farm was lovely but it continued to rain for the next week and a half, apparently there had been a tornado near-by and so we were getting the over spill of the torrential weather. On the second day of our arrival 8 people left, including Felix, he was going back to Wales for his girlfriends birthday. As soon as the people left I was upgraded from a tent to a caravan. The family that owns the farm are really nice, Andrea and Jeroen and their two kids Danny and Rowan. There is the resident woofer, Steve from Middlesborough, whos been there for 7 months now and is caught in what he calls the Casalinho Triangle were time just seems to fly by. A month of me being there quickly passed without me really noticing. It was amazing to be staying somewhere with a constant supply of hot meals and warm beds for the night. We had both been badly missing these after the constant rains of rural Spain and Portugal.
About two weeks in the weather got a lot better and hotter, it is unbelievably beautiful at the farm when its sunny and hot, they have a little river running through the bottom of their land which was my favourite spot. There are lots of baby animals running about including chicks, baby ducks, puppies, kittens, baby goats. I saw some of the baby goats being born, it was amazing within 2 minutes they were standing. 3 English people arrived and one of the women, Laura, knows Lee that I met on the ferry, talk about a crazy small world, especially after seeing Kwami in Madrid. A short while after all the english people had arrived a guy from Belgium named Stan who was also cycling around Spain turned up. Together we rode to the local town which had super markets and internet. On the way back to the farm from one of these rides the slow puncture that I had had for weeks suddenly turned into a very fast puncture and I was stranded about 20km from the farm. Stan cycled on without me and I used a mixture of walking and frantically pumping up my tyre to ride about 200 meters to get back to the farm, it was a boiling day and I hadn´t got any water. On the way back I walked past a massive beautiful lake and couldn't resist going for a swim.
I killed one duck while I was there, it was sickly so we were going to kill and eat it. If anyone is going to eat meat I think its really important to learn to kill it your self, I was feeling quite anxious as the only animal I have ever killed before was the rabbit I now have tattooed on my chest. I caught the duck and put it down on the table while andrea held it. I could feel the same strange emotion that I had felt just before taking the rabbits life welling up inside of me and I knew if I didnt do it quickly I probably wouldnt do it at all. I plunged the knife into its neck and saw the same glimmer of life leave its eyes. Ducks like chickens keep on moving after they have died due to muscle reflexs, so even after I had seperated the head from the body it still gentlly jerked ts wings. I suppose because I knew there was some purpose to its death I didnt mind killing it as much as the rabbit. I disected it and found that there was a tumor the size of a football inside of it, pretty much filling up the whole inside of the duck and pushing all its organs to the side.
Unfortunatly we didnt eat the tumor, and so we didnt get any meat off the duck so we decided to kill another. I didnt feel emotionally up to killing two in one day so this time Andrea did it. In terms of killing ducks I had the two extremes that day, we picked out the fattest looking duck and I held it down on the table for Andrea to kill, it knew what was happening and it wouldnt stop flaling about, after a big fight Andrea cut he main artery in the neck and started bleeding it in to a bowl to use the blood for cooking, she then hacked off the head and thats where the problems began. It lay still for to seconds and then started flapping its wins violently causing me to loose grip, it got to its feet and started walking around the table all the while with bloood spurting out its neck, it stumbled into the bowl of its blood sending it flying over me and the wall behind. the whole scene was utter carnage and everyone was falling about with shocked laughter. It did end up making a very nice meal, but the memories like the stains will last alot longer.
I also made a necklace out of a goats tooth that I had found in one of the fields, I used one of Stans dreadlocks for string. A couple of days before I was due to leave I fell ill for the first time on my trip, I think it was probably just a touch of sun stroke but it did cause me to have violently weird dreams, one of the nights I woke at 3am too terrified to move because I thought my blankets were trying to strangle me. But I got a little better and left on the 31st of May heading south to look for some land to buy. Portugal has finally got incredibly beautiful with the hot weather and the animals are amazing. Its amazing how much difference the sun makes to everything.
