July 2010
17 posts
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. ...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Hard rain on the road to Rod City
The thing I fear the most in the first week is crashing - Alberto Contador said that last night on the eve of the start of the Tour de France. I know what he means. This morning a tin of Pringles rolled unexpectedly into the road in front of me and nearly caused an almighty pile up on the road out of Almeida. So there’s a tip Alberto, if you’re following this blog, (and I suspect a lot...
A FILTHY FARMYARD SOMEWHERE IN ZAMORA
Due to the early start, flatish roads and the fact that we didn’t wake up knackered we have done 66kms and stopped for an early lunch in a bar in Valer - a small village that resembles a large farm and smells accordingly. Finding the bar was not easy as the proprietor had shunned the idea of publicity and dispensed with the idea of having any type of sign or identification mark to...
A puncture on the road to Puebla
PUEBLA (Thursday night)
I must say Spanish waitresses can be quite rude. The Goat tried to order two beers in our hotel in Puebla and the waitress immediately stuck two fingers up at him.
We passed through a long unlit tunnel today which is always a bit dodgy on a bike but things took a turn for the worse for the Goat when his cycling shades slipped over his eyes from their perch on top of his...
Another day in Llanoland
VERIN, GALICIA (Thursday morning)
Cycling is brilliant for curing medical complaints. Take the Goat’s broken nose for example. By Monday night I was fed up of hearing about how bad his hooter was. By Wednesday night he had so many cycling related complaints that the broken conk was hard pushed to make it into the top 10 on his ailments chart. It’s really quite simple: if you’ve...
Road fatigue sets in on Day 2
CELANOVA
Turned in early at 1.30 last night and we have hit the road early as a result. There are no World Cup flags or bunting in Spain to celebrate last night’s success against the Portuguese - the Spanish just crash their cars instead and leave the debris all over the road. Now we’re lunching in Celanova although lunching is probably the wrong word because although the plaza here is...
June 2010
14 posts
Spain dump Portugal out of World Cup but Steve...
What are the chances of finding yourself in Spain, close to the Portuguese border, when Spain are about to play Portugal for a place in the quarter finals of the World Cup? It’s about as likely as the Goat knowing where we are or where we are going (today it was two o’clock in the afternoon before he enquired as to where we were heading). The first of these has happened but I suspect...
I realised an early start was out of the question...
Martin’s idea of taking it easy for the first night lasted for about two beers. The bar receipt in my pocket when I woke up for the second time this morning shows that we had 26 beers in El Bar Portugal. The first time I woke up it was 4.30 and I found myself staring at a flower bed in the municipal gardens with the Goat lying comatose beside me. We got up and staggered around for a bit...
4 Jack Duckworth surfaces in Galicia
The only casualty of the flight appears to be Martin’s sunglasses which he has had to stick together with gaffer tape which is quite embarrassing as I do not really want to be associated with someone who looks like Jack Duckworth. As if that isn’t embarrasment enough he then stuck the repaired visual aids on top of his head, promptly forgot where they were and then, ten seconds later,...
Ryanair in failure to damage bike scandal
More shocking than England’s exit from the World Cup is the fact that Ryanair have delivered my bike undamaged to Santiago. Predictably however the Goat’s bike is in shit order but I believe the blame for this lies not with Michael O’Leary’s outfit but with the Goat’s poor mental attitude to cycle maintenance. I don’t know what sort of shop he took it to for...
Goat comatose before take-off
Yesterday I provided a list of things that do not form the ideal preparation for a massive bike tour. Unfortunately I am now able to add a few more items to that list: 6 - Try arriving at the agreed time at the Martin’s house to find his car but no sign of the Goat himself 7 - Try going down the Coach and Horses to ask where he is only to find a bloke called Tom saying, “He’s...
Goat's passport finally arrives
Anybody who thinks it is easy arranging a bike tour should try this: 1 - Fly Ryanair 2 - Get George Osborne to arrange an emergency budget for the day after you are supposed to leave 3 - Team up with an idiot who gets his nose broken twice in the month before you leave 4 - Team up with an idiot (the same idiot) who discovers his passport has expired just before you are about to leave 5 - Arrange...
BBC appearance upsets tour preparations
Preparations for the tour were rudely interrupted yesterday by BBC Wales requesting my appearance on the late night news programme Dragon’s Eye. Nothing to do with the tour of course - they wanted me to play a couple of verses of the song I did on Wednesday at the Budget Breakfast (the snappily titled Significantly Accelerated Structural Deficit Reduction Plan Blues). “You’d...
Llanoland glossary
Dave in Cwmbran has asked for a glossary of some of the terms used in the blog as he is not a cyclist and is not familiar with the parts of Spain (Llanoland) that we visit. Frankly I’m not sure that Dave is familiar with Cwmbran either but here goes:
Cabron – Spanish for Goat but commonly used as an insult which calls into question the recipient’s mental agility or to suggest the use of dubious...
Budget day blues
Today is Budget Day and I’ll bet George Osborne hasn’t given a further thought to the chaos that he has caused to the organisation of our 7th major tour. The last laugh is on the Chancellor however as it turns out that the great British public is more interested in our trip than in Osborne and his significantly accelerated structural deficit reduction plan.
I have been inundated with emails asking...
The bike ride that George Osborne and a bloke...
Monday 21st June 2010
This year’s 700 mile cycling tour of the Iberian Peninsula should have started today but a couple of factors have conspired together to postpone this sporting spectacular to next Monday instead. First of all George Osborne stuck his oar into the proceedings by rather selfishly announcing that the coalition government’s first budget, the “emergency” budget, is to be held...
Get on your bike !
He is at it again ! Stephen Theaker, our senior partner is putting on the Lycra (look away now) and cycling hundreds of miles for charity. This time it is Spain that be welcoming Steve and his infamous cycling partner the Goat.
Watch our here for regular updates of Steve’s progress, as he blogs his way through the roads and hills of Rioja country, all for the benefit of St...