It's very difficult to write this entry. On the one hand, each individual day could be a separate entry here, with an endless number of photos, on the other - we ride bikes all day long and apart from the views that can't be described, our only thought is "will we really live to see the evening?" But not like in Africa - wondering if someone will eat us along the way. More like in the desert - with the feeling that if we collapse on the side of the road from exhaustion and overheating, they will find us dried up in a few months. Although I'm not sure about that either, because maybe horses and cows will eat us sooner.
The feeling of being further from civilisation (by which I mean a petrol station and an open shop selling water and cakes) than at any point driving through Ethiopia or elsewhere in Uganda is somewhat surprising in Spain. In the photos I suggest you pay attention to the number of people other than the two of us.
There are no contraindications to completely scroll this entry just looking at the photos, knowing that we were very dry, very wet, very warm, very cold and that we saw a lot of nice places. About each of these places you can safely say "oh, I saw something like that, but better, somewhere", but good enough to keep you in awe and still be shooting a ton of photos on the fifth day of riding. That doesn't happen often.
There is also a chance that all the flattery in this post is greatly exaggerated. This is because I knew almost nothing about the area before I arrived. You approach the Dolomites, about which you have read only superlatives for years, differently than you approach surprisingly good views in a place where you did not expect them. Is it because you feel like a little explorer? Maybe.
Admission
Finding the right place to go on vacation is not a trivial task for a person who would like to spend time on a bike. I would even say that it is as difficult as finding the right companion.
The latter, however, was much easier than usual this time. I posted on Instagram that I would go somewhere sometime – Kamil, whom I had not known before, volunteered. We have no mutual friends – our entire conversation before the trip did not exceed a few dozen acquaintances. Bikepacking is, contrary to appearances, much easier than it seems – you get up in the morning, pedal, eat, go to bed, repeat. In the ideal version, you also admire the views, people, culture or anything else along the way, although this is not mandatory.
We quickly decided that in about 2-3 weeks we would fly to Greece and return home by bike. It's a great option, because all the logistics are out of the question - you have one job: to get home alive by bike. We spent a week watching a weather map that suggested we would evaporate after an hour of riding. It didn’t sound like a vacation. Then, my eyes caught sight of a certain star that had been on Google Maps for I don’t know how long. It was hanging in the middle of the Picos de Europa, a region of Spain that only pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago seem to go to.
I even went to the Bilbao area once. Those were the wonderful times when big bike companies invited you to very expensive hotels to ride very expensive bikes with very famous people (in this case Nairo Quintana) and then write something about their bikes. I remember the area as desert, but it was a bit more east than west of the city.
A moment of googling and it turned out that the climate in the area is definitely more conducive to riding than we could have expected. In addition, Wizzair flights, not only on perfect days (departures Saturday and Monday morning) but also at great prices: PLN 500 return plus a bike. What more could you want?
The decision about the company was made 2-3 weeks before setting off, and about the place: a week before.
As it turned out, it was a bull's eye. If I had to choose one place for one and only foreign bikepacking trip in my life, it would be this area.
You could say that statistically the weather was perfect and I saw almost everything I've seen in the last few years traveling around the world. In a slightly worse version, but overall incredibly interesting and packed into a short time. Hence the title of the post.
What is worth knowing
I don't even know whether to refer to the locals as Spaniards or Basques. What's more, I don't even know how to describe the place we went to, because the almost 1000 km long loop covers a lot of terrain... although surprisingly little on the scale of Spain. However, it shows well that Spain is not just the coast and referring to anything in this country from the perspective of the Costa Blanca is a big distortion.
Locals have four basic hobbies:
- Closing shops and restaurants (which are practically non-existent anyway) at times when people are most hungry
- Shouting and playing loud music at a time when you want to sleep the most.
- Explaining anything using a thousand Spanish words because the English craze hasn't reached there yet.
- Being slow and getting things done at a pace as if my vacation was going to last a month instead of a week.
