2010 Santiago to Sevilla

Sevilla - you’ll never walk alone

Finding our hotel in Sevilla (the hotel we had posted the bike bags to all those days ago) was like a mini tour in itself. Local after local gave us directions that sent us around the city from north to south and from east to west with the Goat wanting to stop for a cerveza in every bar along the way on the grounds that the quality of information was better from someone you knew was local. Unfortunately the quality of our understanding of this information deteriorated but we found it in the end, in the back streets and close to the river.

“You speak very good English,” said the Goat to the receptionist when we staggered through the door sweating and smelling from our efforts rather more than usual.

“Thanks. I am English,” said the Girl and a certain amount of guffawing took place which left the girl with the impression that she had just booked in two madmen.

The good news is that the bike bags had arrived and we took everything down to the garage in the basement of the hotel and took everything apart and threw it in the bags and dumped them in a dark corner to fester overnight. It is a great feeling to kick off the old cycling shoes and other sweaty accessories for the final time and get cleaned up for a proper look around the city.

We’ve been here before of course and we immediately went looking for an Argentinian bar which had pictures of the “hand of God” incident on its walls. But it had disappeared somewhere into the mists of time. The closest we came was finding a waiter in the Jewish quarter of town who said he knew of it. Then he asked if we were Liverpool fans and before we had the time to answer he said, “Never walk alone,” and rushed off to get us a plate of olives.

And so we passed our final hours in the great city that is Sevilla looking a bit like tramps. The Goat had attempted to clean his trousers and shoes but had failed somewhere between badly and miserably. And I had not cleaned my muddy shoes at all - though by some fortune a Real Betis shoe shine boy turned up out of the blue and spotted an opportunity to make a few euros and I was back in business with a clean pair of dappers and the whole of Sevilla before us.

And so that’s it for another year - Espana are about to win the World Cup and I will leave with my top 10 tips for cycling in Spain:

1 - Don’t get your nose broken by a golf club just before you’re about to go

2 - Check your passport didn’t expire just before Christmas

3 - Don’t let your mate watch England v Germany the afternoon before you’ve got to go to the airport

4 - Don’t waste money on hotels if you’re going to sleep in the municipal gardens. Just go straight there and book in at a nice looking flower bed

5 - Don’t believe anything the locals say ever.

6 - Don’t go to cafes that are located right next to dungheaps

7 - Don’t cycle in Spain in the afternoons

8 - Don’t take short cuts through orange groves at four in the morning

9 - Watch out for the melon guarders

10 - If you hear the Goat is coming, turn around and go the other way

Adios amigos y hasta luego
Goat takes mud bath in orange grove

It’s Thursday morning, Espana are through to the World Cup final and the Goat is in the bathroom washing half a field of orange grove mud from his filthy garments. We lost each other during last night’s celebrations and both ended up walking back to the Hostal alone. The next thing I remember after leaving the Sevilla bar is being invited into the back of a Guardia Civil car by two cops who wanted to know what I was doing wandering the streets at whatever time of night it was. I told them I was looking for the Goat and tried to describe him to them which resulted in looks of confusion and horror. I managed to get Martin on his mobile and he gave me some directions that baffled the cops and frankly meant nothing to me either. So eventually the cops kicked me out and I came back the way we had come in and got back around two. The doors were locked by then and I had to get back in via the fire escape. Due to his poor navigational skills the Goat, when he finally decided it was time to go home, chose a complicated route that involved wading through a mud bath he found in an orange grove which he claims nearly took his life. To be fair, when I next saw him he was caked in mud up to the cannon on his Arsenal shirt! He arrived back at the hostal just after 4am. By this time the proprietor had opened up the bar to serve the early morning truckers their coffee and the Goat had to sneek in quickly to avoid the embarrassment of the truckers thinking was a midnight bog-snorkeller. When we staggered downstairs a few hours later there was a trail of mud leading from the front door and up the stairs to our room. Hopefully the 5 euro tip I left will help to pay for the additional cleaning materials required.

Finally we have wheeled into Sevilla and we are cleaning up and washing out the cycling kit for the last time. Unfortunately all are other clothes are covered in mud. The receptionist in the hotel is English and I’m sure I heard her muttering to her colleague, “Que pasa? I thought they’d gone upstairs to get cleaned up, but they’ve come down looking worse than before!”