I killed one duck while I was there, it was sickly so we were going to kill and eat it. If anyone is going to eat meat I think its really important to learn to kill it your self, I was feeling quite anxious as the only animal I have ever killed before was the rabbit I now have tattooed on my chest. I caught the duck and put it down on the table while andrea held it. I could feel the same strange emotion that I had felt just before taking the rabbits life welling up inside of me and I knew if I didnt do it quickly I probably wouldnt do it at all. I plunged the knife into its neck and saw the same glimmer of life leave its eyes. Ducks like chickens keep on moving after they have died due to muscle reflexs, so even after I had seperated the head from the body it still gentlly jerked ts wings. I suppose because I knew there was some purpose to its death I didnt mind killing it as much as the rabbit. I disected it and found that there was a tumor the size of a football inside of it, pretty much filling up the whole inside of the duck and pushing all its organs to the side.
Unfortunatly we didnt eat the tumor, and so we didnt get any meat off the duck so we decided to kill another. I didnt feel emotionally up to killing two in one day so this time Andrea did it. In terms of killing ducks I had the two extremes that day, we picked out the fattest looking duck and I held it down on the table for Andrea to kill, it knew what was happening and it wouldnt stop flaling about, after a big fight Andrea cut he main artery in the neck and started bleeding it in to a bowl to use the blood for cooking, she then hacked off the head and thats where the problems began. It lay still for to seconds and then started flapping its wins violently causing me to loose grip, it got to its feet and started walking around the table all the while with bloood spurting out its neck, it stumbled into the bowl of its blood sending it flying over me and the wall behind. the whole scene was utter carnage and everyone was falling about with shocked laughter. It did end up making a very nice meal, but the memories like the stains will last alot longer.
I also made a necklace out of a goats tooth that I had found in one of the fields, I used one of Stans dreadlocks for string. A couple of days before I was due to leave I fell ill for the first time on my trip, I think it was probably just a touch of sun stroke but it did cause me to have violently weird dreams, one of the nights I woke at 3am too terrified to move because I thought my blankets were trying to strangle me. But I got a little better and left on the 31st of May heading south to look for some land to buy. Portugal has finally got incredibly beautiful with the hot weather and the animals are amazing. Its amazing how much difference the sun makes to everything.
Saturday 26 May 2012
Madrid, such a wonderful place
So we had finally made it in to Sunny Spain. 30 km on from the mountains the next night was to be our worst yet. We tried to cook pasta on a portable cooker that Felix had brought under a village bus shelter, we ran out of gas half way through cooking, but as it was the last of our food we decided we had to eat it. We mixed it with pesto and started to eat, it was completely inedible and we had to throw it away, which considering we hadn´t eaten that day was a testament to how bad it was. We decided to camp on the village green that we were on as we had no more energy to try and attempt to find anywhere else. It was bitterly cold and all the heat that was not taken from me by the frozen air above me as I laid trying to sleep in the tent was robbed from me by the ground beneath. I ended up getting about 1 hour sleep that night and I had to get out of the tent a few times in the night as it was getting weighed down. The snow had followed us.
We started out the next day by hitching a ride to the local town to get more food. We cursed the town for the coldness and the wind and anticipated another bad day of cycling. However when we got back to the bikes the sun was out and pulling all the snow and wetness from the road ahead of us. As we billowed through these steamy tunnels the wind died and we realized we had finally made it to sunny Spain. We took our time meandering through little foot paths and little villages and at one point following a little path into the middle of no where and having to cycle through a disused sewage pipe to get back on to the road we were on. We found an idyllic hillside to set up camp on and we cooked our first camp fire meal of pasta, local butter, wild rosemary and thyme, it was amazing. It´s fair to say that earlier that day my optimism levels were at an all time low, but 20 km away I found my self with a full pannier of food next to a roaring fire and they were fully replenished. We stayed there for a few days and then set out on our continued journey south. The head winds were so bad that we decided to get a train the rest of the way to Madrid.
