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!