Sevilla is a great city full of beautiful buildings and interesting people. Strange characters are not the provence of small town Spain - we had just sat down for our first beer in a Sevilla café to ask directions to the hotel (this is one of the Goat’s innovations to ensure he starts drinking as soon as possible) when we were joined on the next table by the most ridiculous man in the world. If you can imagine the smallest of the Chuckle Brothers wearing a bright blue tie-dyed T shirt, white shorts and huge blue shoes then you’d be close to the mark. It may just be that the sun has finally got to us, and I’m sure he was a very nice man, but we were both crying in our beer every time he spoke. Even a fat Spaniard pushing a shopping trolley full of dog food across the cobbled street paused momentarily to take in the strange sight. Thankfully he didn’t stay long and we were left to hone our observational skills over another beer.
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Goat and Columbus mistaken for melon thieves

The Goat is crowing today because I got a touch of sunstroke yesterday and he didn’t. He thinks he is one of the hard men of cycling but, to be honest, it is only the copious quantities of drugs that he consumes daily that keeps him on the road at all. Anything a bike shop or chemist will sell him goes down his neck every time we stop. This may keep him going in the short term but I fear that eventually we will have another Tommy Simpson incident on our hands. Tommy was the Brit who died climbing Mont Ventoux in the Tour de France back in the sixties after taking a cocktail of alcohol and various other stimulants.

Sunstroke itself is quite debilitating but I managed to eat quite a lot last night and felt OK in the morning. The Goat on the other hand fuelled himself up on San Miguel and Cruzcampo with a side order of 7 olives and a small plate of patatas. Frankly I am amazed that Tommy “the Goat” Simpson has not already keeled over in the Mountains of Extremadura - he is riding his luck as well as his bike.

Today we have done a further 103kms and we are now within easy striking distance of Sevilla in a hostal 3kms outside Cantanilla. There were no hotels in the town of Cantanilla itself and that’s why we are stuck out on a crossroads in the middle of dusty nowhere. The proprietor is a jocular character, though constant references to Germany beating England become a bit wearing, but his wife is a different matter altogether. She only smiles on Thursdays and so we determined immediately to leg it into town to watch the match and enquired as to whether a taxi could be ordered. This invoked much guffawing as the proprietor was clearly of the opinion that we should cycle the 3 kilometres. He obviously has no concept of the likelihood of the Goat and me cycling 3 kms down a dark highway after a night on the town. We opted for the walking option and set off under the still baking sun in the direction of town. To avoid the traffic we walked along the verge of a melon field and saw in the distance a young man who we had seen when we cycled by earlier, sitting on a huge stack of polythene with w sun shade over his head. As we approached he seemed to become agitated and when we finally reached him he sprang up and challenged us as to what we were doing. He relaxed a little when he ascertained that were the idiot cyclists he had waved to earlier and then explained that he was a melon guarder and he was worried that we were melon thieves. “I’ve never pinched a melon in my life,” explained the Goat and the relieved melon guarder, who will be there till 7 in the morning said he would see us later on. Meanwhile, the first bar we have found is the Real Betis Social Club Cantillana bar where they are all watching the bull fighting on TV. But at 7.10 virtually all of them disappeared, presumably to watch the match at home, so we quickly legged it down the street to the FC Sevilla Social Club Cantillana where there were still loads of old codgers watching the bull fighting but it looked like there would be a good crowd for the match. Ironically, just before we left the Real Betis bar Martin cleaned out the fruit machine with a 17 Euro jackpot win and so, the Goat has inadvetedly diverted 17 Euros from the coffers of the second division club and spent them on Cruzcampo with Primera Liga giant Sevilla! So now FC Sevilla are 17 Euros better off than Real Betis and it’s all down to the goat! Arriba Espana!
One broken left pedal, held together with gaffer tape for the last 3 days
Hallucinating on a sunny afternoon

One of the highlights of the tour so far has to be year magnificent descent from Salamanca into Extremadura. It was long and fast and full of breathtakingly sweeping curves. Above a certain speed bikes start to shake and a touch on the brakes might be required. With a normal machine that has been properly set up this might be somewhere between 70 and 90 kph. In the case of the Goatmobile this shaking phenomenon seems to kick in at around half that speed. I was behind the Goat for some of the descent and I’m sure some of the debris that whistled past me came from his machine and this might have included his helmet which at some point has fallen off the back of his bike.

