In Pursuit of Spain and France

Preparation is pretty much non-existent for this trip but that’s the beauty of bike packing. We have a start point and an endpoint, and in between we have 15 days of spontaneous adventure and experiences.

Otra cerveza, por favor. Je voudrais un vin, s’il vous plaît. My rusty Spanish and very, very poor schoolboy French skills are being dusted off, with an emphasis on our planned extended lunches as a means to sustaining our cycling trip across Spain and France.

A few years ago, Pete wrote a journal for us on his experience retracing Edward Thomas’ iconic “In Pursuit of Spring”. This time around, it's a homage to the likes of Laurie Lee in his equally iconic ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’.

Spain, host of our starting leg, is a well-trodden tourist destination yet its vast interior remains relatively untouched on the tourist trail. In a quick poll of friends, almost all have worked or been on holiday in Spain, yet none have experienced inland Spain. Laurie Lee wrote beautifully of his incredible adventures on foot from north to south and so it’s time for Pete and I to team up and see it for ourselves. 

A diagonal ride from south west Spain (well, we’re starting in Faro) to the north east will take us over mountains and an expanse of relatively unpopulated rural interior. We’ll aim to bivvy most nights but may well throw money at the problem if it gets very cold and wet, especially at altitude. This is most definitely a holiday and not a suffer fest! And of course we’ll need to get home from there, so for our second leg, we’ll cycle up the west coast of France, hugging the coastline to Brittany where we’ll turn inland to Normandy for our ferry from Caen to Portsmouth. 

As I write this post the evening before departure, our Bostals are semi-broken into cardboard boxes, ready to be stuffed with our gear to help prevent damage for the flight to Faro tomorrow. I have genuinely not felt this level of excitement for a very long time. It’s a different feeling to the epic Pan Celtic ultra endurance racing rides of late - this time around we have only an indicative route and we will not be cycling longingly past a spectacular lunch spot! Oh no, if you can be sure of one thing on this trip, you can be sure of that.

An account and photos to follow on our return as I once again pass the baton to Pete to reflect on his bike packing journey.