Bonkers to Ride into Barcelona

Tuesday 7th April

After our forced rest day, we were feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the hills we knew were on our route today. The weather report was positive, with a temp of 17C. It estimated winds of around 14km/hr. Pretty good riding weather.

Madam Google again....not actually a road! 

Bit of quiet back street. .nice. 

So we had a coffee and some cornflakes, and head off about 9am. We had about 15km of minor ups and downs, and pretty standard road riding, until we got to Sitges. We stopped for coffee and a snack, as cornflakes suck, and thought we'd hit the jackpot. A place that serves bacon and eggs! We have been hanging for our bacon and eggs. We tried to order two Desayuna Championes........10mins too late. They stopped serving it at 11am.......Nooooooooo!

Not quite the breakfast of Championes but good.

                    

Leaving Sitges. Pretty place.

More bloody ham and cheese. But the coffee was great and the fresh squeezed orange juice is awesome.  We had deviated from madam goggles path,  so she had to reset herself. Our punishment was up narrow streets in the wrong direction and now try to get passed this crane truck? What the hell Google?

Wrong way and a truck to get passed.

Managed to squeeze my still fat butt passed,  and then we realized we were not going in the right direction. After some "discussion", we got back on track and headed for the big hills along the coast. The wind started to really pick up straight at us, which was not good.

The road narrowed,  losing it's shoulder,  and the traffic increased. And here come the hills.  There were buses, trucks,  cars,  motorbikes and the odd crazy cyclist. There were signs everywhere telling all vehicles to give cyclists 1.5mtrs at all times. They were very good, but it was still pretty intense.

We've gotta get up there? Phew just breath and pedal.

                    

First rest stop...

We had 15km of this.  Mostly up, but the downs were awesome, even into the 35km/hr winds we kept up with the cars. But as we were focused on getting up there and not getting crushed, there wasn't much chance to take pics. Only a few spots to stop, catch our breath and marvel at our accomplishments.

A little bit of nice down hill. Nice relief.

Wow,  we did it. Well,  I'm still coming...

                    

Glad we're looking back now.

Finally at the top, we could see through the sand storm the beach/port of Barcelona. It wasn't looking  too flash. But down we went, beating the traffic and continuing along the C245 through some tough areas and a million roundabouts.

We're looking at where we're going. ...it's windy now.

Shocking sand storm down there.

We reached the outskirts of the big city, and things started to get scary. We were running off Michelin maps, supposedly cycle routes. It wanted us to get over the river on the National highway.....what the hell? We got to some roadworks, and Will did the "dog when it doesn't want a bath" manoeuvre, digging his heels in and refusing to do it. We had a bit of a moment there, until we believed we'd found another way. Off we went, along a dirt trail through the riverbed. I was stunned to see humpies and veggie patches down there with people living in them. 

Do we get on this or not? NOT!

Through the river bed right to the soccer stadium.

We got through that, and came out who knows where. Every time we rode a few kms, we'd reset the Michelin map, and the bloody thing would add on more kms. Ugh, this was awful. We struggled with dead ends, hills, getting across the train lines and maintaining the right direction. Finally we got ourselves back onto the old N340, which ran mostly down hill to our desired junction another 3kms. We knew there was a round about at which we needed to turn left and we'd be on our final road. We were so buggered, we didn't realise it was THE round about of Barcelona fame. It was my turn to do the dog! No bloody way, with four lanes of everything that moves zipping round with God knows how many exits.....Not Me! 

The Big Barcelona Roundabout. ..aaagghhh.

Feeling stressed Will?

Me too. ...nearly there.

We side walked it, and got onto a perfect bike path on our road, and about a kay and a half found our hotel. Wooooo hooooo! We didn't get squashed by a bus or splattered by cars. I was exhausted, and it had taken us over two and a half hours to navigate from the outskirts of the city to the centre.

I can see the hotel....one more block.

We are training it out of here, I'm not doing that again! Oh, and we're getting a bike GPS! Getting lost is the only thing that gets us down. Worse than hills and wind! But now, we're actually in Barcelona, for real, wow!