Friday 31st October 2008

Woke up feeling recharged and had my first proper shower for what seemed like years. Oddly though, the falling water sound continued after I turned the shower off. Rain?It’ll be over in half an hour. Spain’s a fairly arid country after all, especially in the south. Just a straightforward ride by motorway directly north to Santander to catch the ferry, hardly worth recording. So that was another day riding in torrential freezing rain through mountains. I managed a massive 230 kilometres with innumerable café stops to warm up. I even bought a pair of gardening gloves at one point to wear over my summer bike gloves but that just meant I couldn’t feel the levers so they had to go. I stopped early for the night in a hostel beside the motorway and treated myself to a nice meal and a large glass of wine. It was strange not being able to talk to anybody; I do know one Spanish word but there seemed little point in saying “Hola” confidently in an excellent Spanish accent if I wasn’t going to be able to understand the response. Unfortunately the weather forecast had easily understood pictures: rain everywhere for the foreseeable future except for in the area I needed to go through north of Madrid. It was going to have snow.