On the train the scenery was so beautiful that we regretted our decision about 100kms outside of Madrid and we got off at a sweet little town with cobbled streets and wild dogs sunning about the place. We felt on top of the world as we were bungeeing up and down the mountains towards Madrid. Madrid was beautiful down to the tiniest detail, amazing parks, great streets the best city I think I´ve been to. The first 2 hours that I was in Madrid I came across an old friend from London, Kwami. It was such a surprise, I had stopped the group he was in to ask directions and we saw each other and were pretty much lost for words. Although we didnt really have a way to get in contact again so we didnt see each other again in Madrid. We eventually found a hostel, after many hours of searching and instantly went to sleep till about 11pm when we got up ready to hit the bars. We found a good bar that was playing house and settled down there for a few hours. We turned in at 4 still worn out from the cycle.
The walk home brought us our first nasty experience with The Prostitutes. In the day the streets were lined with them and they seemed harmless enough but at night they turned vicious. We were walking along a road with little idea of where we were when some prostitutes walked up to . Sweet talking their way up to us I thought a simple no would be enough to escape them. But then they grabbed me as one tried to pull me into an alley. I managed to shake them off but we got to the end of the road and realised it was our road and they were standing outside of our hostel door. So we had to try and fight our way through them a second time. The next day we explored more of Madrid and its soulful places. It made me fall more in love with Madrid. There was music in the streets and everyone was meandering along talking, laughing. There was a scent in the air that had become quintessential of Spain, a not a care in the world smell exuded from all passers by.
On the second night in Madrid we went to dump our stuff in the park so we could find it later when we decided to sleep. We went back to the center of town and locked our bikes and went looking for clubs. We walked around and got huddled into a few crappy bars by street hustlers. Eventually we came across lucy as one of these street hustlers who told us of a good Balkan Ska club. We made our way over to it and we weren´t let down. As we left at 6 the club was still filling up. We found our bikes (for Madrid being notorious for pick pockets and bike thieves we werent seeing much action) and headed back to the park. We woke at 1ish to find the dirtiest looks Ive ever seen raining down on us. For Madrid being such a nice place they dont half treat their self proclaimed tramps badly. I received similarly dirty looks when I sat down on the floor to eat something the day before.
We went to the train station to get yet another train to Caceres so we could get to this farm quickly. The train didnt leave till the next day so we headed back into town to find somewhere to sleep. We found some cuban political exiles sitting in one of the squares staging a protest. Apparently Spain has decided Cuba is a free country so is deporting all the political asylum seekers back to Cuba. So we joined them and slept with them on the streets for that night. They were really nice people and instantly welcomed us in to their family. Giving us food, blankets and cardboard to sleep on for the night. I stayed up with one talking for about an hour or so and it turns out he had been locked up for 7 years for writing an article denouncing the Castros. So Eric this is for you. Fuck Castro.
In the morning one of them - a doctor - fixed Felix´s bike which had broken the day before. We caught our train out to Caceres and with it out of the hot, beautiful sunshine of Madrid. To the border of portugal we sped.
We started out the next day by hitching a ride to the local town to get more food. We cursed the town for the coldness and the wind and anticipated another bad day of cycling. However when we got back to the bikes the sun was out and pulling all the snow and wetness from the road ahead of us. As we billowed through these steamy tunnels the wind died and we realized we had finally made it to sunny Spain. We took our time meandering through little foot paths and little villages and at one point following a little path into the middle of no where and having to cycle through a disused sewage pipe to get back on to the road we were on. We found an idyllic hillside to set up camp on and we cooked our first camp fire meal of pasta, local butter, wild rosemary and thyme, it was amazing. It´s fair to say that earlier that day my optimism levels were at an all time low, but 20 km away I found my self with a full pannier of food next to a roaring fire and they were fully replenished. We stayed there for a few days and then set out on our continued journey south. The head winds were so bad that we decided to get a train the rest of the way to Madrid.