The average temperature in Bilbao (which is almost at sea level) is similar to the average temperature in Warsaw during the summer. The average amount of precipitation during the summer is similar to Warsaw, while the average precipitation throughout the year is twice as high. As you might imagine, it is a bit colder and wetter in the mountains surrounding the city. So this is not the typical Spain of our imagination. Nothing here is typical Spain at all in our understanding of Spain as a sunny coast, sand and paella.
At the time of writing, Bilbao is 20 degrees cooler than southern Spain and 15 degrees cooler than Madrid.
Route
In a little over 6 days of driving we do: 999.9 km and 14,360 m up. It takes us 51 hours (time of movement only).
The route is not easy in terms of fitness and supplies. Even when it is flat, it is not flat and the elevation gains are the same as in the mountains. It is just that instead of going up 1000 m, you go up 20 times 50 meters.
Some 98% of the surface is asphalt (terrain is optional), but the optimal tire is around 30-32mm without tread. Not because of any craters, but asphalts are very often cracked or very rough.
Our loop avoids a lot of roads that shouldn't be avoided, but to cover the entire area, both on the asphalt and gravel side (which also seems strong), we'd probably have to move there for a long time. Besides, we're talking about a region that seems small on the map above, but is actually very large.
Costs
Flight Warsaw-Bilbao-Warsaw with bike: PLN 1,166.
Car for a week: PLN 140 (to be split between two)
7 nights: 1964 PLN (to be split between two)
TOTAL: UNDER 3000 FOR ALL
On this trip you can save a lot by not eating and drinking. There is a good chance that if you went there for a longer period of time, the trip would be cheaper than sitting at home.
In the morning you wake up in Praga,
at 11:00 you are cycling through the Basque Country
Who died on the first day,
the second one will not die anymore, that is:
Are you driving? Don't drink!
This is a very good trip, ladies and gentlemen.
I get up sometime before 4 a.m., get dressed, pass a yellow note that has been stuck on my fridge for almost a month saying “sandwiches,” leaving sandwiches carefully wrapped in a bag in the fridge. Interestingly, a week later I haven’t found them where they were left. I check in at the airport at 4:15, less than an hour before departure, because who flies out on Monday morning? Well, it turns out that there are quite a few people. So many that I go through the “security” gates straight into the queue already moving through our gate.
On the way, I have a pretty good idea. Since the only organized thing on this trip is the participants’ presence, the plane tickets, and the potential route, we don’t have the logistics figured out very well. For example, we don’t know where to leave our suitcases. The situation is not helped by the fact that I remember Bilbao airport as a place from which there is no escape. The last time I was there, I spent 6 hours looking for a way through the motorway that surrounds it. So I go to my favorite car rental website economycarrentals (I haven't gotten a referral yet) and Bingo! Renting a small car costs 140 PLN for a week. So I book quickly - so quickly that from today I'm Maciej Hip. The reservation is 20 PLN, so the plan is: we go to the nearest hotels, ask if they'll hold our bike cases, and if not, we'll put them in the car at the airport. The perfect plan.
Monday, 9:30 a.m. – we land in Bilbao. 25 minutes later we are already standing in front of the airport with our suitcases and wondering what to do now. Of course there are car rental companies, but expensive ones. Our cheap rental company is exactly 1.2 km as the crow flies from us. It seems cool, but Google Maps says that on foot it is over 4 km. The email from the rental company clearly states that a bus with the "OK" sign should pick us up – it is not there. The longer we wait, the more it is gone. We decide to walk without hesitation, but of course by the shortest possible route, because the holidays are running out. I am almost certain that the road we are walking does not yet have the formal status of a motorway, despite the Autovia sign that we pass by the side of the road. We take the suitcases down the first exit straight to the rental company, on the way we pass a bus with the "OK" sign full of Poles who will line up for the cars in front of us. Because the bus arrives at the rental company about 2 minutes before us. As it later turned out, it ran every 30 minutes.
The rental shop is next to the hotels – I go into the first one, suggest booking a one-night stay and leaving them our suitcases for a week… "it is not possible"I'm going into the second... "it is not possible". From this point on, every Spaniard will only irritate me more – this is not a country for me, a person who likes things fast, clear, and to the point. Here, every conversation ends either in 10 seconds because “it’s not possible” or requires the exchange of many Spanish sentences, even if one party only knows how to order a large beer in Spanish.
