Days 61 to 65 – Spain, Coast to Coast. The Pyrenees

Tuesday September 13th we set off from Tossa de Mar on a 5 day meander through the Pyrenees to the north east coast of Spain.

Day 1 – To Suria

To be remembered as the day Norma had a spontaneous haircut in a village named  Montseny. I take my life in my hands as I publish this.

 

Some more pics of this days journey.

To Suria.

An easy enough day of 150k.

Day 2 – To El Pont de Suert

We headed up into the foothills of the Pyrenees through and passed the endless villages and hilltop towns.

Passed lakes, waterways and staked out police – well we were here first.

Onto El Pont de Suert a beautiful village which caters for those who ski, mountain climb, absail, hike and ride motorcycles. As usual in all of these parts the town closes down and goes to sleep between 1 and 4.30pm. What a life.

An enjoyable day’s ride of 190k

Day 3 – To Biescas

Not unlike El Pont de Suert and existing for the very same reason tho a fair bit closer to the snow, we commenced the day with a 40/80k detour to visit Vielha. More French than Spanish it’s only been accessible from Spain since 1948 via a rather long tunnel under the high mountains of the Pyrenees.

The riding is very relaxed with excellent roads in general even tho we chose to mostly use the less travelled roads. It seemed we had the road to ourselves for most of the day as we traversed this section of the Pyrenees.

To our hotel at Biescas

215k and another day of pleasant riding. The weather is getting colder now though, with much of this day being overcast and temps down to 10c. Autumn is here in the mountains.

Day 4 – To Logrono

It rained overnight and there was a snow chill in the air as we kitted for cold and wet weather that never really eventuated – well not today anyway. But there was fresh snow on the hills behind us that yesterday had been hidden by low cloud.

 

And more of the same.

We’d decided to bypass Pamplona famous for it’s ‘Running of the Bulls’, but that was no never mind as we came across Olite which has the same thing. And we arrived at the time of one of their many Festivals.It seems the whole province dresses in red and white and comes to town for a good time and a parade.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours here and were introduced to world of Tapas. In every bar, cafe or restaurant there are lined up on the counter a line of plates of a variety of local cuisine. One merely points and for very little one can enjoy the delights of the country. I think it’s marvelous, Norma’s a little fussier than I am though 🙂

Logrono is a city and a modern one at that. Certainly nothing to write home about.

230k today.

Day 5 – Zarautz

It looked like we might be able to skirt around some inclement weather,

but looks can be deceiving, especially when confronted with this and TomTom is leading us right over the top.

Needless to say it closed in to a very wet day. We certainly can’t complain as this is only the second time in 41 days of riding that we’ve had any rain, the first being the 4th day out and then only for an hour. But not this, this was cold and heavy and didn’t let up.Our original route had been through some delightful looking hills to the coast some 50k west of our destination, but prudence is always a good thing so when a freeway that tunnels through every hill presented itself just as the heavens opened with a vengeance, we paid our toll and rode the final 50k in relative luxury to Zarautz.

The plan had been to enjoy the beach for a few days before heading north through France on the final leg of our wonderful journey. Not on this beach and in this weather we’re not! So we’ll take a bus to San Sebastian down the road, catch up on the blog, do some accounts that need doing and indulge in some tapas.

145k for the day.

 

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