This morning’s ride from Merida to Palomas has been a wonderful mixture of serenity and madness, with some hallucinating thrown in for good measure. We left Merida on the stork highway - a wonderful road where these magnificent birds serenaded us out of town by about by clakking from their perches on the pylons by the side of the road. Before that the Goat nearly crashed into a man who was walking quickly across a bridge smoking a cigar and reading a book. This unusual combination probably takes some skill although clearly he wasn’t very good at it, Talking of unusual sights, in the next village we saw a man who must have had the biggest head in the world and a man on a clapped out motorbike who had a face like a walnut and two workmen’s buckets for panniers. Still they probably think we’re a bit strange, especially now that the Goat has torn a hole in the back of his cycling shorts and is now cruising through Extremadura with his backside hanging out.

The heat is still on. It was 38 degrees at ten o’clock last night so it must be at least 42 now (lunchtime). This is where the hallucinations come in. When it gets that hot you scan the horizon looking for signs that there might be a bar or café in the next village where you can get more water. The tell tale signs are usually a couple of plastic chairs outside the bar. Twice now in our desperate search for a watering hole we have mistaken agricultural equipment for these plastic chairs. It’s easily done - try standing out in the sun for 6 hours with nothing to drink but hot water and then look at a row of red and green tractors - they will look like plastic chairs. The strange thing was that we both made the same mistake! The second incident involved a scooter covered with a piece of old carpet and with an old tomato box strapped on top. On closer inspection this looked nothing like a plastic chair and I can offer no explanation for this ridiculous sighting.

Today was a really hard day, mainly I think because we had expected it to be easy and it wasn’t. The heat was the main problem though the fact that they closed another road in front of us and gave us an extra and unexpected 20kms to do right at the end of the day didn’t help.

But we have made it to Lerena and found a nice hotel near the plaza. The senorita on reception told us we could put the bikes in the hotel garage and gave the Goat directions which included the fact that it had a white door. Unfortunately she didn’t make it clear to the hapless Goat that it was a garage door and so he turned left out of the hotel, as instructed, and then knocked on the door of a private house. “Shall I bring the bike inside?” said the Goat to a bemused woman who was obviously cooking the dinner and he was, I think, about to add, “Shall I put it by the sofa?” when a neighbour intervened and pointed us in the direction of the garage down the road while I apologised profusely to the woman and promised I would never bring him back to Lerena again. The two businessmen who were in the bar of our hotel when we arrived will certainly be hoping that is the case as he has taken to plonking himself in the bar on arrival.
Oven in the sky (Coria to Merida)

Today is all about avoiding the heat. Everything else has disappeared as an issue. The track the bike takes on the road has to be the one that maximises any available shade. At 7.30 in the morning it is still warm. The forecast today is 42 degrees. We have to drink continuously and save energy wherever possible. Talking has become difficult. We sit with vacant stares at rest stops until one of us tries to say something and suddenly stutters out some gibberish and nothing is achieved. Blankness and silence returns. Even the locals can’t be bothered to say, “Buenas dias,” and make do with muttering just Buenas. But it’s a stunning ride this morning running alongside some of the large lakes of Extremadura and everything is good.

We stop often to take on more water and have now stopped for food in the Café Bollocks in Caceres. The policy in Extremadura on eating on Mondays is that it should be discouraged wherever possible. None of the gas stations sell anything edible and we even found a McDonalds that didn’t serve food in the mornings. But the Café Bollocks takes the biscuit (or it would if it sold them). The staff here have been trained to talk complete bollocks and to change their minds about what is available as often as possible. There is an extensive menu of bocadillos (sandwiches) but the girl said they weren’t available. She had to ask about the hamburger and came back with the message that that was off too but we could have Cuban rice. While the Goat was pondering on this a bloke turned up and asked if we wanted sandwiches. I told him the girl had said they were off but he shrugged and said she was wrong and that the Goat could have his hamburger and why didn’t I have a French omlette? It was a great question because apparently Cuban rice had by then disappeared from the list of things that it was pointless asking for. When the food finally came he had covered his options well by sticking my omlette in a sandwich and calling it a bocadillo. In the toilets meanwhile a bloke in a Spain shirt, I think it was Fabregas, was warming up early for the semi-finals by doing some stretching routines and shouting, “Yaaaah!” He had a bandage around his face. Presumably if he does this on a regular basis he quite often gets a poke in the eye.

