I've just arrived in a small seaside resort called Barri Mar. I've got all the sandwiches ready for the boy and sent them my location, so I'm just waiting for them to arrive in about 15 minutes. Just enough time to say hello on here 😊
A lot of people asked me before this trip, "won't you get bored? You'll have so much spare time, what will you do?" But experience from the France trip is that actually, I don't have much spare time at all. I often arrive at lunch or the final evening stop about an hour before the boys. That gives me just enough time to find a shop, but 20 litres of water and enough ingredients to fill 8 baguettes (yes 8...!) and make them up, find somewhere suitable to sit, and set up shop. I really enjoy it though, and actually really enjoy driving. I can play Taylor Swift and sing along full blast without any judgement!!
It's so much harder for the boys. Obviously there's the cycling... We all know that's hard. Well, actually it's still fairly hard to imagine what cycling 80 miles (avg) each day is like, in the blistering heat, for 15 days straight. But it's not just cycling. The amount of planning, admin and faff that goes in to putting on a trip like this is immense. As the whole thing is self guided, even route planning and deciding on where exactly A to B is can be a challenge. Honestly it's a phenomenal amount of work the boys are putting in, off the saddle.
A typical day starts with the alarm going off at 6.30. It's then takes approximate 2.5 hours of faff to have breakfast, get ready, pack up and be ready to leave. It just does. We got steadily more effecient during Framce and had it down to a fine art, but it's incredibly difficult to shave time off that when you're camping. Everything is dirty and needs a clean, and the facilities are not right next to you.
So the boys are then ready to set off sometime between 9 and 10. Then obvs they're on the bike, which from someone like me that can barely cycle down to Sidmouth and back, it's such a huge challenge that they're doing. The normally arrive at the lunch stop around 2.30, break for around an hour, then back on the bikes.
They then ride all afternoon, in the hottest part of the day, and depending on how many miles they do, normally arrive at camp between 5 and 6. They then spend about 30 minutes cooling down, drinking water, lying on the floor trying to stop sweating and get their breath back. It then takes around another 2-3 hours of faff and admin to get the tents put up, mattresses inflated and to cook and eat dinner and to wash up. We then discuss the next day's ride, and agree a meet point and end point, weighing up accommodation options and places that would work. We've generally finished all of our jobs by around 9.30 or 10pm.
And this is a day when meeting points are straight forward. We've been lucky so far and managed to find each other straight away. Yesterday was really difficult for me to find somewhere to stay, it took me from 5pm until 7pm, and I had just parked the car when the boys arrived. They had done 110 miles yesterday, so I had wanted to spend a good hour or so trying to get as much of the tents done as I can on my own. But that didn't happen.
Moral is still high in camp though, but our boys are definitely in need of a rest day! I wonder how much of Valencia they'll be able to see...
Here's some photos from this morning
The boys have just arrived :)
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