Explaining to the lady at the rental desk that I don't take any insurance because I don't plan on moving the car for a week requires a bit of verbal acrobatics. This is of course "it is not possible", because it will take up their parking space. So we fold the bikes in front of the rental shop, play Tetris in the trunk of the Corsa (it's a miracle we didn't get a Fiat 500) and I park the car 30 meters away.
11:30 we press “START” on the counters.
Bilbao -> Reinosa
127km / 2577m up (Strava)
So many years of cycling, so many bikepackings, and one still deludes oneself that things will be different than usual. They are not.
We set off with almost empty bottles, we pass through Bilbao and we come across some cycling loop, judging by the number of cyclists. When I say we pass through Bilbao I mean: we enter it on a fast road, even though there is a beautiful cycling route next to it, unfortunately behind a concrete fence. It's a shame, because the view of the city from the road is more than impressive.
Why didn't we fill our water bottles and buy food in Bilbao? I don't know, probably for the same reason I left my sandwiches in the fridge for the journey. I would say that I missed them a lot during the whole trip, but that would be a lie – after all, I'll be eating mostly bread with cheese and ham for a week.
The city itself is beyond perfect – I’m pretty sure I could live here for a while (if it weren’t for the Spanish (and Basques) of course – but I don’t know that yet). We drive along the river, admiring the beautifully preserved buildings and some art. What’s more, the art is simple enough that even I can understand it: who doesn’t like puppies?
As it turns out, there is a cycling loop in every direction. We decide to stop at the nearest shop, because I haven't eaten anything since yesterday's dinner, and I could use a drink. Believe it or not, on the almost 160-kilometer loop, it seems that we pass one shop. Its assortment is comparable to my garbage can by my house. So I take 2 bottles of water and 2 cookies. You could say that I take everything that is worth taking in this shop.
We spend the rest of the day looking out for shops and we can't find a place to park. As Mr. Kazimierz Staszewski sang:
If I knew about it, what I know (…)
If I could go back (…)
When I could finally clear up what was important here (…)
We consider shooting a horse or donkey on the side of the road, cutting off its leg, and quickly drying it in the sun. I don't think we're even the first with this idea, because during the entire trip we pass at least a dozen donkey legs lying on the side of the road. Apparently they're not as tasty as I imagine.
We really do pass places where there should be food, but there is nothing. It's good that the views are at least pleasant enough that we will die in beautiful natural surroundings. Nature itself, because if it weren't for the asphalt that was cracked quite badly, I would have the impression that humanity had died.
In Reinosa, we check in after 8pm. It's an 8 hour drive with 40 minutes of stops along the way. I don't know if there were hotel alternatives along the way, but this is the first place with a supermarket.
We enter the hotel “on Roberta” with our bikes. We pack into two tiny elevators before the lady at the reception has time to react. We pay 240 PLN for Hotel Vejo and quickly go to Lidl, which closes a moment later. I come out of it like I'm Julia Roberts and Richard Gere is walking behind me – bags full of luxury, a smile on my face and a few minutes later, sobering up: what am I going to do with all this? Especially since I forgot my backpack from my suitcase.
In Kamil's eyes I see the question I heard in spring, in Ethiopia, from Robert: "Hey, will it be like this every day?" Without batting an eye, I lie "of course not. It will definitely be better". It won't be, I know it - it never gets better. With every dragée eaten, these trips look the same and the first day looks the same. The first day is always "the last time we start the trip like this".
Reinosa -> Alba de los Cardaños
158km / 2317m up (Strava)
It's a funny day. We're changing our approach to riding. From now on, we're adding at least a kilogram of food to our luggage for a rainy day. Because you know - in normal life, a person can ride a bike and not eat, but when the next day he has to ride a whole day without eating, and then again and again... the situation becomes uncomfortable. The body can eat its muscles, but they will eventually run out, and something has to be pedaled.
The day is fun because we start with a climb from 850 meters to about 2100 meters. El Chivo desde Espinilla – over 20km with an average of over 5%. I would say we reach the upper station of the ski slope, but we have gravel roads, so of course we push the limit a bit and reach the top of Pico Tres Mares.
