Another long day and I was in two minds whether to do back roads or motorways…a text from Brittany Ferries during breakfast to let me know there would be a 3 hour delay made up my mind…back roads and slowly so that I do not have to sit around in Santander for too long.
Not many photos today…but the first is kind of ironic. There seems to have been work to make some of the busier roads less bendy and often the old piece of road has been left in place and becomes an ad hoc parking spot (I have used them this way a couple of times).
On this new section of road they appear to have goofed in their choice of angle or survey of the underlying geology when cutting the new road through the hill.
Today was the one day where I got a proper soaking. I could see rain in the distance and stopped to fit my hand guard covers, I decided I would wait until I got closer to the black clouds on the horizon before putting my waterproof ‘romper suit’ on.
This was a bad decision…about half a mile further on I went round a bend into the most ridiculous downpour, within approximately 50m it had gone from starting to rain to me being soaked to the skin, being pelted with hail and the road becoming like a river!
Not too surprisingly despite having a waterproof camera I did not take photos, though happily about a mile further on I was back in sunshine and less than an hour later I was dry.
My cross country route meant I travelled through the Navarra and Rioja wine regions, clearly pictures of vines in these areas are not nearly so notable as in the Pyrenees.
In the following photo it is not easy to see but there is a thin grey line running near the base of the hills. It is a concrete lined ‘canal’ that runs for miles, I assume it is used for irrigation. Whatever it is for it looks fairly recently and must have taken a huge amount of effort to build.
There were not any other notable things to take pictures of for the remainder of the long ride. I did learn from my earlier mistake though and put my waterproofs on before the last mountain pass approaching Santander, which was the correct decision for a change because it involved riding through the middle of a black cloud, visibility was about 10m and it was dark, probably the worst ‘fog’ conditions I have experienced.
Eventually I am on the ferry and leaving Spain…
I’ll be doing one more blog to reflect on the trip, more as notes to remind me about things when planning subsequent trips, but there may be some things I forgot to include on the way through or that I can expand on that I will drop into the last ‘Pyrenees 2018’ blog.
