Day 8: Wednesday, July 10, 2019


Today was the first day of the bike trip.

Lara and Annie arranged the trip through Spain is More (https://www.spainismore.com/en). It was unlike any bike trip I have ever done. (My cycling buddies and I have used VBT the most often and one trip each with Duvine in 2015 to see and ride the routes of the Tour de France and this year with Backroads for a domestic trip.)

There are a number of major differences in the Spain is More trip. First, we used mountain bikes and they were heavy! They had a rear rack and waterproof panniers but I still think they were heavier than my fattie. 




In addition to the panniers, they had a handlebar bags that contained an extra tube and a patch kit. There was a mini-pump on the frame. It was a self-guided tour so there were no tourguides or sag wagon. You were pretty much on your own.

They dropped off the bikes at our hotel so we never even met any of the people from the tour company. We met some of the people who they contracted to do things like transport our bags to the next hotel and a guy who drove me from my last stop to a bus station at the start in Santander.

But it was just a little weird not to meet anyone from the tour company. I know that Annie spoke with at least one of them on the phone the day before trying to straighten out the hotel room situation.

Since there were no guides, we were on our own to get started too. We were somewhat bound by the times that breakfast was available in the hotels but other than that, we were on our own. We would pack food for lunch or stop somewhere and the same was true at the end of the day. When we reached the appointed end-point, we checked ourselves into the hotel where they had made our reservations, found our luggage that had been transported there, and hunted for food. Annie and Lara were terrific in filling in the gaps of the tour that my other tours provided.

Our first riding test was to get out of Santander, a medium-sized city. Here we are looking at the GPSes on our phone as we try to get out of town. I am not exactly sure what Lara is doing but it does look like she is happy about something. 


Once we got out of town, the riding was a lot less stressful. Besides the main routes (we were on the northern route), there are multiple paths along each route. The turns were pretty clearly marked with signs like these.






They put the arrows everywhere including places where they probably weren't supposed to.


We still missed a few turns. The signs were designed to help walkers, so on a couple of occasions, we would blow by them and when we retraced our steps, we saw that we had missed some of the less obvious signs.

Here we are on one of the paths leaving the city. This was one of the nicer paths that wasn't paved.


Most of the roads looked like this.


This stretch of road made me want to sing the Beatles song "The Long and Winding Road"...


That's Pedro going under the bridge with a lovely mural.


This was a typical view of the scenery. Pictures taken with an iPhone don't really do justice.


We must have seen dozens of pilgrims on each day. I can't imagine doing this trip on foot. But I guess if it is too easy, it's not really a pilgrimage?


I really liked this bridge. At first, I thought it was a pedestrian/bike-only bridge. But a number of cars passed by while we were looking around.


I got the kids to wave.


We passed through a couple of old towns. This picture is typical: a small town square, cobbled streets.


I still have no idea what is the appeal of riding on cobbles. And we were on mountain bikes! 

Our destination was Santillana del Mar. We thought it was pretty cruel that it was not on the beach with a name like "del Mar".

Here is the front of our hotel.


And on the other side was this. 


A perfect place to sit after a ride.

This was the view of the town out of a second story balcony of our hotel.


This was the view from a first-floor terrace where we had breakfast the next morning.


We walked around town after getting settled. Here are a couple of pictures of Santillana.




There allegedly is potable water coming from this spigot.




Here's the group minus Corinna.


Here are the data for the day's riding: https://www.strava.com/activities/2520915187

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