As we walk through the mountains in our SPDs, we pass a few runners, and I’m pretty sure there’s a bit of consternation as they run past two guys in helmets, their boots clattering on rocks, above 2,000 meters.
The ascent itself is not particularly easy with luggage, but the views and the lack of people make up for it all. It is like in the Alps – we will not go any higher during this trip. However, the real difficulties begin, to our surprise, after the descent. We may have filled our bottles in the spring, which was located as far away from the grazing cows and horses as possible, but it does not change much. A big logistical mistake was the lack of a water filter. I do not trust cows – they are lazy, but subconsciously I feel that there is a cow toilet at the top of our spring.
It's so warm that it can't get any warmer, and we're only, it would seem, 400 meters up. The last time it was this warm was the equator in Uganda. It is a state in which breathing is already difficult and a person is happy inmordewindu, because that's any kind of coolness. Similarly to Uganda, there is no possibility of rescue. No shade, no civilization, no everything, including hope.
I dream of a vacation in cold countries
We come across the first shop at the hundredth kilometer. It doesn't sound bad, but we reach the hundredth kilometer 8 hours after starting the ride. We also have no doubt that we won't come across another shop that day - not even at our chosen hotel. So we stock up on supplies to make up for the current calorie deficit, enough for dinner, breakfast and part of the ride the next day. Get it? Spain, and we stock up on supplies for 4-5 meals in the shop, because there's no other way. Packed to the tops of our bags, we ride another 30 km to the hotel. To make things more enjoyable, a storm chases us and we almost make it before it. The overnight stay makes up for it a lot.
For Hotel Pico Espiguete we pay 166 PLN. After booking outside the shop I immediately get a question (in Spanish of course) about our arrival. With the help of a translator I reply with a beautiful, elaborate sentence that around 19:00 (and in fact, we will be there at 19:01, which in Spanish terms is about 30 minutes too early). As a response I get information that "no problem, dog in the room 10 euros". My faith in automatic translations decreases a bit.
The host greets us with the information "restaurant closed, no shops in the area". That's how I interpret his hundred Spanish sentences. Zero surprise. The price includes breakfast, which consists of coffee and crispy toast. If it weren't for the supplies, we would die. Whatever you say, the location of the hotel is a hit, as is the area.
Alba de los Cardaños -> Riaño
175km / 1829m up (Strava)
OH MY GOD as Janice from Friends would say. This is powerful. Very.
It could just as well be Norway. From the very beginning, which we start at a large lake surrounded by mountains, through all the wonders we pass along the way, to the final 600-meter climb and the subsequent descent. We set off without a specific plan, as the weather forecast has been scaring us with warnings of serious storms since the morning. So we decide to ride "a little longer and we'll see" and so on until the evening. It's a day that I can't describe in any other way than with photos. It's empty and beautiful. We only die once, on the last climb, because of course there's no civilization and the temperature is a bit too high. At that time we don't know yet that we'll miss the warmth.
For a moment we wonder what would have to be here to make it even more beautiful. All we can think of is the presence of dinosaurs – a moment later we pass two signposts to something that looks like a dinosaur museum.
That day we mainly pass lakes and mountains. It's one of the prettiest loops (because we end in a town we've already passed) I've ever done. It's as if you looked up at the sky while driving and asked "can it get any better" and God said "hold my beer". It's not the last day it'll be like this. The changeability keeps you from getting bored.
The receptionist at the Presa Hotel, for which we pay 289 PLN, does not let us in with our bikes – we leave them in the underground car park. This is a problem if your luggage is secured in several bags to your bike. We check in at around 6:30 PM. It sounds good, but as befits local customs, it means waiting at least 2 hours for anything with food to open, despite the fact that the town is very touristy (which means that there is at least one person in it apart from us and the hotel staff). So we go to the bakery, which is miraculously open, buy about 2 kg of bread, which we eat at the hotel and instead of going out for dinner, we fall asleep. A dozen or so euros saved… again.
The view from the window is worth a million dollars, and to enhance the experience, a storm that has been building up all day finally appears. This is the 4th day in a row that we haven't touched warm (or commonly called normal) food. You can get used to it.
