Saturday 1st November 2008

Yesterday’s ride in the cold and rain had tired me so I slept late to 9.00 this morning. It was slightly easier and warmer riding today, partly because it wasn’t raining and partly because I was wearing all of my clothes. The limiting endurance factor was my hands which stopped working after about 80 kilometres. It’s a slow and fairly tedious business travelling the full length of Spain stopping every 45 minutes to warm your hands on a cup of coffee. I gradually let my motorway cruising speed edge up to get farther between stops. I stopped just south of Madrid to plan my attack on its notorious road system and saw that the rack had broken again just beside the previous repair. There was obviously a design weakness in the rear cross brace but it didn’t matter – this was Europe on a Saturday afternoon so no hope of a repair. I was really missing Morocco. I cautiously approached Madrid as planned on the A4 from the south and I departed from Madrid as planned on the A1 to the north. In between? Not a clue. I know that I maintained my stately progress at 80 kph in deference to my broken rack and despite encouragement to greater efforts from my fellow road users. In the memorable words of Terry Wogan on his allegedly fast lap of the Top Gear track, ‘I’ll be the judge of that’.Spain’s answer to Randalstown, Guadalix de la Sierra, provided a good hostel for the night. The staff in the Chinese restaurant loved my total incomprehension of their Spanish Chinese menu and fought for the privilege of confusing me further with their various and varied English translations. No idea what I ate but it was lovely and so were the staff.