On the train the scenery was so beautiful that we regretted our decision about 100kms outside of Madrid and we got off at a sweet little town with cobbled streets and wild dogs sunning about the place. We felt on top of the world as we were bungeeing up and down the mountains towards Madrid. Madrid was beautiful down to the tiniest detail, amazing parks, great streets the best city I think I´ve been to. The first 2 hours that I was in Madrid I came across an old friend from London, Kwami. It was such a surprise, I had stopped the group he was in to ask directions and we saw each other and were pretty much lost for words. Although we didnt really have a way to get in contact again so we didnt see each other again in Madrid. We eventually found a hostel, after many hours of searching and instantly went to sleep till about 11pm when we got up ready to hit the bars. We found a good bar that was playing house and settled down there for a few hours. We turned in at 4 still worn out from the cycle.
The walk home brought us our first nasty experience with The Prostitutes. In the day the streets were lined with them and they seemed harmless enough but at night they turned vicious. We were walking along a road with little idea of where we were when some prostitutes walked up to . Sweet talking their way up to us I thought a simple no would be enough to escape them. But then they grabbed me as one tried to pull me into an alley. I managed to shake them off but we got to the end of the road and realised it was our road and they were standing outside of our hostel door. So we had to try and fight our way through them a second time. The next day we explored more of Madrid and its soulful places. It made me fall more in love with Madrid. There was music in the streets and everyone was meandering along talking, laughing. There was a scent in the air that had become quintessential of Spain, a not a care in the world smell exuded from all passers by.
On the second night in Madrid we went to dump our stuff in the park so we could find it later when we decided to sleep. We went back to the center of town and locked our bikes and went looking for clubs. We walked around and got huddled into a few crappy bars by street hustlers. Eventually we came across lucy as one of these street hustlers who told us of a good Balkan Ska club. We made our way over to it and we weren´t let down. As we left at 6 the club was still filling up. We found our bikes (for Madrid being notorious for pick pockets and bike thieves we werent seeing much action) and headed back to the park. We woke at 1ish to find the dirtiest looks Ive ever seen raining down on us. For Madrid being such a nice place they dont half treat their self proclaimed tramps badly. I received similarly dirty looks when I sat down on the floor to eat something the day before.
We went to the train station to get yet another train to Caceres so we could get to this farm quickly. The train didnt leave till the next day so we headed back into town to find somewhere to sleep. We found some cuban political exiles sitting in one of the squares staging a protest. Apparently Spain has decided Cuba is a free country so is deporting all the political asylum seekers back to Cuba. So we joined them and slept with them on the streets for that night. They were really nice people and instantly welcomed us in to their family. Giving us food, blankets and cardboard to sleep on for the night. I stayed up with one talking for about an hour or so and it turns out he had been locked up for 7 years for writing an article denouncing the Castros. So Eric this is for you. Fuck Castro.
In the morning one of them - a doctor - fixed Felix´s bike which had broken the day before. We caught our train out to Caceres and with it out of the hot, beautiful sunshine of Madrid. To the border of portugal we sped.
The first taste of spain
In 1909 my great grandfather made the thousand plus mile journey from Vienna to London on foot. Along the way he wrote alot of postcards home, when he got back to london he collected these postcards into a book called "The Diary Of A Tramp". Its 2012 and its time for travelling, this blog will be my postcards home. I havent really got much of an idea of what im going to do out there or how long im going to be out there for but im going to try and have fun and learn as many things as I can. For those of you reading this blog who don't know im going to be cycling around Spain to see all there is to see.
As I got on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander on a Tuesday a brief "what the fuck am I doing" feeling flickered over me, but it passed quickly as I remembered exactly what I was doing. I met some lovely people on the ferry; Felix who it turned out was doing pretty much the same thing as me, Lee a guy heading down to Orgiva in a converted Horse box who gave me and Felix 50 euros and Sam an english teacher in Zaragoza. Me and Felix decided to travel together to a permacultural farm in portugal. We landed in santander in the evening and decided to rough it for that night, for packing I had worked on the basis that Spain was a hot country all of the time. It turns out I was wrong.