It will be very hard to beat this day. But the area is clever. It will not try to beat it at all, it will simply change the landscape completely once again and thanks to this, it will be impossible to compare these days.
Riaño -> Cangas de Onis
171km / 2055m up (Strava)
The day we came here for. We enter Picos de Europa National Park first thing in the morning with the goal of circling it. I don't see how it could be any better than the day before. Or could it be? I don't know, but I'm constantly surprised by the variety of terrain and views. I feel like we're passing through at least 3 countries here every day. This time it's a crossroads of Slovenia, the Dolomites, and Taiwanese canyons.
It's not a day that's easy to describe. Driving this route is a bit like watching the lottery results when you have a winning ticket. You hit three, you think it's great, and the host pulls another number from your ticket. And so on a few times. We have gorges, Alpine mountains, huge rocks and even some terrain. In our case, navigating the terrain means a bit of walking, of course. But it was worth it!
We also have a 50-kilometer continuous descent along the way: from over 1,600 meters almost to zero. It is slightly uncomfortable for someone with limited descent skills. Especially when traveling with luggage. There is a feeling that shooting through the barrier on the bend will end with a minimum of a kilometer-long flight down. Knowing the Spanish, the ambulance helicopter will be having a siesta, and before it sets off to my place, it will still have dinner.
This descent differs from other, wonderful descents by one, fundamental difference. A difference that is felt throughout the entire trip. There are no Germans in their expensive cars. There are no tourists at all and the whole, worst surroundings of the famous passes. At most, you come across an English couple on motorcycles or in a vintage car. It seems that the direct ferry connection between nearby (not on a bike) Santander and British Plymouth is quite convenient for them. In less than 24 hours I can transport myself from my rainy country with heavy equipment to another rainy country, but with bigger hills.
In the evening, we are caught by rain, which will not leave us until the end of the trip. We sleep in Pensión San Pelayo 10, for which we pay 215 PLN. Right after booking, I get a Spanish message in the style of "call me and I will tell you where the accommodation is". I ignore it, we go to the place, stand under the staircase of the building indicated on Booking and call using the simplest English I know "hello, booking reservation, we are in hotel". The nice lady on the phone says a few to a dozen sentences and we hang up. Finally, she finds us in the minute when our patience of waiting ends. And patience is limited, because we have been soaking wet on the bike for an hour.
In Cangas, we see people in the plural for the first time, and we quickly regret it – because the number is too plural. Our apartment is in the very center of a small town where a city party is taking place that day. The music does exactly what the bells do at 6 a.m. in Ursynów on Sunday. It starts around 9 p.m., when we plan to start falling asleep, and ends around 3 a.m. I think. In addition, there is singing, shouting, and a full range of sounds that do not allow us to fall asleep. Of course, we eat lunch and dinner at the grocery store, because there may be many pubs, but placing an order is not easy for someone who does not want to enjoy wine, but simply wants to get a lot of food quickly. The waiter comes, I ask him for a pizza, he runs away, because he is only responsible for serving drinks. The new waiter will not come until he sees that we are already sitting with drinks. We leave, elo.
Once again, sandwiches have to do the trick. I would like to write that it was a very scenic day and every two hours it surprised us with something completely new, but I have the impression that every day in this text will end this way. Even the roads that we treat as "so-so" while driving seem epic in retrospect. This is the problem of beautiful places, the border moves quickly. But not so quickly when the diversity of the terrain begins to overwhelm.
Cangas de Onis -> Queveda
145km / 2323m up (Strava)
Waiting for a pleasant return trip along the coast is like waiting for Christmas presents under the tree. Then you open them and find a book waiting there.
It was supposed to be completely different. We were supposed to go down to the coast and in the sun, happiness, with the wind at our backs and flat, we were to head down the Camino de Santiago towards Bilbao. Only the last point is correct, although I sincerely sympathize with anyone who decided to go on a pilgrimage this way. What is pleasant about walking on asphalt, which is not even particularly scenic - I don't know. The culmination of this senselessness are the walkers passed on the technical road along the motorway. They must have sinned a lot in life or got lost to atone for their sins like that. Although on the other hand we don't have it much better.
