Adventure, misadventure and a cider festival--- all in the first 3 days!
8 am Friday 12th June I rode off the ferry at Bilbao in Spain having boarded it some 36 hours previously in Portsmouth.  My aim was to ride to the Trike World Championship time trial in St Marsault in the Vendee region of France, and then home via St Malo.  The race was on Saturday 20th so I had bags of time; or so I thought.

Through the marvels of the internet I knew about the transporter bridge close to the ferry.  This would get me across the estuary, into the hills and away without having to go anywhere near Bilbao.  There are very few roads across this part of Spain, the Basque country.  There are main roads that follow the coast, and some more a fair way inland.  I chose to use a minor road route about 15 miles inland.  Things started very well, courtesy of the transporter bridge, and I was soon into my route and the hills.  The temperature was 34oC which began to take its toll on me very quickly.  In the afternoon the backroads route got exciting.  I’d been riding in increasingly narrow roads, all with road numbers as shown on the map, when I got to a junction of several such roads with no signs at all.  I rode down a couple to find they turned into farm tracks.  The third I chose also appeared to be a farm track since it was very narrow and made of concrete blocks.  I really was not sure about where to go.  Behind one of the farms I could see a young lady sunbathing (that just has to be said in a Les Dawson voice full of smut and innuendo) so I rode around the side of the farm and asked if the road really went through.  My schoolboy Spanish is so underused that it might as well not exist, but between us with a bit of French and English thrown in, she assured me I was on the right track – literally.  Off I set with renewed confidence.  After a short distance I came to an extremely steep section.  Truthfully, if this was not a 1 in 3 then it was very close to it.  I ran out of steam and could not ride up it on my heavily loaded trike.  I stopped, and immediately the trike started rolling backwards down the hill leaving a skid mark as the locked front wheel slid.  I got off pretty quickly and tried to tow the trike up (it’s usually easier to tow a trike than push it) but that failed and I had to push it up while all the time scrabbling for traction from my cycling shoes.  Of course, a few miles later I met its downhill brother which I had to walk as well due to an impending junction.  Anyway, about 5pm I got to a town somewhat short of my target and pretty tired.  I asked in the police station about a hotel and they directed me to the only one in town.  So, that’s the adventure bit – the tiny roads and steep hill.

8 am the next morning and the climbing started within a hundred yards of the hotel.  I had no more tiny roads on the schedule for the day, but the heat and hills (mountains indeed) combined to prove too much for me by about 2 pm.  I was grovelling up the climbs, taking every chance there was to soak my hat or bathe my feet in culverts at the roadside.  I was even considering wild camping because I was so tired, but it was too early to make that a practicality.  I rolled into a small town and saw a group outside a bar/restaurant.  They told me that there were rooms here, but when I asked inside the answer was no – no rooms here or anywhere near here.  A little further into the village I tried again.  The chap I spoke to said there was a hostel around the corner and gave me directions that I vaguely understood.  As I rode around the corner I was hailed in English.  I’d come across a builder from London who had lived here with his Spanish family for 13 years.  A fortunate meeting indeed because the hostel (not youth hostel) was a few rooms associated with a local bar and my new acquaintance sorted it all out for me in Basque.  The hostel turned out to be cheap but very clean rooms with your own facilities included.  A very fortunate find.  Drinking beer with the Londoner later he told me that this night (Saturday 13th) there was to be a cider festival.  Of course I had to take a look.  For an entry fee of 3 euros I got a glass and 12 tokens.  There were only about 12 local producers at the event, so I might have tried everything.  The cider is served cold, from the bottle, and poured from a height of about 3 feet into a sharply angled glass.  Each sample was an inch or maybe two in the half pint glass.  I had enough to remind me why I do not like cider and then sat listening to local singers perform.  When the festival ended, a party was struck up in what appeared to be the local student’s house.  Double glazing, shutters and earplugs just about attenuated the noise enough for me to get some sleep.

So there we have adventure and a cider festival.  Now for the mis-adventure.  I left town about 8 am with the party still going strong and immediately started climbing steeply.  Within a mile sweat was dripping from the end of my nose.  A long and hard climb took me to 802 metres from where I descended into the next town.  Strange this – it is not what I was expecting.  While I was sorting out what had gone wrong I had breakfast in a bar and chatted to a resident Dutchman who is teacher of English.  My mistake was that I’d left town on the NA-1700 instead of the NA-170.  To compound the problem, the dearth of roads meant either a long detour or I had to retrace.  So retrace I did.  Fortunately I had not descended a great height and I got back to my starting point at 10 am to a peaceful town, the party having ended.  The ride out took over an hour; the return took only 30 minutes which shows how lucky I was in not having descended too far.  The reasons I had made the mistake were because the road signs had all be obliterated by the Basques and I’d been a bit sloppy with the map reading.  Had I not stopped the night before I would still have left town on the wrong road and would have suffered mightily for it, so I suppose it worked out ok.  Like the previous day, this was a short day’s riding due to the heat and the hills.  I got to somewhere I knew would have a campsite so stopped immediately.  Luckily they had a restaurant of sorts so I did not even have to go into town.  A simple salad and omelette were very welcome indeed.

That night there were tremendous thunderstorms, but by the time I left at 7 am they had cleared and the day was just overcast.  The climb over the end of the Pyrenees topped out at 600 metres and was gently graded so I rode in the middle ring – no need for the granny today.  At the border there was an enormous amount of building work with new hotels and supermarkets on the Spanish side where prices were almost 2/3 that of the French side.  France welcomed me with rain.  By lunchtime I’d had enough and had reached Hasparren, about 10 miles inland of Bairritz, where I could not find the campsite so took a hotel room and an immediate appointment with lunch in the restaurant.

By now I was running almost 2 days late.  I’d estimated 2 days to clear Spain and had taken 3 ½.  The next few days I put in longer rides of 80 miles or so.  This covered 200 miles of flat and straight roads through Landes, the flat area south of Bordeaux which was pretty monotonous riding, but at least it gave a sense of scale to the area.  Because of the proximity of the sea and some very large lakes, this is a holiday area for the French with prices to suit (3.5 euros for a coffee).  I crossed the mouth of the Garonne on the ferry to Royan on Thursday lunchtime; a nice 30 minute crossing allowing a little nap.  Royan could have been on the Riviera with all its fancy shops and white buildings.  By now I’d realised that the most I could hope for would be to arrive in the Vendee on Friday afternoon, too tired to compete on the Saturday.  So I decided to back off a bit and arrive on the day of the race with 500 miles in my legs and record a DNS.  This I duly did, arriving at the start just as everybody was signing on.  The 15 mile time trial on a winding course was won by Carl Saint in 35:52 (well he is comp record holder at 10 miles with a 21 minute ride).  The rest of Saturday and Sunday were taken up with social events, meals, and the village fete; then on Monday I set off towards St Malo with 4 days to cover 200 miles had I gone directly.  Of course I meandered somewhat, adjusting my route to give myself a tail wind for my last 50 miles, the rest of my ride being into a NE headwind.  Total tour distance was 775 miles.