I had come horribly underprepared, all I brought was a sleeping bag, bike tools, not enough clothes and swimming trunks. As we cycled west out of santander that first night, it was an amazing first taste of spain, still nice and warm in the evening and surrounded by smells of orange and lemon blossoms cycling in and out of quiet - apart from the constant barking of dogs everytime we rode near - villages looking for somewhere to sleep. We started up a big hill and it started pissing it down, about half an hour in and we realised it was set in for the night. We found a little wooded bit of the side of a hill and prepared for our first night. Luckily Felix had a waterproof sheet which he chucked over me and he had a self adapted survival bag so we were kind of ok untill about 3 in the morning when the sheet must of blown off of me and I woke absolutly soaked.
That first night as it turned out was to set the premise for our first couple of weeks, the amount of emotional highs and lows that we went through each day in our never ending search for warmth, food and shelter were ridiculous. Going from being rained on constantly to seeing amazing spanish villages and towns spralled out in front of us in the sun was both breath taking and emotionally wearing. Despite the never ending rain we stayed optimistic, I remember having heard that rainfall and clouds get stopped by mountains so we headed south towards the mountains of cantabria and what I thought would be sunny Spain. We reached the foot hills of the mountains on our fourth day of sleeping in hostels and roughing it with our newly bought tent, and by this time we had given up on hoping for sunshine or thinking that anything that we owned would ever get dry.
We started cycling up the mountain in yet more rain, it felt like we had the whole of Europes rain at our backs and in our faces constantly. But this was the day we would pass into proper Spain so we took the mountain with full force. We cycled for hours and hours, each bend in the road signalling a downward turn only for me to sprint to it and see that it dipped down only to straighten out even steeper than before. After a couple of hours of pretty much constant cycling we found a pub, they gave us a free plate of chips each and let us dry our clothes by the fire. This was the first of many, many examples of Spanish genorosity that we would encounter. We kept on cycling for a few more hours and just when I was thinking we would have to camp for the night in the mountains the temperature dropped and the light drizzle that was coming down in sheets around us suddenly pulled up, like someone had pressed the pause button on life and we saw snow start to cover everything. At first we celebrated, it was the most beautiful snow that I had ever seen and looking out over the mountains with this snow falling was an unforgettable experience, but as we continued higher and higher we started to see it fall heavier and heavier. 4 inches came in about 15 minuites making it hard for us to cycle. We stopped for me to put socks over my hands and a bite to eat to keep our ever diminishing energy levels up. Felix had heard that there were wolves up in these mountains and at one time we had planned to search for them but with hypothermia around the corner we decided against it. We kept on cycling and cycling for what seemed forever untill finally we saw it level out. The joy in our hearts was enough to melt all the snow around us at that point. We uncovered a snow sheeted sign and found that it marked the top. 1260 meters of mountain and we had finally done it. We jumped up and down like maniacs.
We never even thought about the downhill ride. We didnt think it could possibly be worse coming down. The wind tore away at our joy of having reached the top, the snow bit into our already frost bitten hands and the snow being parted by our front tyres waterlogged our shoes and made our toes numb. But it wasnt too long till the first town. A twenty minuite ride took us to a little snow oasis of a town called Soto. Strongly recommended to stay in if anyone feels like snow boarding or skiing next winter. There was a god send of a little pub that reminded me of a swedish inn. They sold us really cheap and nice hot choclate and really cheap nice cider and the manager didnt seem to mind us dumping our wet clothes all over the place. The feeling that we had when we had finally dried off by the fire was an indescribable mixture of complete exhaustion and happiness of having finally made it into actual Spain. Even though it had been a hard first 4 days I think we both a lot happier for travelling.
