It being a Sunday and all, I felt justified in sleeping in this morning. I felt just as justified in eating a whole box (2500kcal worth!) of the delicious muesli I'd bought, after all I was going to be riding far today. Or was I? After packing up, I performed my usual pre-ride check and discovered a flat tyre. “Phew! Lucky I patched that one last night!”, I thought as I got out my one and only spare tube. A Spanish guy came over and had a chat in his broken English and my shattered (I don't think it counts as broken yet) Spanish. Perhaps distracted by this, or perhaps just due to my ineptness, I dug in a little too hard with the tyre lever after putting in the spare tube. Psssssshh.
$&*#!
No tubes left and I'd used the last patch in my repair kit last night, so I was basically up the proverbial creek without a paddle. There weren't going to be any shops of any description open that could sell me a repair kit either. As the guy at the campground reception said, “In Tarifa, no-one wants to work on a Sunday”. At his suggestion, I walked the road to the service station, but as I expected, they couldn't help. Walking back, I noticed a whole lot of cyclists going past, and had an idea. Just as I was getting to the campground, I noticed two guys on mountain bikes pulling out. Sprinting after them, I waved desperately and shouted 'Una Momenta! Por Favor!' at the top of my lungs. One of them didn't want to stop, but the other did, and apparently already cognizant of my plight ('you're the one camped outside the toilets right?'), rode up to his comrade and got a repair kit off him.
Thanking my saviours, I walked back to my site and got to work patching a few tubes. I did three (I actually would have patched all five of them, but I didn't want to use all of his patches), just in case one of them didn't hold. Two did, so I chose the best looking one and put it on, being careful to use the plastic tyre lever this time. No pinching occurred this time around, and I end up with another spare tube because a Germany woman came up to me and presented me with a meticulously wound (how very German) tube.
Resolving to buy about one hundred patches when I next found a shop selling them, I set off quite slowly. I was feeling pretty saddle sore and the combination of a half inflated front tyre (my pump isn't that fantastic) and the problem with the chain skipping off the gears wasn't conducive to fast riding either. Still I just concentrated on spinning the pedals round and gradually started to enjoy the nice day. I was entering wind farm territory (it's very windy down here near the Atlantic ocean) and it made me feel very virtuous riding my green vehicle past these generators of green power. Some people don't like wind turbines, but personally I find them very aesthetically pleasing and have never noticed any unpleasant noises originating from them.
I ended up riding for forty five km without stopping for more than the time it takes to snap a photo, which was a minor miracle considering how saddle sore I was. The streak ended there because it was of course lunch time! Avocado and bread are definitely the perfect ingredients for a touring lunch, nothing else can sate me.
Unfortunately, five km after I started again the nice Carretera Nacional stopped abruptly, dumping me on the autovia. There was a road going down to the coast, so I decided to take that instead in the hope that there would be a campground somewhere down there. Sure enough, about three km later I saw a sign for one. Strangely though, I didn't really want to spend the night there. I had a strong urge to just stealth camp. There had been lots of good spots that had caught my eye and I was getting a bit sick of paying so much money for so little. Most of them don't even provide toilet paper in the toilets and that aggravated me incredibly, more than anything else.
Riding past the turnoff for the campground, I realised I didn't even have any cash left to pay for a night. I wanted to reach the 70k mark anyway, so I was happy to keep going to Conil, the next town (there was no bank where the campground was) and maybe (maybe!), I'd go back to the campground after getting some money out. There were far fewer stealthy spots on the way to Conil, so I started to reluctantly think I'd better go to the campground. Reaching the town, I found a multitude of banks, and tried my card at the first one. 'We cannot process your request for technical reasons' That's weird... I tried at the next one – same issue, but it was run by the same carrier, so that didn't necessarily mean anything. Then after trying at a telebanco and being told a similar story, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to be able to get money out that night. It wasn't as if I didn't have any money to draw out, I've still got heaps left! The whole visa network must have been down or something.
So basically I had no other option but to stealth camp now. I guess I could have gone to the campground and paid the next morning, but like I said, I wanted to stealth it anyway, so it was the perfect excuse. The time was getting close to six, so I needed to get a move on and find a suitable spot before it got dark. As I rode up from the beach (where camping was strictly forbidden), I noticed a thick copse of uncleared trees high up above the street. “That would be rather perfect”, I thought to myself, trying to see if I could find a way up there.
There was a path further up, so waiting until there was no-one to see me, I snuck in and took a look around. It was perfect, completely invisible from the street. Someone had dragged some branches across the path in an attempt to block it off, but I just dragged my stuff over the barrier, hoping that it didn't mean someone would care if I went up. No-one had shown up after half an hour while I sat reading a magazine, so I decided it would be fine and put up the tent on a flat bit of ground.
Taking a bit of a risk, I went for a run, carrying my wallet and passport and hoping that no-one would come along and rob me of my other stuff. If something like that did happen, it would be very frustrating and distressing, but I'd still be able to get home, so it wouldn't be the end of the world. I hadn't missed a run in quite a while at that point and didn't want to set a precedent, so it was worth the risk to me.
Nothing happened (apart from a very slow run) and I went to bed content, without having spent a cent all day.
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