Finally after 135kms we have arrived in Merida and had the first crash of the tour when the Goat was trying to get out of the way of an ambulance as we climbed a cobbled street into the town, much to the amusement of the ambulance driver. The only damage it appears was his shaving razor so now he can’t shave, he’s lost his cycling helmet, and broken his watch strap and his cycling computer. There seem to be no limits to his incompetence. To cap it all we have made the mistake of checking into a hotel where the rooms are full of electronic gadgetry. Predictably the Goat’s curiosity has got the better of him and rather irritatingly the room has almost come alive around us with windows and blinds opening and closing, lights going on and off and Elton John singing in the bathroom. The problem will be switching these things off, which can all be worked on timers, and I have no doubt that we will be woken up in the early hours of the morning by an orchestra striking up in the toilet!
Rehydration
Postcards from Paraguay

The plateau that is Salamanca ends at the Puerto Pedrales and from there you can see almost the whole of Extremadura spread out before you shimmering in the furnace heat. The descent was long and fast (7% to 9.5%) and the road was good enough to get up speeds of 70 to 80kph. But the trouble with coming down off a plateau is the heat. It crashes into you in waves as if someone is constantly opening and closing a giant oven door in the sky. Tarmac melts. The water in our bottles gets almost too hot to drink and there are bits of your bike that you just can’t touch. Add to this the fact that all the oxygen seems to have been sucked out of the air and you will understand why we are relieved to have finished today.

We have therefore decided that will have to start early from now on and try to finish before the afternoon heat sets in. The Goat tried that last night to no effect though so I give much for the chances of this plan seeing the light of day. I was a bit tardy with the last beer and the Goat nipped off alone in the direction of the hotel. It was locked of course and so when I got back I tripped over a comatose Goat who was getting some shut-eye in the doorway of the hotel. I woke him up and together we attempted to master the technology required to open the door but failed miserably and had to ask for help from a passing senorita who rang the hotel on her mobile and got Luis to come down and open it.

In spite of the late start today’s ride was a good one. We rode most of the way to the top of Pedrales in the company of two Yorkshiremen who were doing a few (pannierless) rides in Salamanca. I say, “in their company,” although I did notice that they were careful to keep half a bike’s length upwind of the Goat.

Now we we’re in a Portuguese bar owned by Christina who has taken a bit of a shine to Martin and tried to fatten him up by the simple procedure of offering him food. “We’re not used to eating proper meals!” protests the Goat as he tucks into his bacalao and chips. Never mind that, by virtue of the fact that we have drunk more than 10 Superbocks (Portuguese beers) we have both been entered into a competition and I am now the proud owner of a Superbock pen and the Goat has his clutches on a deck of Superbock cards with which he is right now planning to fleece most of the local herberts in the bar who are mysteriously hanging on his every word.

Meanwhile the sun has gone down and all manner of characters have started to crawl out of their pits where they have been siesta-ring and are right now filling the bar with confusions and chaos. Try this in a Portuguese bar: mention that you can’t remember the name of your hotel and watch as the whole bar scrambles to investigate the situation. Our plans for an early night seem to be doomed.
Spanish football incident

ROD CITY (Saturday night 7.30pm)

Everyday is different on the road - last night we were in a fly-blown Zamoran village little cheering on Uruguay against Ghana with a few local wide boys and tonight we are sipping beers in the colourful plaza of the walled city of Cuidad Rodrigo. There are Spanish flags everywhere and an air of expectancy. Germany have dumped the Argentinians out of the Copa Mundial and it’s them they must play if they can beat Paraguay.

ROD CITY (10.30 pm)

Vamos Espana - David Villa’s three post goal has put Espana through! We watched the first half in a bar in the plaza but due to speed-of-service deficiencies in the cerveza department we moved back to the hotel for the second half to watch it in the company of our friendly host Luis. Luis is a Real Madrid fan who has never heard of Nottingham Forest and was amazed when I told him they won the Champions League twice back in the middle ages. Unbelievably, five seconds before Spain scored the only goal of the match, the TV signal in the hotel went dead - and in the eerie silence that followed we heard the cheers and shouting from the street outside and knew that our adopted team was on its way to the semi-finals. Now we’re back in the plaza and cars and pick-up trucks are driving around waving Spanish flags and sounding their horns and everyone is happy, except of course three million Paraguayans who are loitering somewhere in the suburbs of Ascuncion in the depths of misery. Such is life, such is the Copa Mundial.