As I got on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander on a Tuesday a brief "what the fuck am I doing" feeling flickered over me, but it passed quickly as I remembered exactly what I was doing. I met some lovely people on the ferry; Felix who it turned out was doing pretty much the same thing as me, Lee a guy heading down to Orgiva in a converted Horse box who gave me and Felix 50 euros and Sam an english teacher in Zaragoza. Me and Felix decided to travel together to a permacultural farm in portugal. We landed in santander in the evening and decided to rough it for that night, for packing I had worked on the basis that Spain was a hot country all of the time. It turns out I was wrong.
I had come horribly underprepared, all I brought was a sleeping bag, bike tools, not enough clothes and swimming trunks. As we cycled west out of santander that first night, it was an amazing first taste of spain, still nice and warm in the evening and surrounded by smells of orange and lemon blossoms cycling in and out of quiet - apart from the constant barking of dogs everytime we rode near - villages looking for somewhere to sleep. We started up a big hill and it started pissing it down, about half an hour in and we realised it was set in for the night. We found a little wooded bit of the side of a hill and prepared for our first night. Luckily Felix had a waterproof sheet which he chucked over me and he had a self adapted survival bag so we were kind of ok untill about 3 in the morning when the sheet must of blown off of me and I woke absolutly soaked.
That first night as it turned out was to set the premise for our first couple of weeks, the amount of emotional highs and lows that we went through each day in our never ending search for warmth, food and shelter were ridiculous. Going from being rained on constantly to seeing amazing spanish villages and towns spralled out in front of us in the sun was both breath taking and emotionally wearing. Despite the never ending rain we stayed optimistic, I remember having heard that rainfall and clouds get stopped by mountains so we headed south towards the mountains of cantabria and what I thought would be sunny Spain. We reached the foot hills of the mountains on our fourth day of sleeping in hostels and roughing it with our newly bought tent, and by this time we had given up on hoping for sunshine or thinking that anything that we owned would ever get dry.
We started cycling up the mountain in yet more rain, it felt like we had the whole of Europes rain at our backs and in our faces constantly. But this was the day we would pass into proper Spain so we took the mountain with full force. We cycled for hours and hours, each bend in the road signalling a downward turn only for me to sprint to it and see that it dipped down only to straighten out even steeper than before. After a couple of hours of pretty much constant cycling we found a pub, they gave us a free plate of chips each and let us dry our clothes by the fire. This was the first of many, many examples of Spanish genorosity that we would encounter. We kept on cycling for a few more hours and just when I was thinking we would have to camp for the night in the mountains the temperature dropped and the light drizzle that was coming down in sheets around us suddenly pulled up, like someone had pressed the pause button on life and we saw snow start to cover everything. At first we celebrated, it was the most beautiful snow that I had ever seen and looking out over the mountains with this snow falling was an unforgettable experience, but as we continued higher and higher we started to see it fall heavier and heavier. 4 inches came in about 15 minuites making it hard for us to cycle. We stopped for me to put socks over my hands and a bite to eat to keep our ever diminishing energy levels up. Felix had heard that there were wolves up in these mountains and at one time we had planned to search for them but with hypothermia around the corner we decided against it. We kept on cycling and cycling for what seemed forever untill finally we saw it level out. The joy in our hearts was enough to melt all the snow around us at that point. We uncovered a snow sheeted sign and found that it marked the top. 1260 meters of mountain and we had finally done it. We jumped up and down like maniacs.
We never even thought about the downhill ride. We didnt think it could possibly be worse coming down. The wind tore away at our joy of having reached the top, the snow bit into our already frost bitten hands and the snow being parted by our front tyres waterlogged our shoes and made our toes numb. But it wasnt too long till the first town. A twenty minuite ride took us to a little snow oasis of a town called Soto. Strongly recommended to stay in if anyone feels like snow boarding or skiing next winter. There was a god send of a little pub that reminded me of a swedish inn. They sold us really cheap and nice hot choclate and really cheap nice cider and the manager didnt seem to mind us dumping our wet clothes all over the place. The feeling that we had when we had finally dried off by the fire was an indescribable mixture of complete exhaustion and happiness of having finally made it into actual Spain. Even though it had been a hard first 4 days I think we both a lot happier for travelling.
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