Saturday September 27, 2014

We left the hotel at 8:15 under cloudy skies.  We watched the sun fighting its way through grey skies. It was a little cool to start the day, but as the sun worked its way higher in the sky, it got a little warmer.

However, the grey skies won the fight today.  As we progressed south on a lovely ribbon road with cattle farms on both sides of the road the weather became quite humid.

As we came into Caceres it started to rain, then it poured down.  We were close to a Carrefour supermarket, so we sheltered there while it stopped.  Ralf went in to the Carrefour as there was an Orange store in there and I thought he might be able to update his telephone.  They didn’t speak any English and he was unsuccessful in adding more credits to his phone.

He also got the provisions for dinner tonight – Dinner Menu #1 – Pasta with tomato sauce and tuna with olives and garlic.

I spoke to a very nice Spanish guy who was very impressed with our trip, he spoke good English.  He was a cyclist who had cycled, in one day, 360kms from the Pyreneans to the Atlantic Ocean including some of the mountain cols that are climbed on the Tour de France.  I was very impressed.  He told me I was the better cyclist, I disagreed with him.  My daily rides are nothing compared to a 360 km one day ride, especially over some of the mountains that he went over.

Eventually it stopped raining and we made our way to the campsite.  We decided to take one of their cabins, which was only E8 more expensive than a campsite.

We managed to do some “housekeeping” – washing and sewing, – our cycling gear is seeing the worst for wear.  We have been wearing them almost every day now for 10 months and they are beginning to wear quite badly.  We had to do some minor sewing repairs on the jerseys.  Drying the bikes and cleaning the chains is always a priority after they have got wet.  I will have to give the bikes a good clean at some stage.

On checking my email I got some awesome news – Joy’s surgeon met her today and told her they got all the tumor.  Life is really good.