It's frosty
Delta, The Cassino
And you get wet
We can't do it with just two of us
Carefully
I brought us here
Because I could
The drops wash away the dirt from us
And now you see what I have underneath
We set off in a light drizzle that grows stronger with each passing hour. To start, we climb a hill that could just as easily have been in Taiwan. We look at the beautiful view from Mirador del Fitu limited by rain to about 10 meters. Then a little down to freeze, and from there it was supposed to be only dry, flat and with wind. The plan was roughly correct, only it turned out exactly the opposite.
Can riding in the rain be enjoyable? Of course, but not with the wind in your face, not when you're tired and not for 10 hours. Especially since the beaches and surfers look much better in the sun. My vision of jumping into the cold ocean in the heat that has been tormenting us for the past few days doesn't seem so appealing now. I even have the impression that the ocean is drier than the asphalt.
The problem is that flat means an endless number of small hills along the coast. It's hard to talk about flatness when the day ends with a vertical gain of 2,323 meters. Somewhere around the 60th kilometer, we have a final crisis. We look at the forecast: no rain. We look ahead: no rain. We start riding – it's pouring like crazy. In fact, it's not raining here – it's hanging in the air. It's so fine that you can barely see it, but it makes riding very difficult. Especially since the temperature doesn't want to exceed 17 degrees.
I dream of holidays in warm countries
We stop at a gas station and look for the nearest place to stay, we have some time to spare. According to the plan, we should finish one day too early. On the other hand, if the entire coast turns out to be so wavy, and the forecasts are right that the weather won't change for a few days, it could be risky.
We set off from the station, only to stop again after a few kilometres, convinced that we can't go on like this. For the first (and last) time on this trip, we eat something warm, because we find a stop at a roadside restaurant, where we'll spend about 2 hours. Ordering is easy, because everywhere there's only "daily menu". It turns out, shockingly, that when a person eats something warm and rests, the world becomes a little better. The rain calms down a bit, and we continue on according to the old strategy of "to the nearest hotel, and then we'll see". In this way, we do almost another 100 kilometers.
We sleep in Posada la Hijuela for 259 PLN. When a nice lady asks me if we want a room downstairs or upstairs, the answer after looking at my heaviest Factor in the world (because of the food supplies from the previous town) I answer that of course downstairs. A very good choice - we get a room with windows to the entrance to the hotel, with two armchairs standing by. We spend the evening listening to Spanish conversations that pierce the head.
Queveda -> Bilbao
170km / 2241m up (Strava)
The weather forecast says only pleasant things: wind at our backs, no precipitation, vacation. Maybe I would believe it if I didn't have windows. Weather forecasts generally work very well here, except they lie all the time. The rain is pouring down so much that after about 10 minutes we don't care anymore. To say that hours of riding in the mountains is the last thing we wanted at that moment is an understatement. Our knees are already going to the side, our bodies don't have much strength after one hot meal in a week, and on top of that the lack of sleep and the miserable previous day, which had clearly chilled us.
On the way we pass hills that are impossible to climb. It is so steep that the white stripes painted on the roads eliminate any traction, even for a wheel heavily loaded with luggage. What's more, it is not very comfortable to walk on them. As if that were not enough, I repeat my adventure with Ethiopia, although this time without a fall. Remember how I wrote that I have one screw in my life that I screw myself – the one in my shoe, which I lost together with the block in the middle of Africa. Well, having learned from experience, this time, while walking I also lose it, but the block stays in place. This means that my foot is still connected to the pedal, but the block is spinning around and I can't unclip it. Info for posterity, straight from the bus stop: putting a thousand newton meters into one screw saves about 3 grams by not using the other one.
After 2 hours we arrive in Santander. From now on I will have as good an opinion of the city as of the bank with the same name. I won't say whether it's good or bad, because I'm afraid that someone will read this and increase my interest rate. Getting through Santander in the rain is a nightmare. The roads are slippery, the paths are torn up, and despite using navigation, we lose track of the route so much that I could give up and take the train. But it's no use - at some point we are surrounded by the motorway and the closed roads of the port. In my head I draw a tombstone: "he died doing what he liked" - and to this I have a picture of me standing on a roundabout in the rain, completely exhausted and soaked. It's a good thing I know the technique "no time to think, you have to drive until something happens" - it saves us once again.
Then it only gets better, at least physically. The wind really starts to blow at our backs and for the first time we start to reach 40 km/h on the flat. Of course, there are hills further on, but Bilbao, which is quickly approaching, manages to attract us. We book a two-night stay in a hotel near the airport: Hospedium Hotel Blu Loiu: PLN 800 for two days.
We stop at a store on the way and I'm pretty sure no one has ever managed to pack as much food into the Tailfin (trunk) as I did that day. I carry food in it, in other bags, in pockets, everywhere.
At the end of the day, we have another half-hour of confrontation with the receptionist, who explains to us in every sentence that the hotel has carpets and you can't enter with a bike. She suggests that we leave the bike leaning against the elevation. A great idea, especially since it's the third day in a row that we're staying in a hotel bordering a city party. In the end, we reach some kind of compromise - the lady suggests that we keep our bikes in the bathtub (probably as a protection for our ass, if anyone asks her), we formally agree, sensing the pointlessness of the conversation.
And everything would be fine, if not for the fact that we are greeted in the room by women's clothes. At this point, I would like to remind you that after a week of riding, the brain does not function as well as before it began. By the way, I also apologize to everyone I corresponded with during the trip. So it takes us a while to realize that we have been given a room already occupied by someone. I have to go get the nice lady and our eyes meet as we both look at our bikes placed on the carpet instead of in the bathroom.
Bilbao -> Bilbao
53km / 1018m up (Strava)
If you're wondering what the roads around Bilbao are like, I recommend the first episode of the second season of the Tour de France on Netflix. In short: narrow, wet, wavy, fast with sharp turns. In the category of roads you want to ride with your knees shaking from side to side, this is probably the last place (or the penultimate, because there are also the Karkonosze in Czecze).
We have one goal: to ride our bikes to the car, throw them in our suitcases and go back to the hotel. It turns out that drawing a loop with less than 2000 meters of elevation gain per 100 km is not easy here. We head for the coast, to see it with a blue sky at least once. On the way, it's like Gassy, only older people and cheaper bikes (most of them with jaws!). A few more climbs, including one quite funny, snake-like, make us realize that we won't achieve anything that day. We shorten the loop and, with our heads down, pretend to take the shortest route to the car. The odometer shows 999 km - perfect.
Summary for non-readers
It's not a week of vacation, it's a month. One day on bikepacking is 2 weeks corporate life in Warsaw. Multiply that by eight and you know that a person returns in a state in which he smiles in the office after returning.
Some -
almost wislawa szymborska
so not everyone.
Not even a majority of everyone, but a minority.
Not counting schools where it is necessary,
and themselvespoetsathletes,
there will be probably two of these people in a thousand.
They like –
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
you like compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
he likes to have his way,
likes to pet the dog.PoetryBikepacking in such places –
just what is itpoetrybikepacking.
More than one wavering answer
this question has already been answered.
And I don't know and I don't know and I'm sticking to it
like a saving handrail.
The subject is simple – I recommend 100%. If I had to do it again, I would cut out the entire coast and add some mountains, and then take a train back from Leon to Bilbao (we discover at the Bilbao station that there is one). Maybe it would be possible to reach the legendary climb, the name of which I have not been able to pronounce properly for years – Alto de L'Angliru (13km with an average of 10%). Or maybe it's not worth extending this route at all, because it's good enough and then fly out on Friday morning, physically f*ck yourself up, come back on Sunday by this train (I don't know about the hours), go straight to work on Monday morning... a bit late and not very lively. It sounds hard, but then you take one day off and see the world in a nutshell
However, if one day you find yourself stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere, without food or water, with a storm approaching, despite the fact that it is sunny all over the country, tired, without any hope and you start to wonder what kind of vacation it is – don't blame me. I take no responsibility for what I write here. If you survive, you won't regret it. If you don't, well, you won't either. You can have "I regret nothing!" engraved on your tombstone.
